"If you aren’t smoking and you’re on a good running program,” the doctor told us, “you don’t need to worry about nutrition.”
It was 1972, and we doctors had just heard about the special health benefits of running from Jack Schaff, a cardiologist from Honolulu, Hawaii.
“Let me tell you again what I have said today,” Schaff said. “If you want good health, you must exercise, and running is the best exercise. The next thing I said is that if you use tobacco, good health will never happen. Tobacco and good health are mutually exclusive. I did not talk about nutrition because I figure two out of three is good enough anyway!”
Adventists have never believed that good health would happen without good nutrition. However, we sometimes exhibit the “two out of three is good enough” mentality when we present the physical and mental aspects of the health message and save the spiritual for “later.” Two out of three is always inadequate, especially when the third component is the power source to make necessary changes in the first two.
For this reason, the Upper Columbia Conference has invited Miraslov Kis, chair of the Department of Theology and Christian Philosophy at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary on the campus of Andrews University, to lead the health ministries retreat at Camp MiVoden. Using the same principles outlined in his book, Follow Me, he will explain the work of Jesus in a new and powerful way—a way that gives us success not only spiritually, but in the physical and mental aspects of our lives as well.
It is when we combine all three aspects of our health—physical, mental and spiritual—that we will be truly effective in presenting the health message in our communities.
Jay Sloop, M.D., UCC health ministries director, says "Two out of three is always inadequate."
