Sinners in the Hands of a Skinny God

A parable for today

In the beginning, there was a God. And this God had the sleekest, trimmest body of all time. God created humans with bodies, and while they lived in God’s organic garden, their bodies were perfect—no extra fat, just lean muscle, no pain or disease, just bodily bliss. God had just one rule: don’t eat wrong.

But these humans wanted to eat however they saw fit. So they took all the delicious fruits and vegetables, even killed a couple of cows for delectable steaks, and ate to their hearts’ content. All was well and good for a while; their bodies didn’t change much. But then they invented bread. Now their appetites were opened, and there was no going back. They ate everything that seemed good to them. And their bodies began to change…plumper, rounder, fuller. Of course, they ate everything in secret–didn’t want God telling them what to do! They didn’t mind their fleshy new bodies, but it would be their bodies that betrayed them.

One day, God was walking in the garden and saw the humans.

“Oh my…ME!” God exclaimed. “What the hell happened to you? You’re…FAT!” And God was not just disappointed or concerned for their health. God was Big Mad. So angry that God rounded up the humans and took them to the far edge of the garden, where the Exit sign flashed red and bright.

“You are fat, and therefore you have to leave,” God said. “There is no room for you in paradise. Once you’re thin and trim again, by the sweat of your brow, I’ll consider letting you back in. But know this—it’s going to be hard work. You’ll long for thinness, but your appetite will sabotage you at every turn. It’ll take some time, but if you work out and eat right, you’ll eventually earn your way back in.”

And so the humans were shut out of God’s garden and forced to labor over their food, trying to figure out what God meant by “work out and eat right.”

Immediately the humans felt shame over their bodies, which had cost them paradise. They wanted to do whatever they could to get back to the organic garden of their memories. They passed on their memories to their children and their children’s children, who took the last word of God to heart: “Work out and eat right.” These phrases were argued over for ages—what did they mean?

Every person wanted to make it back to paradise as soon as possible. So, they turned the words of their God into sacraments and organized their whole culture around getting their “garden bodies back.” They set up altars with lights and cameras around images of perfectly thin bodies. They imagined themselves in thinner and thinner bodies so that they could achieve wholeness and ease of life, just like it had been for their original parents in the garden.

Nowadays, the adherents of this religion meet in places of worship called gyms and they collectively fast from indulgence as they pursue thin and trim bodies. Their chants fill the culture—perhaps you’ve heard one or two. “Calories in, calories out,” they repeat. “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” they mouth as they proclaim the weight loss gospel to the unbelieving swine they barely tolerate in their pagan ways.

“The end is near!” they exclaim. “Repent and be healthy!” their prophets and evangelists cry. They sleep at night, not exactly at rest due to their body worries, but confident that they are doing as much as they can to be skinny again. When judgment day comes, they want to be found righteous. Maybe the Skinny God will allow them entrance into paradise once more.