Why We Begin with the Bible
When many first begin to take their health in earnest, they soon find that information does not of itself settle the matter. One voice bids them take this course, another bids them take that. Physicians, naturopaths, terrain proponents, spiritual guides, and well-meaning friends all speak, yet their words often stand in sharp conflict one with another and with the hearer’s own experience. He cannot live out every protocol, nor re-run every experiment, in order to find which is true.
Where, then, may the truth be found? Beneath this confusion lies a more fundamental question. No man can decide what is true without some standard of truth. A health claim, a moral claim, a spiritual claim—all must be weighed against something. The moment we ask, “By what standard do we judge?” another difficulty appears. If we seek to prove our standard by some higher rule, we have only begun a new chain of, “But how do you know that?” which never ends. To know what is true, we must have a standard; but to know which standard is right, we would already need some truth.
In other words, every man begins somewhere. He lives from belief and from certain starting points, whether he will acknowledge them or not. The materialist who says that only what “science” measures is real is not free from belief; he is standing upon unproved assumptions about matter, the senses, and certain methods. The one who says, “I simply follow what feels right in my body,” is likewise standing upon unproved beliefs about feeling as a guide to truth. The question, therefore, is not, “Can I avoid belief?”—you cannot. The question is, “Which beliefs and starting points am I building upon, and are they indeed worthy to govern my life and health?”
For the most part, men never face this. In practice, multitudes are entrusting their bodies to standards they have never once examined. They are told to “trust the science,” to “trust the experts,” or to “trust their intuition,” and are content to do so, so long as their path is made easy. Seldom are they pressed with the simple question, “By what standard do you judge any of these?” It is for this cause that the present article is written: to call a halt, to bring the foundation into view, and to show why we must first deal with the matter of the standard itself, before we dare to speak of health.
The Only Infallible Standard
If every man must have a starting point, the next question naturally arises: where ought we to begin? It will not do to answer that one standard is as good as another, provided it seems to “work” for a time. If the foundation itself be unsound, whatever is built upon it must fail in the end.
In this work there is no claim to neutral ground. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are received as the revelation of God to man, and therefore as the only infallible rule of faith and practice, including how we are to view and care for the body. This is not a matter brought to some higher tribunal for proof; there is no higher court. It is the point at which we stand: that the God who made heaven and earth has spoken, and that His Word—not opinion, custom, or tradition—must govern every other claim.
From this several things follow. First, whatever is said about health must be brought into agreement with what God has declared concerning Himself, concerning man, and concerning the order He has appointed in nature. We are not left to devise a doctrine of the body, or a scheme of remedies, out of our own minds, as though the Maker had been silent. Secondly, the question in matters of health cannot be, “What seems most plausible to me?” but, “What has God made known, and what does He require of me in the ordering of this body which He has formed?”
Scripture presents God as the Creator of heaven and earth, who made man in His image and formed his body of the dust of the ground. (Gen. 1:1, 26–27, 2:7.) Our bodies are not accidents, nor mere material to be moulded according to changing fashions; they are His workmanship, to be offered unto Him as “a living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1), and regarded as temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16, 6:19). In this light, questions of diet, rest, appetite, and simple remedies cannot be dealt with as matters of taste alone. They stand in direct relation to the honour or dishonour rendered to the living God who has made and redeemed us.
The Bible also shows that God has written laws into nature and into our very constitution. It speaks of times and seasons, of day and night, of labour and rest. It teaches that “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” and that “the life of all flesh is the blood thereof” (Lev. 17:11, 14), and so sets before us that the life and condition of the whole body are bound up with the life and condition of the blood itself. Every cell receives its sustenance from that stream and returns its wastes there for removal. Under God’s providence, the quality of the blood is shaped by the food we eat, the air we breathe, the rhythms we keep, and the way we govern our thoughts and appetites. Thus it comes to pass that we truly become what we habitually eat and do, for those choices are written into the blood, and from thence into every tissue. These are the very laws of health which God has appointed, and which will later be considered more fully in their own place.
What place, then, have other authorities? Other writings and counsellors may have their use, but only as they take their place beneath the Scriptures. None may stand alongside the Word of God as an equal rule of faith, nor sit above it as judge. In all questions of health and healing, this is the point to be held fast: the Bible is the greater light, and every lesser light, every claim, and every counsel must be brought before that standard and there tried.
Nor is this any more arbitrary than the starting points which every other man and system must choose. All begin from axioms they cannot prove by a higher standard. The difference is this: Scripture does not merely claim to be useful or inspiring; it bears witness of itself that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” that it is “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,” and that “the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16, 17), and it calls us to “the law and to the testimony” as the rule by which all other voices are to be tried (Isa. 8:20).
A Messenger of the Lord Tested by Scripture
If the Scriptures are thus taken as the only infallible rule, another question immediately arises. What place has any later messenger or prophetic gift? Many either cast aside all such claims as imposture, or else receive them blindly, without trial, as though to question were unbelief. Neither course is safe.
On this foundation, Ellen White’s testimonies are received as the genuine spirit of prophecy—the same “testimony of Jesus” which spoke through the prophets of Scripture, not a weaker or “partial” inspiration. Yet they are not set beside the Bible as a second rule, nor placed above it as judge. Scripture itself gives us a figure by which to think of this. It speaks of “two great lights” set by God in the firmament of heaven: “the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.” (Gen. 1:16.) The greater and the lesser are alike lights of God’s appointing, each with its own rule and authority over day and night, yet differing one from another in glory. (1 Cor. 15:41.) In like manner, the Bible is the greater light—the only infallible rule of faith and practice, to which all must be brought “to the law and to the testimony.” Ellen White’s writings are thus “the lesser light” in relation to that greater light: not because they come from another Spirit, but because they ever point back to what God has declared aforetime by His servants the prophets.
This claim is not left to sentiment or to private feeling. The Scriptures themselves set forth tests by which any professed prophet is to be tried: the source and manner of the revelation; whether the word comes from God, or from man’s own heart; whether it speaks truth and its predictions stand; whether it is in harmony with the law and with the prior testimony; whether it bears a true confession of Jesus Christ come in our flesh (that is, Christ dwelling in His people, not a bare admission that He once took flesh two thousand years ago); whether it lays sin bare, warns of judgment, and builds up the church; and whether the life and fruit of the messenger accord with God’s commandments while rejecting occult and forbidden practices. Applied to Ellen White’s life and work, these tests have led many, not by compulsion but by careful inquiry, to a settled conviction that her counsels bear the marks of a true prophetic gift, and that her health writings come as tried and trustworthy light in full agreement with the greater light of Scripture.
In this work, therefore, her instructions concerning pure air, sunlight, temperance, rest, movement, a simple plant-based diet, the use of water, and trust in divine power are not treated as private opinions to be weighed against changing medical fashions, but as inspired applications of the laws God has revealed in His Word and in nature. Where her counsels shed light on how those laws are to be carried out in daily life—especially in regard to appetite, indulgence, presumption, and the use of simple, natural remedies—they are welcomed, not as additions to Scripture, but as part of the same call to ordered, obedient care of the body which the Scriptures themselves enjoin.
Why “Science” and Experts Are Not Enough
Once the standard of God’s Word is owned, the common counsel to “trust the science” must be weighed afresh. Men are bidden to receive its conclusions as final, yet the very method they trust is built upon foundations it cannot prove. It is not enough to say, “The studies show,” if the studies themselves rest upon things taken for granted.
Modern scientific work proceeds upon certain principles. It assumes that this particular “scientific method” is the right and sufficient way to seek truth about God’s world; that our senses and instruments give us a trustworthy picture of reality; that the future will resemble the past; that complex living beings may be understood by altering one variable at a time while “holding the rest constant;” and that mathematical patterns, statistical correlations, and probability statements can tell us what truly causes what, and what will be so in time to come. Yet none of these things can be demonstrated infallibly by the method which rests upon them. They are received as first principles (axioms), and then smuggled in as though they were self-evident truth. Whatever descriptive use may sometimes be found for such tools in narrow, controlled settings, these assumptions are not neutral, and they carry no divine warrant to rule the conscience.
In practice, much of this work is carried on under highly unnatural conditions—isolated cells in artificial media, carefully selected subjects, and single variables altered while everything else is constrained as far as men know how. The effects seen under those contrived arrangements are then treated as though they had been shown in whole, adaptive human beings living in the real world, and as though they revealed true causes in God’s creation. But that passage from the simplified system to the living person has neither been shown nor can be proved by such means. For all its show of precision, such a method cannot escape its own limits.
Much that is presented as settled science is therefore a weaving together of three threads: (1) observations and measurements made by fallible men with limited tools, (2) models and stories about unseen entities and mechanisms, and (3) institutional and financial pressures that select and reward certain stories while silencing others. The measurements themselves are usually thin—computer-generated readouts, microscope images of stained and processed samples, and signals run through layers of statistical modelling. Upon those outputs men build loaded tales about unseen viruses, receptors, molecules, and pathways, and one of those tales is then enforced as “the science,” though the same observations might just as well be pressed into the service of other, incompatible accounts. Diagrams in textbooks and on slides often picture those unseen things as though they had been directly observed in action, when they are, in truth, artistic reconstructions drawn from a chosen theory and used to train the imagination to take that theory for reality.
To the public, all this appears as bare claims of authority: “We know this drug works,” “We know this pathogen causes that disease,” “We know this lab value predicts that outcome.” In reality, such assertions rest upon thin measurements, loaded (and often profitable) interpretations, and probability statements that can never rise to certainty nor uncover true cause. The pretence of knowledge is used to dress up what is, at best, opinion about unseen mechanisms, and at worst, an instrument of marketing and social control. Whatever its technical garments, such a method cannot tell you what is ultimately true or good, or what obedience to God requires in the care of the body.
When a protocol or product is declared “scientifically proven,” it is not proved as a geometric theorem is proved—that is, by strict deduction from fixed first principles. It rests, at best, upon studies that yield probabilities under a chain of human assumptions: how the experiment was ordered, how the data were handled, and how the results are to be read. However plausible those assumptions may be made to appear, they are neither certain nor God-given, and they can never stand in the place of a clear word from God as to what a human being is for, and how the body is to be regarded and treated.
The words “scientifically proven” are therefore wielded like a signet, pressing a seal of authority meant to end a dispute, settle a policy, or close a question. In ordinary use the phrase is little more than a stamp affixed to one preferred story about limited observations gathered under narrow conditions for a particular end. It does not mean that the thing has been shown in whole, living persons over time, that no other explanation can meet the facts, or that no contrary evidence remains. It means only this: that, for the present, certain institutions have chosen this story as the one they will uphold.
When all these things are set together, it is plain that neither the method nor the men who employ it can stand as the final court of appeal. For all their measurements, probabilities, and models, they cannot supply the rule by which those things are to be weighed, nor the end for which the body is to be governed. We do not say that no observation ever made in a study is of any use, nor that every physician is a deceiver. Yet it follows of necessity that “science” and “expert” opinion cannot serve as the highest standard in questions of health. At most they offer tools and observations, and shifting, provisional models that may sometimes help one to notice patterns, or to suspect that a particular intervention is helping or harming in a given case. They cannot determine what a human being is for, what obedience to God requires, where the boundaries of conscience lie, or what kind of life accords with the laws of health He has appointed.
Therefore, when you are told to “trust the science,” the necessary question returns: by what standard is this science itself being judged? If an interpretation of data leads to the violation of clear light which God has given—whether about temperance, about the life in the blood, or about care of the body as His workmanship—it is the interpretation that must give way, not the Word of God. If a theory or protocol requires you to ignore or overturn the plain laws of health in order to manage a disease-label indefinitely, however clever, profitable, or fashionable it may be, it is not thereby faithful, but stands condemned by the very standard it pretends to serve.
A Warning Against Feelings and Impressions
Many, seeing the confusion and abuses that attend appeals to “the science,” suppose that the remedy must be found within: in feelings, impressions, and private leadings. If “experts” and their instruments cannot be trusted as the highest court, then surely, it is thought, the answer must be to “follow your heart,” to “listen to your intuition,” or to “do what feels right to you.” In our day this counsel is urged not only by the world, but at times even by those who profess the name of Christ.
Yet Scripture is plain that the heart, in itself, is not a safe guide, for it is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” (Jer. 17:9.) It is darkened by sin, inclined to seek its own, and easily carried away by the desires and lusts of the flesh. A man may feel strongly persuaded and yet be sincerely wrong, for “there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Prov. 14:12.) He may mistake the quieting of guilt, or the relief of having chosen a less difficult path, for the peace of God. He may call an impulse “a leading of the Spirit” when it is, in truth, only the echo of his own desires.
The feelings and impressions of the inner life are not, however, to be despised. They belong to our created nature, and at times may bear witness to the light which God has already given. Inner impressions, however, differ from person to person in ways that cannot all be right at once. They are not given to rule us, but must be educated by and subjected to the written Word of God and by those fixed principles of truth and duty which He has made known. Any “peace” that rests upon disobedience is not the peace of God “which passeth all understanding” (Phil. 4:7), however real it may feel for a time.
This matter touches directly upon questions of health. A man may “feel led” to disregard plain light concerning temperance, rest, or the use of harmful substances, and then comfort himself that he has “peace” about it. Another may shrink from the discipline of needed reform and take his reluctance as a sign that God does not require such a change of him. To claim God’s favour while thus turning from His known will is not faith, but presumption: it asks Him to bless what He has forbidden, and to set aside the very laws of life and health which He has appointed. The question, in every such case, is not whether the heart feels at ease, but whether the course chosen accords with the Word of God and with the light already given.
The Biblical Frame For Health
If neither “science and experts” nor “feelings and impressions” can be your final standard, what then remains? We submit that health must be understood within the same Scriptural frame as every other part of life: creation, fall, redemption, and obedience. God created the body with a definite design and laws; sin has brought disorder, disease, and death; Christ redeems the whole person; and believers are called to present their bodies to God in obedience as instruments for His service.
What standard, then, has God given by which questions of health are to be judged? The answer is not hidden. God has spoken in His Word, in the testimony of His works, and in those simple, intelligible laws of life and health which He has appointed for the good of all. These do not change with fashion or feeling. Scripture itself bears witness to these things. It warns against gluttony and drunkenness, calls temperance the fruit of the Spirit, teaches the goodness of labour and of rest, and sets apart times for laying aside burdens and remembering our Maker. Even men who do not receive the Bible as the Word of God have often acknowledged, by experience, that the body thrives best under light, fresh air, pure water, simple food in season, ordered rest, and a quieted mind.
These provisions set before us, not only what is forbidden, but the kind of living that best accords with the habitation and constitution Jehovah has given us, and with the purposes for which He made the body a dwelling-place of His Spirit. Set forth in simple terms, the laws of healthful living include such things as a plain, nourishing diet in due season, regular and suitable exercise, the free use of pure water, abundant sunlight and pure air, proper rest and relief from overstrain, temperance in all things, and that quiet trust in divine power by which the mind is kept from being worn out with anxiety.
In these things there is nothing mysterious or reserved for a few. They are gifts and duties set within the reach, in some measure, of all, and they stand as part of the standard by which claims in health ought to be tried. Any practice or prescription that bids us slight or overturn these plain provisions of God, in order to cling to some cherished indulgence or to uphold a merely human device, shows itself by that fact to be out of order. The path of safety is to bring every proposed course into the light of His Word and of these appointed laws of life, and there to ask again: by what standard does it stand or fall?
In this light, health is never treated as a saviour, nor are we to let it become an idol. The guarding and restoring of physical health matter because they fit into a larger calling: to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, in the duties of the individual life. A mind and body less burdened by self-inflicted conditions of disease is more readily available for that service.
An Appeal to Conscience
In the end, these matters do not rest in the abstract, but in the choices of individual lives. Each of us must answer before God how we have dealt with the light given us—whether in His Word, in conscience, or in the plain lessons of His providence and works. It is a fearful thing to go on in known presumption, asking God to bless what He has forbidden, yet He is rich in mercy to those who turn and obey the light they have. It will not suffice to say that “the experts” approved, or that our own hearts felt at ease, if the course we chose could not endure the light of the standard He has appointed. The question comes home to each one of us—in what we eat and drink, in how we labour and rest, in how we regard the body He has formed: by what standard are we walking? In what follows, we shall bring rival accounts of disease—germ and terrain alike—to this same standard, and then consider how the laws of health themselves are to be lived.