Sunday, December 12, 2004
I was right all along
What would happen to a kid if he got absolutely no exercise at all--just sat (or lay) around all the time?
Well, it's pretty obvious: Some parts of him (like his muscles) would underdevelop while other parts of him (like his waistline) would overdevelop.
Kids, like people in general, need exercise. God designed us so that we need to work out to grow properly.
That's why God gave kids the instinct to gain excitement (before the invention of TV and video games) by going outdoors and running around (in packs) and playing and wrestling and rolling around.
In the dirt.
And getting cuts and scrapes.
Which the dirt gets in.
Now this is the part that drives a lot of contemporary American parents wild with worry. Cuts? Scrapes? Dirt? In? Don't you know that dirt has viruses and bacteria and parasites in it???
But wait: Maybe that's part of the plan.
God designed children (and the rest of us) to live a rambunctious--and dirty--existence, not to waltz around in a sterile Star Trek-like environment. That's why he gave us an immune system.
But maybe, just like kids in general need exercise, so do their imune systems. And if their immune systems don't get the workout they were designed to have, what then? It might seem reasonable to suppose that some aspects of their immune system would underdevelop (leaving them vulnerable to one set of maladies) and other aspects of it would overdevelop--leading to . . . leading to . . .
Allergies.
Well, it's pretty obvious: Some parts of him (like his muscles) would underdevelop while other parts of him (like his waistline) would overdevelop.
Kids, like people in general, need exercise. God designed us so that we need to work out to grow properly.
That's why God gave kids the instinct to gain excitement (before the invention of TV and video games) by going outdoors and running around (in packs) and playing and wrestling and rolling around.
In the dirt.
And getting cuts and scrapes.
Which the dirt gets in.
Now this is the part that drives a lot of contemporary American parents wild with worry. Cuts? Scrapes? Dirt? In? Don't you know that dirt has viruses and bacteria and parasites in it???
But wait: Maybe that's part of the plan.
God designed children (and the rest of us) to live a rambunctious--and dirty--existence, not to waltz around in a sterile Star Trek-like environment. That's why he gave us an immune system.
But maybe, just like kids in general need exercise, so do their imune systems. And if their immune systems don't get the workout they were designed to have, what then? It might seem reasonable to suppose that some aspects of their immune system would underdevelop (leaving them vulnerable to one set of maladies) and other aspects of it would overdevelop--leading to . . . leading to . . .
Allergies.
