Carelessness of Health

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 26, 1872

Carelessness of Health.

Carelessness of health is a common and crying sin. It is not merely a misfortune—it is more than an evil—it is a great and terrible crime. Sickness imposes burdens upon the race greater than we can estimate. Not only do loss of time, labor, and money, with poverty, want, orphanage, and distress, result from sickness; but despondency, murmuring, repining, and complaining, with bitter and selfish thoughts, perpetually spring up from physical disease.

Health and happiness are nearly related to each other. When one is lost, the other frequently departs. Hence health, as well as happiness, is a Christian duty, and this is none the less important because it is so little understood. Ignorance of this duty leaves men to pursue, without restraint or hesitation, such courses of imprudence, indulgence, and excess, as, with all the certainty of mathematical sequence, lead to infirmity, imbecility, bodily disease, and premature dissolution.

Sickness is the result of sin. It may be personal or ancestral sin; it may be sin in ourselves or sin in others around us; it may be something which we can or cannot avoid or remedy; but the root of all sickness is sin in some form. When there was no sin, there was no sickness; and in the new world, when sin is ended, pain and sorrow will flee away. All unrighteousness is sin. Sin is lawlessness; it is the spirit of insubordination to wholesome rule, which defies authority, and indulges in forbidden things. And from inordinate appetites, unbridled lusts, excessive labors, imprudent exposures, and various infractions of physical and mental laws, through passions, stimulation, or uncontrolled desire, the human constitution is unbalanced and undermined, and the result is disease; the end, death!

Such self-imposed infirmities are disgraceful to men, and dishonorable to God. It is a disgrace to a man to unfit himself for the highest possibilities of his nature, by gluttony, by intemperance, by sensuality, or by any excess. It is a dishonor to God to abuse and dishonor the workmanship of his hands, and render it unfit for use.

The glory of a workman is in the perfection of his work. A watch continually out of order, and requiring perpetual repairs, disgraces the man who made it and palmed it upon the world. A machine which does its work improperly, and requires constant tinkering, is a disgrace to the inventor who drafted it, and the mechanic who constructed it.

A healthy, vigorous, upright, noble man, “so fearfully and wonderfully made,” and fulfilling all his various functions and duties with celerity and ease, is an honor to that Creator whose wondrous power has formed so goodly a frame. But a sickly, wretched, disordered, distorted, murmuring, repining invalid, is a reproach to Him in whose image man was created.

Much of the disease and pain which afflict mankind is the result of the sheerest carelessness. It is easily avoidable, and hence it is wrong. An ambitious boy tries to do the work of a man, and is praised for it by greedy and heartless employers, who, for a few hours’ labor, allow him to make himself a wretched, life-long invalid. A young girl exposes herself to wet and cold, and prides herself on her bravery and courage; but long years of pain and feebleness, and the sorrows of a ruined and shipwrecked life, teach her how foolishly she has cast away the glory of her strength. A sudden strain, a needless exertion, a hard day’s work done through seeming necessity or faithlessness or parsimony, often lays the foundation for years of distress, which only terminate in the quiet of the grave.

An aged person, with life enough to last a score of years with careful usage, in some hasty effort, or special labor, breaks down in a day, and goes with all his ripe experience, wise counsel, and life-long care, to his death-bed and his grave, in an effort to accomplish some trifling matter, or save a few shillings of expense.

Such carelessness of health is a crime. To be dependent on others when we should be strong and support the weak; to be sick and burdensome when we should be full of health and helpfulness; to spend our days in sadness and repinings, when our lives should be full of strength, and joy, and courage; to come to the grave in our brown hair, plucked from life like fruit unripe, instead of like a shock of corn fully ripe, crowned with years and full of blessings; and to do this by our own sins, and fault, and carelessness, surely this is a grievous crime. And yet thousands are thus guilty every day, and many of them are persons whose years should have taught them wisdom.

Let Christians consider that life and strength are a God-given, holy trust. Let them beware how they trifle with such priceless treasures. Let them cherish life and improve it as a heavenly favor, that it may be well with them, and that their days may be long upon the earth.—The Christian.