Gym

I confess, morbid curiosity sometimes gets the better of me.  So I clicked on a link that promised to tell me about the people who should not be allowed to “gym.”  (And that’s the way it used the word — as a verb, not a noun.  So back off, grammar Nazis!)

I saw one picture and closed the page.  It was a woman in a ridiculous leopard-print leotard on some sort of machine.  She was about 50 pounds north of 50 pounds overweight.  Insert name of bloated mammal here.  The implication was that such a person had no business being in a place devoted to the pursuit of health — or, at the very least, the pursuit of abs.

I find that deeply troubling.  I understand that workout fiends take their exercise seriously, and that they may consider their “temple” defiled when a barrel of whale blubber manages to waddle through the doors.  But to deny access to the ones who need it the most?  What sort of elitism is that?

I’ll tell you what sort of elitism.  The same sort Christians show to the worldliest of the worldly when they somehow find their way into our assemblies.  They need Jesus more than they need air.  Literally.  It’s written all over them.  Again, literally.  And we want to impose a dress code?  Or shun them because they are “weird” or “scare the kids”?  Would Jesus?  Did Jesus? 

Read Luke 7:40-47.  Then ask yourself whether you would be more like Simon the Pharisee or the “sinner” at Jesus’ feet.  Then take a good, long look in the mirror.