So we have been discussing the art of love/agape, and I wanted to introduce a critical principle. Agape banking is preparing yourself to love, in the sense of making ready to exert yourself on behalf of the welfare of others. You know it’s coming; you can see in your own life times and places where you needed something from someone else. Be ready to give before the need presents itself. There are all sorts of ways.
For example, I pursue fitness for good reasons.
1. Having more to offer: In preparation for needs not yet seen, I push my body so I can offer strength to others. So long as the needs are light, I prepare for when they may be great. All it takes is one moment and it could be worth years of effort.
2. Living longer and stronger: Even if the bulk of what I do makes no great demands on me physically, being fully alive and for a longer time makes me more useful, more reliable.
3. Dying well: Studies indicate those who pummel themselves while they live die with less suffering, even if they die under torture. This is not a matter of resistance, per se, but overall health which makes it easier to keep your resolve and sanity under the worst circumstances.
This is part of how I keep a large agape account. The bigger the balance, the more love I can pour onto situations and people. Looking in the mirror, I have no doubt I cause trouble which places demands on others. I see the old scars in my soul of things I’ve done to harm others, in one way or another. Thus, I have no reason to expect anyone else to be better, so I save up lots of forgiveness for when the time comes.
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Definitely the truth about point 3. I’ve seen with my own eyes that unfit people die in a distressed, decrepit state. Of course, we all die eventually, and we all become old, ragged and decrepit to one degree or another. But being unfit just makes the decrepitness worse. And the funny thing is that workouts don’t take much effort or time – even 15 minutes every other day (the lazy person’s workout) still does wonders.
Indeed, it does; the body’s initial fitness curve is very steep in favor of results over small efforts. Dying well is one of the most powerful forms of showing the truth.
In the olden days I doubt very much they had anything like the Bowflex 20 minutes a day, three times a week workouts. I think they worked hard just trying to stay alive…and played like children throughtout their lives.
I have nothing against workouts. I have a Bowflex and free weights. I wonder if we could kill two birds with one stone if we could taylor our physical exertions to some other form of gain besides tight glutes.
I chuckle at the image of “tight glutes.” I played the body builder game in college, but never very seriously, a frankly Western cultural thing. However, working out itself is neither an Eastern nor Western concept specifically. From ancient times, men have understood we play in practice for emergencies. Thus, we intend to train as we expect to use our bodies in the real thing. Hebrew men would admire strong legs, and any hint of lameness was rather like the skinny geek or our day.
I wish I could afford free weights and a place to store them, but trailer park living and a shared home is simply not amenable to that. So I use other methods I developed over the years during military service. I don’t really care about the bodybuilder look, but the rest of the world does, and it’s easy for me to get results there. So in the interest of Game I give it some effort, but I am really much more interested in things like swinging my double-bit axes. I’ve used that skill several times in helping my neighbors. I take full advantage of being a heavy-hitter.
But on yet a deeper level, making the most of whatever God has given us physically is simply good stewardship, unless you know for certain He calls you to a different approach. Thus, the short list in my post.