The Rumor Mill

 

 

“So, I hear you’re leaving us,” the older man told me. 

“Really?”  I said, surprised.  “Who told you?”

“Oh, it’s all around our church,” he said breezily.  “I saw you over at Food Lion this week and thought about saying something over there, but I knew I had an appointment today and so I didn’t bother you.”

I could just picture the folks at a little Baptist Church talking about the high school foot ball team’s woes, the best places to get a knee replacement, and Dr. Waldron’s imminent departure. 

“Honestly,” I told him.  “This is the first I’ve heard of it.  I’m not planning on leaving.”

My patient seemed to relax a little.  “That’s wonderful news,” he said.  “It sure is crazy how rumors fly around a small town.”

Ain’t it the truth…

Of course, it isn’t just small towns.  In 1897, Mark Twain was reported by multiple newspapers to be dying or perhaps even dead in London. 

Finally, one periodical, The New York Journal, decided to contact the author (a difficult thing to do if he had actually been deceased).  In response, Twain famously wrote back, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

“The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts.” (Proverbs 18:8)

Gossip may start innocently enough with someone sharing a concern or a poorly heard story about someone – a friend, a cousin, even a small-town doctor.  As that story is shared between individuals, gentle embellishment and poorly functional hearing aids combine to morph it into something that scarcely resembles the truth.

On the other hand, the point of gossip is not to share truth, but rather to deliver a tasty morsel to someone else which can then be passed on down the line. 

This particular story wasn’t particular harmful.  It may have scared some patients (and relieved others), but eventually they will all find out that it isn’t true and that will be that.  There are times when someone’s reputation may be harmed or friendships damaged as the result of these delectable bits of gossip.

The solution is simply to go the individual whose story is being told and ask them what the truth is, rather than pass it on to the others in a community.

There is little that stops a story in its tracks quicker than when you talk to your doctor and find that the new of his departure was greatly exaggerated.

Hamsters and Treadmills

 

I heard a whirring sound in the hallway.  It might have been a distant fan or perhaps zephyrs blowing in from the coast.  Actually, the sound was simply Pip working out.

Pip is a Syrian Hamster, a little fellow who sleeps all day and runs on a treadmill all night.  Actually, it isn’t exactly a treadmill he runs on, it is a wheel, but the concept remains the same.

The modern treadmill dates back to 1817 when an Englishman by the name of William Cubitt became bothered by the idleness of prison inmates.  Obviously in the early 1800s, there wasn’t much on television, but the prisoners still did little with their time while they waited for the end of their imprisonment.

With this in mind, Cubitt came up with the concept of a treadmill – or treadwheel.  It was simply something that prisoners needed to walk on for hours each day to teach them to “be industrious.”  Long before prisoners took up making license plates, they were walking on a treadmill, grinding the air as they worked out their sentence of “hard labor.”

It is amusing that in two hundred years, the treadmill has morphed from something that prisoners were forced to do in order to teach them the dangers of idleness to something that most gyms have installed to help the industrious to burn calories.  These days, many people simply do not burn enough calories with their normal work and apparently need to emulate these early Victorian prisoners.

Many people purchase treadmills with the expectation that these calorie burning devices will enrich their lives.  A surprising number of these exercise machines sit idle – in surveys approximately one third of treadmills sit in a corner, collecting dust, while their owners do other, less strenuous activities.

“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” (James 1:22)

A surprising number of people own Bibles but never open them.  When they do find their way into a pew, the message they hear from the pulpit does little to impact their lives.  Like the treadmills in the basement, the Bibles and sermons collect dust, changing nothing except, perhaps, to make the owners feel better about their level of spirituality.

It would be better to be like Pip.  He requires no external motivation, he simply has a drive to run and so run he does – every night.  If you want to, you don’t have to is true whether you are talking about treadmills or Bible reading.

A Pill for Will Power?

 

 

“I am so frustrated,” the older lady sitting across from me said.  “I’m desperate to lose weight and I just can’t!”

“What have you tried?”  I asked her.

“Well, I got some online subscription to a weight loss program and they sent me some medicine – I don’t remember what it was.  Anyway, it made me feel so bad that I couldn’t eat!  I only took it for two days and then I stopped because of how bad I felt.”

“That’s unfortunate,” I said.  “I guess not eating helps with weight loss.”

“Sure – but I don’t really want something that makes sick – just something that gives me more will power.  Then, I was going to try a keto diet,” she said.  “The problem there is that there are so many carbs in this world that I like.  There’s cookies and pies and chocolate.  Chocolate!!  I can’t imagine giving up chocolate for even a week, much less longer than that.”

We talked for a while longer.  I have frequent conversations about weight loss throughout my weeks and what I have discovered is that people want a pill that will give them will power – without having side effects.

For some people, medicines like Zepbound and Wegovy are good solutions – assuming their insurance covers them, but for many, the cost and side effects are too much for them to be able to take the medicine.

For many, the concept of weight loss is something that is constantly longed for, but never achieved.  Carnivore, keto, and cabbage soup diets exist (along with a hundred others) because few are able to stick with them long term.  These diets are good for ten-pound weight loss in the first four weeks, followed by a gradual return to normal eating patterns and putting the weight right back on.

The problem is two-fold – we live in a society with lots of tasty, unhealthy food.  More than that, few people can easily stick with portion control or cut out foods that they know aren’t good for them.

Is it possible that Americans value chocolate more than an ideal body weight?  <gasp!> I’m afraid so.

Jesus told a story about a merchant who was seeking valuable pearls, “who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.” (Matthew 13:45,46)

This is one of the parables of the kingdom and in it, Jesus made clear that the kingdom is more valuable than anything else.  The problem is that many people do not recognize its value.  They walk into a jeweler’s shop and see only another pearl, not something of immense value that is worth obtaining.

More than that is the simple question of whether the people who recognize its value are willing to surrender everything in order to obtain it.  It is not enough to simply give lip-service to this, it takes everything we are and have.

So many people say that they want something – weight loss, financial freedom, or a deep connection with God – but they are unwilling to give up what it would take to achieve that goal.  At the end of the day, the problem isn’t that we don’t know what it would take to achieve our goals, it is that we value the status quo more than those goals.

Whether it is side effects, chocolate, or potatoes, the path to weight loss has many detours and those who achieve it are those who value the goal more than the things they crave.  How much more those who desire the kingdom?