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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 07 November 2022

Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize sale of marijuana for recreational purposes in 2012. Now President Joe Biden stated in February 2021 that his administration will pursue cannabis decriminalization. Is this trend toward embracing recreational marijuana good and wise?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #53 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Both Democrats and Republican politicians, and certainly the general public, seem to have made peace with the idea that marijuana— also called cannabis, weed, pot, or dope, referring to the dried flowers, leaves, stems, and seeds of the cannabis plant—is a harmless drug, no more threatening than caffeine. And now the current administration is apparently marching full speed ahead toward decriminalization or legalization of marijuana in both medical and recreational uses.

“In the US, the non-medical use of cannabis is legalized in 19 states (plus Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the District of Columbia) and decriminalized in 12 states (plus the US Virgin Islands) as of May 2022. Decriminalization refers to a policy of reduced penalties for cannabis offenses, typically involving a civil penalty for possessing small amounts…instead of criminal prosecution or the threat of arrest. In jurisdictions without penalty the policy is referred to as legalization, although the term decriminalization is sometimes used for this purpose as well.”

“Despite federal prohibition, the U.S. cannabis industry has experienced dramatic growth in recent years. By some estimates, total U.S. cannabis sales were expected to surpass $24 billion in 2021, representing 38% growth over 2020 sales…(Business analysts) projected that the cannabis industry is expected to add $92 billion to the U.S. economy.”

Around nine-in-ten Americans favor some form of marijuana legalization, according to an April 2021 Pew Research Center survey. An overwhelming majority of U.S. adults (91%) say either that marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use (60%) or that it should be legal for medical use only (31%). Just 8% say the drug should not be legal in any form.”

The CDC says, “Marijuana is the most commonly used federally illegal drug in the United States; 48.2 million people, or about 18% of Americans, used it at least once in 2019.”

Now, despite all the excitement about “Ooo, pot is finally legal,” there are still significant downsides. In other words, marijuana was considered an illegal and harmful drug in the past for worthy reasons.

Again, according to the CDC, 

• Recent research estimated that approximately 3 in 10 people who use marijuana have marijuana use disorder. For people who begin using marijuana before age 18, the risk of developing marijuana use disorder is even greater.
• Marijuana use directly affects the brain, specifically the parts of the brain responsible for memory, learning, attention, decision-making, coordination, emotion, and reaction time. Infants, children, and teens (who still have developing brains) are especially susceptible to the adverse effects of marijuana.
• Long-term or frequent marijuana use has been linked to increased risk of psychosis or schizophrenia in some users.
• Using marijuana during pregnancy may increase the person’s risk for pregnancy complications. 

So “the public health impact of marijuana legalization remains a controversial issue. Advocates of legalization contend that this policy change will provide for more stringent regulation and safer use of marijuana, more efficient use of law enforcement resources, and possibly even a decline in the prevalence of marijuana use among adolescents and of the use of “harder” drugs (e.g., cocaine and heroin). 

Those opposing legalization cite the adverse effects of marijuana and worry that legalization will lead to an increase in use, and thus an increase in health problems attributed to marijuana. The latter view is reflected in the official position statements of prominent professional medical associations such as the American Psychiatric Association, the American Society of Addiction Medicine, and the American Medical Association, which have expressed concern regarding the negative consequences of marijuana use.”

“There has been a significant increase in the number of people using marijuana daily or nearly daily.” “The legalization of medical marijuana has led to a boom in the industry, with dispensaries popping up all over the country.” “More people are using marijuana for recreational purposes.”

But what many people do not know is that “the potency of marijuana’s psychoactive component, THC, has risen dramatically. In many of the marijuana products being legally sold in Colorado—one product is sold as “Green Crack” and has a THC content of 21%, and other products legally sold have a THC content of as high as 70%.”

So, the marijuana now widely available is not the same, nor as supposedly harmless, as the pot associated in the public’s memory of the Let it all hang out 1960s drugs, sex, and rock and roll hippy counterculture. 

Drivers who are high on marijuana react more slowly, find it harder to pay attention, have more difficulty maintaining their car’s position in the lane 

and make more errors when something goes wrong than they do when they’re sober. Marijuana users’ minds are blunted to reality. Cannabis is mind-altering, harmful to the brain, and potentially addictive. It destroys brain cells. People who use marijuana are more likely to abuse other drugs like alcohol, tobacco, opiates, amphetamines, cocaine, and heroin. Getting high causes you to become disengaged, not only from people, but also from life in general.

Aside from considerations about the physical and psychological effects of marijuana, we could also talk about why people seem to want to deaden their ability to interact with their circumstances and people around them. Some would say this is symptomatic of a spiritual issue, a desire to seek solace and a reduction of anxiety in chemicals rather than the Spirit of God.

Marijuana is nowhere referenced in Scripture, but prohibitions against intoxication are.  

People sometimes note there is no condemnation of drinking wine, so why is marijuana different? One answer is that wine can be imbibed without drunkenness, while numerous medical researchers, and also marijuana users, point out that one hit makes a person high, that indeed the sole purpose of smoking pot is to get high. 

So, there is a difference between drinking wine and smoking pot.

Christian liberty indicates that, where legal, Christians may decide to employ perceived benefits—though research is not yet definitive—of medical marijuana.

Christian liberty, the freedom God gives us to discern and make wise decisions, may allow us, where legal, to use recreational marijuana, or it may not – herein lies the discernment and decision to be made.

Scripture enjoins us to use our freedom wisely, noting that all things may be permissible but not all things are beneficial. Christian freedom is always to be used as unto the glory of God and the blessing of those around us.

Use of medical marijuana is controversial. Use of recreational marijuana is unequivocally problematic. “Today’s marijuana is a potent, highly hallucinogenic drug, so recreational use is fraught with danger.”

Using recreational marijuana, even periodically, is a threat to youth who are more susceptible to negative side-effects, can cause mental health problems like paranoia or schizophrenia, impairs users, can cause a host of physical maladies, and can be addictive.

Why, then, is the current administration and a number of states so excitedly insistent upon making recreational marijuana legal? One answer could simply be money. The cannabis industry is booming, and politicians want the taxes this haul generates.

In the end, one wonders how getting high on marijuana, how using a recreational drug to deaden our senses, how allowing our minds or bodies to be brought under the power of anything other than the Spirit of God, is beneficial and wise. Well, it is not.

Regarding use of marijuana for medicine, I encourage you to go slow, study available research, and look for safer alternatives.

Regarding use of recreational marijuana, I encourage you to be a cannabis teetotaler. “Do not get drunk on wine,” the Scripture says, “which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit,” (Eph 5:18). It’s not much of a stretch, and not a misinterpretation of Scripture, to say the same about pot.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. 

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022   

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.  

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 09 August 2022

Most Americans are taking some kind of drug daily, ones that improve the quality of or even save our lives, so the issue is not drugs per se but what kind of drugs? Are we addicted and has chemistry become a substitute for spirituality in our lives?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #40 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Opioid abuse is now a national epidemic, more lethal than the worst diseases.

“Opioids are a class of drugs naturally found in the opium poppy plant and that work in the brain to produce a variety of effects, including the relief of pain with many of these drugs. Opioids can be prescription medications often referred to as painkillers, or they can be so-called street drugs, such as heroin.”

America is now the most medicated country in the world, and we apparently possess an insatiable appetite for opioid medications, legal prescriptions or illegal synthetics on the street. For example, one in four American women are taking some form of psychiatric medication, chemical treatment for depression, anxiety, ADHD or other mental disorder. One in six in the general population.

These drugs “don’t just relieve pain and worry, they produce psychic euphoria, a sense that the rest of the world has slipped away, especially when abused—perpetuating the potential for addiction.”

So, drugs become a way to cope, to manage the stresses of life, some of which are unavoidable—just life in the real world—but many stresses and anxieties are rooted in how Americans choose to live their lives: our overdrive toward financial success, overwork, insufficient rest, lack of a sense of community found in family or church, little perspective on why we do what we do, perspective traditionally found in religious worship now increasingly tossed aside. 

In other words, we create our perceived need for artificial chemical support. 

We damage the body, which Scripture calls a temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16-17), we lose control and subject ourselves to influences like the seven deadly sins, we place our health and spiritual wellbeing at risk (Col. 3:17), and much more even unto death.

These deaths of course include junkies as portrayed on TV crime shows, down and out people who’ve lived on the dark side for years. But these deaths also include your neighbors in brightly painted suburbs, people behind the white picket fences who live what might be called “respectable” lives.

“Many people who take opiates find that they need the drug just to feel normal, rather than to relieve pain. Tolerance does not necessarily mean that addiction will occur, but it makes addiction more likely.”

The opioid fentanyl poses an exceptionally high overdose risk due to having an extremely unpredictable fatal dosage when mixed with other drugs. 

“Starting around 2013, fentanyl disrupted the North American market for illegal drugs, capitalizing on pre-existing demand for opiates such as heroin and prescription pharmaceuticals. In 2016, fentanyl and fentanyl analogues were the most common cause of overdose deaths in the United States at more than 20,000, about half of all opioid-related deaths.”

“Compared to heroin, it is more potent, has higher profit margins, and, because it is compact, has simpler logistics. It can be cut into, or even replace entirely, the supply of heroin and other opiates...As of 2018, fentanyl was the most commonly listed opioid in overdose drug deaths, surpassing heroin.”

“More adults between 18 and 45 died of fentanyl overdoses in 2020 than any other leading cause of death, including COVID-19, motor vehicle accidents, cancer and suicide. Fentanyl also killed more Americans in general in 2020 than car accidents, gun violence, breast cancer and suicide, according to the analysis of CDC data from Families Against Fentanyl. Fentanyl deaths doubled from 32,754 fatalities to 64,178 fatalities in two years between April 2019 and April 2021.”

“Opioid dependence in America doesn’t discriminate; it just infects. Transcending geography, class and religion, it’s ravaging a generation, claiming lives by way of both addiction and death.”

But with all this, when was the last time you heard a sermon, or even a reference in the pulpit, to opioids? If your answer is, I can’t remember, then that’s evidence of part of the challenge from a Christian point of view. Some churches are doing good work on this, but much of the Body of Christ is not as active as we could be. Overwhelmed perhaps by so many problems, dealing with people willingly putting drugs into their bodies, especially prescription medicines, may not seem as urgent.

But the Church needs to share “Thus saith the Lord” in terms of where individuals look for peace and solace, emotional reinforcement, even relief from physical pain.

By the way, I’m not suggesting individuals who take pain medications are doing something wrong. Far from it. I understand that legitimate treatment for a host of physical or emotional afflictions can be enormously important and helpful. And I believe God enabled humanity to learn from and develop remedies from his created order, medications we can use to bless people’s lives.

But the statistics clearly indicate that many people are doing more than this. 

They’re attempting to drown their troubles with various opioids, rather than seeking respite in the Spirit of God. Instead of seeking first the kingdom of God, they hope for better living through chemistry. This includes drug addicts for sure, but it may also include millions using drugs like opioids to deaden their sense of agitation, loss, defeat, despair, gut-wrenching sorrow, or absence of hope. It’s substance abuse just like alcoholism, though this abuse uses pills.

We’re told that what addicts need most are meaningful relationships with people who are there and who care. This, the Church can provide, but it will take understanding, commitment, time, and money. The Church can support individuals struggling with opioid dependency by helping them identify the root of the problem. What caused the need? For Christians this means looking honestly at the heart.

If we are prolife, as I believe Christians should be, then we must be prolife holistically or comprehensively, meaning in every way. We are indeed responsible to help those who cannot help themselves.

So, I recommend pastors delve into this issue. Pastors don’t have to become a doctor or psychologist, just a shepherd applying a Christian worldview and biblical teaching to a real-world contemporary issue.

And I recommend the rest of us work to learn more about the current opioid crisis in America, that we discover how our church might reinforce both prevention and recovery, and that we try to discern what part we might play in aiding those who need our assistance.

Physician Matthew Loftus wrote in his Christianity Today article, “if addiction is even remotely an issue of misplaced affection, then for Christians, the gospel is the only suitable starting point. ‘All people—addicts in particular—are called to start with the gospel that satisfies our hunger, trusting in God’s love for us and repenting of our sin.’”

“Many people recover without trusting in Christ, yes, but those who are grasped by the gospel have a significant head start in sorting out the ‘hierarchy of loves’ as they untangle the particular ways in which sin has created strongholds in their lives.”

In 1 Thess. 5:14, the Apostle Paul reminded us, “we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone.”

The opioid crisis is a national emergency. The question remains how the Church will meet the challenge.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.  

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022   

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.  

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 15 March 2022

If you look under “healthcare” in the dictionary you’ll probably see the word “expensive,” so wouldn’t it be great to identify some healthcare steps that make for a healthy body, mind, andbank account?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #13 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Healthcare is a long way from what our forebears endured during the 1800s and earlier. Thankfully, we no longer use leeches to suck out poison, understand germs, 

recognize the importance of hygiene, and have developed a vast array of medicines and medical technology that improve the quality and often the longevity of our lives.

But with this advancement has also come increasing costs—for the meds and med tech but also for health and medical insurance to helps us pay the bills. Consequently, some argue the government should do more, then do more again, taking care of us with socialized healthcare programs that too often trade benefits for liberties.

But take heart, there are costfree healthcare steps we can choose. We shared a few of these steps in the last podcast episode, “Costfree Healthcare 1,” so here we go with “Costfree Healtcare 2.”

What can we do for little or no cost that will improve our health?

1. Avoid Narcotics.53 million Americans, or 19.4% of people 12 and over, used illegal drugs or misused prescription drugs within the last year. Remember the commercial: “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs”? Sizzling fried egg. Actually, that commercial understated the problem. Hard drugs debilitate not only the brain but every part of a substance abuser’s life. “Using” is unwise, illegal, and unhealthy. 

2. Don’t Abuse Alcohol.If alcohol and tobacco are included, 165 million or 60.2% or of Americans aged 12 years or older currently abuse drugs and alcoho Alcohol abuse slows reflexes, impairs mental processes, increases the risk of several diseases, and often leads to alcohol dependence. It’s not called “Getting hammered” for nothing.

3. Develop a Hobby. Hobbies typically involve collecting, accomplishing, enriching, learning, expressing, developing, preserving. Part of the fun is that we don’t have todo these things. The very “unnecessary” character of many hobbies is evidence of the creative talent we possess as imago Dei, beings made in the image of God. The capacity to develop, arrange, or make is a form of investing ourselves and our values in the Created Order. It’s a God thing, which raises our quality of life.

4. Forgive.The man or woman who does not forgive is the man or woman who is hurt in perpetuity, embittered, and enslaved. Meanwhile, the unforgiven often go on unscathed. Jesus commanded us to forgive “not seven times, but seventy-seven times,” i.e., unto infinity if necessary (Matt. 18:22). Forgiving doesn’t exonerate another; God still brings things to account. Forgiving is a divinely enabled act that releases us. You probably know someone who hasn’t forgiven a parent dead for 25 years. Sad. Unforgiveness is a cancer of the soul. I can’t prove it, but I think unforgiveness is the number one sin in the Christian Church.

5. Avoid Sex Outside Marriage.“Friends with benefits” is a hip phrase communicating the general moral state of our culture. It denotes unmarried friends who have sex-sans-commitment whenever they’re inclined. But sex outside marriage is neither as casual nor as inconsequential as commonly believed. On the contrary, certain pathologies form a scary list of direct and indirect consequences: STDs, unwanted pregnancies and sometimes abortions, broken marriages, and additional psychological, spiritual, and physical forms of duress that can last a lifetime.  

This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends.

6. Serve Others.If you’re feeling depressed, down in the mouth, or logy, focus upon someone else’s problems. Then help them. It’s amazing what “Love one another” does to one’s perspective, feelings, and even actual circumstances.

7. Don’t Speed.From our youth we’ve heard “Speed Kills.” It does.

8. Get Married.I’m hard-pressed to argue this one is costfree, but researchers have repeatedly made the case that married people are healthier and tend to live longer than unmarried people. It seems God knew what he was doing when he said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). Of course, women have always known that men would make a mess of things if left to their own devices.

9. Get a Pet.Again, not sure this is truly costfree, but with the dividends the costs are minimal and worth it. People who own pets live longer, healthier lives. It’s called pet therapy. Go figure.

Our Brownie the Beagle has a philosophy, a consistent one:

--If I say, I’m really stressed…Brownie says, “Let’s go for a walk.”

--Me: Such and such happened and it’s a bummer…Brownie: “Let’s go for a walk.”

--Me: My favorite team lost…Brownie: “Let’s go for a walk.”

--Me: The world is ending as we know it…Brownie: “Let’s go for a walk.”

Moral of the story: If you need near costfree healthcare, get a dog or other pet. Pets are less expensive than Peloton or gym memberships, and they ask very few questions about our problems. They focus on “joie de vivre” – the joy of life.

Costfree healthcare is in our grasp, just a choice or two away. Live without self-induced health problems. Live longer. Deciding to live healthy is a matter of God honoring stewardship. 

Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022    

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.  

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 11 March 2022

With the cost of health and medical insurance continuing to go through the roof, wouldn’t it be great to find healthcare that didn’t cost us anything?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #12 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Healthcare might be the most contentious compound word in the English language.

Health care, the phrase, only recently became healthcare, the compound concept, a near inevitable progression already recognized by several respected dictionaries.  

In high school, we took a class called Health, which is to say, how to take good care of yourself. Now,healthcare is something government does, or insurance agencies provide for us.    

Whether we think healthcare reform is overdue or overdone, most of us would probably agree it is, and ever will be, overpriced.       

But what if we could enjoy cost-free heathcare—sort of like the citizens of Greece, only for real, with no one else in the E.U. helping pay the bill?     

Maybe cost-free is a phrase that can come to our rescue. We’ll make it compound. Not cost -dash- freebut costfree, a newly evolved word that makes 21^st Century sense, to us if not to our grandparents.  

Or is costfree a compound redundancy? If something is costfree, why don’t we just say it’s free? Well, because nothing’s really, free.  

Anything worthwhile costs us something by way of investment of time, talent, or treasure. It’s the accountability God built into the world’s economy so that, despite our continuing efforts to debase ourselves, we cannot run amok forever.  

Eventually, bohemian youth grow up—though among musician rockers there seems to be a lot of bohemian holdovers into advanced age.

Still, everyone, sooner or later, must pay the piper, unless of course we just keep looking to government to take care of us cradle-to-the-grave.

It’s a hard lesson that I’m afraid our country, or at least a lot of our political leaders, have not learned—the idea that, eventually, we must live within their means. 

But then again, if you’re a duly elected politician of either Party, or you’re an appointed for life or good behavior bureaucrat, when the time comes, you retire and go home. The bill coming due for expansive expenses you created is someone else’s problem. It’s a classic “kick the can down the road” scenario.     

So costfree healthcare makes sense to me. Whatever results from ideologically or partisan-driven political healthcare battles in government, Congress, or state legislatures, we’re not hostage to it.  

We can still do a number of commonsense things for our health.  

We can assume individual responsibility and initiative.  

We don’t have to wait for government or health insurance companies to take these steps. As good stewards of the life God gave us, we can make our own responsible healthcare choices.    

This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform.  Download an episode for your friends.

Allow me to share several ways you can enjoy costfree healthcare:

1. Read the Bible. Numerous studies have demonstrated that regular Scripture reading makes a positive, cumulative impact upon spiritual and emotional and, thus, physical well-being. Don’t read it as a fetish or good luck charm but read and apply the Word in your life. God’s Word never returns to him void of impact.

2. Pray.When I was a kid in Sunday School, teachers told me that reading the Bible is “God talking to us” and praying is “Us talking to God.” Talking to God changes us and bolsters our well-being, no matter how the Lord chooses to respond to our needs and requests.

3. Attend Church.Researchers have repeatedly found that people who attend religious services one or more times per week live longer, healthier lives. Church provides us with community, meaning, and fellowship, all ingredients of better living.

4. Exercise.Regular exercise benefits all human systems, respiratory, digestive, muscular, circulatory, everything. Exercise improves moods, reduces stress, re-energizes energy, maintains weight, purifies skin, enhances sleep. Even just walk—walkers live longer, enjoy better mental acuity, experience lower incidences of disease, age more slowly, reduce risk of catching colds, and more. You don’t have to compete for the Olympics. Just get a step counter app. Walking just 30 minutes per day reaps rewards. It’s impossible to overstate the positive impact of exercise upon our health. Put another way: “Couch potatoes are less healthy potatoes.”

5. Eat Better. We are what we eat. Poor diet, poor health. Better diet, better health.

6. Lose Weight. Some 73% of Americans are overweight or obese.The US spends more per person treating obesity than any other economically advanced country. Presently, overweight issues are at 14% of the country’s total annual healthcare expenditure. Obesity accounts for overtwo-thirds of all diabetes treatment costs, about a quarter of treatment for cardiovascular issues, and 9% for cancer. The moral of the story: burn calories, reduce pounds.

7. Quit Smoking. Walking away from smoking is an act of liberation. A one-pack-per-day smoker spends about $2,292 per year on the habit. Quit smoking and you liberate your pocketbook from daily loss, from higher insurance costs and, believe it or not, from lower resale value on your cars. Quitting liberates you from higher probabilities of heart disease, lung or throat cancer, and other diseases. The first question I’m asked at the Doctor’s office, after my birthdate, is do you smoke? Why is that?

8. Get Sleep. Adequate sleep recharges the body, protects the heart, may increase memory, and generates a long list of other benefits.  

9. Get Rest. Sleep and rest are different. You can be caught up on sleep but still be going full tilt, non-stop, gung-ho in the rat race…over prolonged periods. This is a recipe for myriad health problems. We need rest and relaxation = R&R. God created the world in six days then rested on the seventh. He didn’t rest because he was tired. He rested to enjoy what he’d done. Rest need not be synonymous with doing nothing, though this can be beneficial too. Rest can be recreation, or re-creation. Rest revives, restores, rejuvenates. Rest is detachment from the norm. Jesus combined rest with prayer, drawing away to the mountains, the water, or the Garden of Gethsemane. Rest is best when it reinvigorates the soul.

There are more healthcare measures that arguably don’t cost us a dime. I’ll share those with you in the next podcast. I commend costfree healthcare to you. It’s eminently affordable.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022    

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.  

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 04 September 2012

Want to lose weight? Just try my foolproof Say What? Diet. It works every time.

Say what?

That’s right, you don’t need to buy expensive diet books.

Say what?

You don’t need to purchase even more expensive fitness machines.

Say what?

You don’t have to join time-consuming, maybe costly workout clubs or organizations.

Say what?

You don’t need to enroll in a One-Size-Fits-All-Diet endorsed by a Super Model who at this point in her life has never used this diet.

Say what?

You need not pore over calorie and carbohydrates books, learn enough chemistry to qualify for a degree, or memorize 20 skinny habits.

Say what?

That’s right, you don’t have to do all those things. You just need to do two things, consistently and correctly, every day.

Say what? This can’t be true.

Oh but it is. Are you ready? Here’re the two principles defining the Say What? Diet:

1 – EAT RIGHT.

Notice I didn’t say Eat Less. You can eat less and still not lose weight if you’re eating the wrong foods. Later, after you learn to eat right, eating less is a good portion-distortion-reducer, but to get started, just learn to eat right.

As I noted above, I don’t believe in finding the one super diet that works for all human beings and bodies. I believe in finding the diet that works for your body. Find the diet that works. What’s that you say? “Works” means the diet that helps you lose weight in a healthy manner. So find that diet and EAT Right, everyday, every meal. 

2 – EXERCISE RIGHT.

Very few human beings can lose weight consistently—unless they’re ill—without exercise. To lose weight you need to Exercise Right. This means, like the diet, finding the type of exercise, the routine, the amount of time, and the intensity that works for you. What’s that “works” thing again? Finding the exercise that helps you lose weight. If your exercise doesn’t help you lose weight all you’re getting out of it is weariness.

Exercise in a manner that “fits” you. I’m not a jogger or runner. Never have been and never will be. I don’t possess the endurance and I don’t like it. I do like to walk and I like to bicycle even more. When I walk or bicycle “enough” I create enough burn, crank up the metabolism, and lose weight (that is, when I’m also eating right). You discover what works for you. Then do it.

From time to time your body will hit what I call a plateau. You stick on a number on the scale and can’t seem to get past it. This is normal. Ways I break through the plateau include: 1) Eat not just right but significantly less for a day or two. Or, 2) Exercise not just right but significantly more for a day or two. Either one or both generally does the trick.

Dieting is a multi-billion dollar business primarily because people are looking for and willing to buy what might be the “Fountain of Thin” or the “Brass Skinny Ring” or the “Silver Weight Loss Bullet.” In other words, they’re looking for magic short cuts or fancy formulas.

You don’t need all that.

Say what?

Try my Say What? Diet and see for yourself.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.