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- [00:00]
A
Need babies to be great again.
- [00:16]
B
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Sky Pod, brought to you by Holy Post Media. I'm Sky Jutani, and joining me for this Drew's news episode is our friend. And what. Do you have a title around here yet? What is your official title?
- [00:28]
A
Can I make up something like Maestro of the Newsletter or something?
- [00:33]
B
Okay, Maestro of the Newsletter. Drew. Dick. Drew, you have an editorial role with us now at Holy Post Media. So you are doing stuff. You produce the Drew's Newsletter, a weekly email newsletter that is free, that covers a whole bunch of stuff you're seeing all over the Internet related to issues that we care about here at Holy Post. Sometimes they're just for entertainment, but you can sign up for that, get it in your inbox every week for free by going to holeypost.com and once a month you join me on the Skypod to take some of those stories where we unpack them in greater depth and have some fun with it. So welcome back.
- [01:07]
A
Hey, good to be back. Yes. Subscribe to the Drew's Newsletter. It is the newsletter most millionaires read.
- [01:15]
B
There you go.
- [01:16]
A
That's not true. But I'm just kind of whiteboarding some marketing pitches for it, and I think that's a pretty good one.
- [01:22]
B
Fits right with our editorial standards of embellishment. Okay, let's get into it. So you've got stories this week. I've been given a little heads up on what the are. I'm excited. I'm genuinely looking forward to this conversation. Drew, let's start off. What do you want to lead with?
- [01:39]
A
Okay, we're going to start with Fat Pastors.
- [01:43]
B
The.
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A
Yes, you heard me correctly. Well, not pH a T, but yes.
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B
One of the little known characters from the Austin Powers movies.
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A
That's right.
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B
He got edited out. You can see him in the.
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A
In the.
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B
In the cuts and the extras. The blooper reel.
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A
It was too controversial.
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B
That's right. Okay.
- [01:59]
A
Yes. So, okay, this is not like a story, like a news story, but I saw this guy, Gabe Plugetz, who took to X.com to share about his family's decision to leave their church. And first of all, he said, listen, the church was great, okay? Incredible, loving people. Families would pray for them. Out of the blue, everyone was super friendly. Killer worship, because that's essential, right? You want a worship team that's bringing it every week. But there was something off about the lead pastor. And what was off his weight. It was off the scales, you might say the pastor was obese. And Gabe was bothered by this. And he actually made the decision to leave the church because of the pastor's obesity. Well, I should add one more thing. I mean, it wasn't just the obesity. It was that, like, the pastor was making jokes about it, seemed comfortable with it, and he's like, yeah, I'm out of here.
- [02:55]
B
Yeah. This is a quote from his post. It didn't disqualify him. In our eyes, being obese doesn't mean you don't know God or understand the Bible, but being obese and not doing anything about it, that says something about your character. So he. I don't know if he had conversations with this pastor, but his conclusion was this pastor apparently didn't care that he was overweight, and from Gabe's perspective, wasn't taking any action to be healthier. And therefore, that's a sign of a broken, disqualifying, ungodly character, which I guess so. Okay. There are so many layers to this that we could honestly spend the entire episode just on this because I am fascinated by it. Okay, what about it caught your attention? Drew, before I get on my soapbox.
- [03:49]
A
Well, first of all, I want to say that I'm holding back a lot of puns about church growth and things like that. Okay. So you should appreciate that. But I actually, at first, I'm like, this is ridiculous. I mean, this guy Gabe is obviously very superficial. But then, like, when I read his post, I'm like, okay, well, there is something here. And I think the deeper issue is that this is a sin. That is gluttony that the American church tends to wink at. Right. We don't take it very seriously. Now, one caveat is that not everyone who's obese is a glutton. There are metabolic disorders. There are certain chronic conditions that make it hard for people to keep weight off all that. So I want to say that it's not just that, oh, if you see
- [04:31]
B
someone who's overweight, not everyone who is fit and skinny is unglutinous.
- [04:38]
A
Yes.
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B
So we'll get into that in a minute.
- [04:40]
A
Yeah. A bigger concept than just overeating certain foods. So, I mean, my first reaction, and actually this kind of still is my overall reaction, is that it was pretty silly just to leave the church over that. Even if you say, okay, well, this pastor may have a problem overeating, is that really something that disqualifies him from ministry? I would say no. That may be just me speaking as someone who's put on a few pounds recently. So even though I'm not a pastor, but. Yeah, but I. But Then the more I thought about it, I realized, hey, there's some complexity here, because this is one sin that the American church. I mean, it's just funny, right? You kind of joke about too much fellowship and. Yeah. So. But it's maybe something we should take a little more seriously. Where did you. Where did you land, Scott?
- [05:25]
B
Like I said, I can talk the entire hour just about this story because I think there are so many facets to this. All right, I want to give a disclaimer also. At the beginning, I have. I have a physiological predisposition towards being overweight. Like, literally, since I was in third grade, I have been pudgy or struggled with being pudgy. And sometimes my weight has been way higher than it should be. I have. I have no idea what it's like to be skinny. If I have ab muscles. I've never seen them. Like, you had an era. I know you've talked about it when you were a young man or a teenager where you were really fit, really athletic.
- [06:04]
A
I used to have abs. And it's like, you know, better to have loved and lost. It's actually worse because you remember them, and now they're buried.
- [06:10]
B
I have never known my abs. So, like, I. I am not throwing stones here at anybody who struggles with weight gain. Like, welcome to the club. I'm. I'm there. So let's start with this. I find it interesting that everything he described about this church community was exemplary. You know, godly people, caring community, edifying gatherings, and worship, all of it. He doesn't say anything negative about the Bible teaching or instruction or none of those things. And yet they make a decision to leave this community solely because of an issue that they perceive with the senior pastor. Now, we'll get into that in a second. The first thing right off the bat is why is the entire decision to be part of a community or not come down to the guy in the pulpit? Right? So that's number one. The fact that we make the pastor synonymous with the entire church is just broken on so many levels. The church is not the pastor. The pastor is not the church. And if everything about that church community from. Again, the very little you get from this Twitter post is exemplary, godly, wholesome, all the things that you want, you don't leave the church because the guy in the pulpit doesn't meet your expectations. Right, Right. So that's a huge problem in and of itself. Secondly, I think this unveils. I don't have a better word for it than the problem with the celebrity pastor. And there's no. I don't know who this pastor was. I don't assume that they fit the celebrity definition that we normally think of as a celebrity pastor. But I think in general, most of our churches tend to make the pastor into a celebrity.
- [07:57]
A
Oh, yeah. You don't have to have a national platform to be a celebrity in your little ecosystem. You can be. Yeah.
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B
And here's the thing with celebrity. Broadly, not just pastors, but the whole concept of celebrity. What makes a celebrity a celebrity is that they are an idealized version of what I desire for myself. There's an aspirational quality to the people we idolize and celebrate. They have some quality that makes them admirable. I mean, you can even see this in our politics. Presidential candidates tend to have some qualities that the people voting for them wish were true of themselves. You see this in Donald Trump. He's perceived to be a successful business guy, and some of the more virile manosphere kind of people think he's great with the ladies or whatever. He has all these qualities that people want for themselves, themselves. And so you attach yourself to that person. And what we've done in a lot of our churches is we project upon the pastor qualities that we want to be true of ourselves. And I think what's coming out in this post, which is really weird, is. And the guy, the author, Gabe, whatever his name is, like, he. At the end of the post, he posts a picture of himself and his family. Right.
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A
That's important. And they're all totally trim and jacked. Yeah.
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B
They're like the idealized vision of a fit young couple. And in our context, we want the pastor to be the epitome of what we want for ourselves. And it's pretty obvious that this pastor, being overweight, did not fit that celebrity ideal of what this guy wanted for himself. And again, there's all these weird things about why do we project all of those expectations upon our pastor? And then the second, deeper thing beyond that is, where do our expectations originate from? It's one thing to say I deeply desire to look more like Jesus Christ in my character and behavior and attitudes and proclivities and allegiances. And I would like to follow a pastor who's a few steps ahead of me on that journey. So I want a pastor who is full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self control, all those various qualities of the fruit of the spirit. But it's evident in this post that the quality this person wants to see in their pastor is physical fitness, which is a quality that's obviously not a bad quality to hold, but it's a quality that's rooted more in American culture than it is in the New Testament. And so that brings me to the kind of third piece of this, where he makes the assumption that if you are overweight or obese, I mean, he flat out says it, that it's a deficient character at fault. And I just think that's a huge assumption, which you cannot possibly know without a far deeper relationship with this person to discern that their obesity is truly the fault of a broken character. We know so much more about physiology and hormones and insulin resistance and all these different things that lead to obesity. And, you know, there's a reason why obesity is more common among people who are poor than people who are wealthy. Because it's environmental. It's access to, you know, healthy foods. It's the culture of American consumerism. There's a lot of factors that go into this, and there are a lot of people for whom their struggle with their weight is not a brokenness of character. It can be deeply psychological. It can be deeply physiological. Just as somebody who has got an eating disorder isn't necessarily a reflection of their character, it's a reflection of a deeper psychological or physiological problem. So for this guy to jump to the conclusion that this pastor's obesity is a direct reflection of his character is a massive assumption, which is. It's similar. It's, I think, very similar to the assumption that if you're poor, it's a reflection of bad character, or if you're wealthy, it's a reflection of positive character. Like, that's just insanity. And so, anyway, I think all of this stuff is, we need to examine why do we equate the pastor with the church? Why do we expect the pastor to be the idealized version of myself? And those assumptions coming from culture rather than Scripture. And then third, the assumption that the physical appearance of a person is a reflection of their godliness or character, all of that is profoundly broken in this one tweet. And I think it's a fascinating glimpse into American Christian subculture right now.
- [12:50]
A
Yeah, no, you're on to something, especially with that aspirational piece that we often look at the pastor. And it's funny because I'd love to hear his comments like, was everyone in the church obese? I mean, maybe this is a real problem in the church. I doubt it. I think you're right. I think he's looking at the pastor and saying, hey, that doesn't fit the reflection of who I Want to be.
- [13:13]
B
That's right.
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A
And so I'm out of here. Which is of course very silly and superficial in my view. And I see this all the time. You know, it's funny, you talk to people in ministry. I've heard this from multiple pastors. When you cross about 50 years old, they say the offers to go and pastor at other churches kind of dry up. And the reason for that is maybe it's a little bit of ageism or maybe it's just practically churches go, oh, this person doesn't have a long enough Runway left in their ministry. But part of it is that church consultants will tell you that you attract people like the pastor. So if you want young families, get a pastor with a young family. And so, yeah, there's this factor to church life in America where people aspire to be like the pastor, like the pastor's family. We put them up on a pedestal. And so then when they fall short, in this case in appearance, we go, you know what, we're out of here. Now to steel Mana's argument a little bit though. Let's assume that we're injecting some more data into this that we don't know, but let's assume he has talked to the pastor. Let's assume the pastor didn't have a metabolic disorder or some sort of eating disorder, or that he's poor and lives in a food desert and can't have access to healthy foods and the pastor is just a bit gluttonous when it comes to food. Maybe that's an issue. I don't know if it's a deal breaker as far as I can't sit under this person's ministry because they're, they struggle with overeating. I would say it's a bit of a character deficiency, but maybe not disqualifying. And I do, like I said earlier, I do think gluttony, especially when it comes to food, and again, gluttony is a bigger thing than just food. And overconsumption is one of our little pet sins in the American church because let's face it, you look at Americans, we're all overweight. And I'm preaching to myself here. And we just kind of tend to laugh off overeating, eating too much, eating bad foods. And I go now, I disagree with this guy's decision to leave a church over it. Certainly I'd regard it like, even if this pastor does overeat, I'd regard it like maybe someone who's a little short tempered or has some sort of character thing that isn't disqualifying but may actually border on sin. And so what do you say to that? If this pastor truly is. And like Gabe says in the post, he makes jokes about it. He doesn't seem to think it's an issue. And I've heard this a lot, pastors, you know, just, hey, too much fellowship, pat their belly.
- [15:46]
B
Yeah. What's interesting in the post to me is he doesn't indicate that the pastor lacks self control, which is sort of the corollary to gluttony. And I want to talk more about gluttony in a second. But it's not that the pastor lacks self control. It's from his point of view. The pastor doesn't seem to be pursuing fitness and health.
- [16:12]
A
Right.
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B
That's different. And I mean, I'm certainly no physiologist, I'm no physician, I'm no nutritionist. But in my discussion with people who are those things, and in my understanding of this stuff, as I've thought about my own health and my own proclivity and blood sugar issues that I have and I've had since I was a young man, there are reasons for being overweight and perhaps even obese that have nothing to do with a deficiency of character or lack of self control. Sometimes there are, but I think in a lot of cases it isn't. And you can have a genuinely physiological addiction, addiction to carbohydrates and sugars that end up putting you on this treadmill of a weight gain. Right. And it has nothing to do with self control. So I just think the assumption that to be overweight means you have a deficiency of character is a profoundly unfair judgment to make. Now, on the flip side, if the pastor in the pulpit, you know what, body mass index is an indicator of good character. Right. So if you have a pastor in the pulpit who you can see his abs, not hopefully in the pulpit, but if you were to take off a shirt, like, you know, really low body mass index, really low body fat, does that mean they don't suffer from gluttony? I was looking up the definition, historic definition of what is gluttony. And yeah, it's often connected to eating food in sumptuous, you know, amounts and stuff. But it goes way beyond that. It is the excessive attachment to the pleasure of consumption.
- [18:02]
A
Right.
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B
And that consuming is not just food. It is being driven by your appetites. Right. So the irony is there are churches out there, evangelical churches, that celebrate, and this is grotesque in some ways, but they celebrate. Like, have you Seen these churches that do these marriage sex series, like the goal of having intercourse with your spouse every day for the next month or something like that. Like, that's gluttony. The constant indulgence of social media and the dopamine hits you get from seeing stuff on social media or likes or whatever, that's gluttony. You know, the feeding of your appetite without regard to self control is gluttony. It's not just food. So similarly, some people get a physiological rush and a sense of an ego satisfaction from exercise and working out and looking really fit and looks maxing and all that craziness stuff. That is also a form of gluttony. It is being driven by appetites. Not the appetite for the consumption of food, but the appetite for the satisfaction of your ego because people look at you and think you're an Adonis. Right. That is gluttony. So I just, I find it really short sighted to assume, number one, that being overweight or obese is a result of faulty character. And the inverse is also true. Being super fit physically does not mean you're not guilty of gluttony or you don't have character deficiencies. So I just think the entire attempt to judge somebody's godliness by their appearance is wrong from the start, period.
- [19:47]
A
That's really dangerous. And that is funny because you mentioned, you know, someone who's so obsessed with working out that it becomes almost idolatrous. And I've seen pastors that are like that that are constantly posting their workouts online. You know, they're kind of flexing and stuff like that. And presumably this guy wouldn't have a problem with that. In fact, maybe he'd love it. And so it can go the other way too far as well. For sure.
- [20:12]
B
Yeah. So anyway, I think this post says a heck of a lot more about where American culture is and where the evangelical subculture is, and that it's rooting its definition of what makes for an idealistic church leader far more from American culture than it does from the New Testament.
- [20:31]
A
Yeah.
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B
Now, if I were in this church and I had a good relationship with this pastor, who I cared about deeply and loves the congregation stuff, I might have a conversation with him going, hey, buddy, like, I'm worried about your health. Right, Right. Can we have a conversation about what you're doing about your health? Because, yeah, I don't know, I'm assuming he's morbidly obese. Like, this is. This is not good for you, for your family, for your ministry. Like And I would approach it more as a health concern rather than a character concern.
- [21:04]
C
And then you might discover he's actually
- [21:07]
B
doing something about this, or he's talking to his physician about it, or he's looking at what the options might be. I don't know. But I wouldn't make the assumption that it is disqualifying for ministry. I think that's just such a ridiculous,
- [21:20]
A
awkward conversation to have with your pastor,
- [21:22]
B
which is why I'm saying it would have to be a really, really good friendship with somebody rather than, you know what, Sky?
- [21:28]
A
I would leave a church because the pastor's too skinny. I want to. I want to die on that hill. Okay, you're making the rest of us look bad. Like, do you even Fellowship, bro. Come on.
- [21:36]
B
Well, I just think any pastor that is more concerned with their external appearance than the formation of their character is a problem. And, you know, this is also, historically speaking, people, when you go back and look at Renaissance art, medieval art, things like that, to be obese or at least somewhat overweight was a sign of great beauty because it was more associated with wealth.
- [22:00]
A
Right? That's right.
- [22:02]
B
So I know in some of our churches, if your pastor was driving a Rolls Royce, you would think, well, that's ostentatious and inappropriate and you would never go to a church with a pastor that drives a Rolls Royce. You go into some communities, a pastor driving a Rolls Royce is seen as an exemplary positive vision of somebody who's got their life together and is managing their resources well. And this is the epitome of godliness. It's culturally defined. So I just think that this post was so interestingly oblivious to their own cultural definitions of what an ideal church leader should be, that it said far more about the person who wrote the post than it did about this pastor.
- [22:44]
A
Yeah, it was revealing in ways he maybe didn't intend.
- [22:48]
B
Exactly.
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A
But anyway, I think it's a heavy issue. I'm glad we got our arms around it. Let's move on. Well, this is related. The second story. Maybe this is the cure for that obese pastor, the Bible diet that's getting people holy and hot for summer. Okay, well, this is the New York Post piece that they ran about Kayla Bundy, a foodie and faith based influencer who treats her body like a temple. Oh, yeah, I can see you shuddering already. So she's this. Yeah, a proponent of the Bible diet. I don't know what that means, but I guess it's just eating things from Bible times.
- [23:34]
B
It's defined in here somewhere. Basically it's focusing on foods that are mentioned in the Bible.
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A
Yeah. Going back to what God designed before the food industry told us otherwise.
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B
Oh, my gosh. I just drew. You are triggering me today.
- [23:49]
A
I know. It's all intentional. She's 27, a native of Michigan who now lives in Bali, Indonesia. Of course she does. Of course you can't.
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B
It's better for Instagram.
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A
Yeah. Instagram pics from Michigan. I mean, that's depressing. So she's in Bali and of course, you know, dispensing this advice with the obligatory bikini shots of her slim, tan body. And, yeah, she's. I mean, she's eating healthy. Like, you look at the list of things here. It's like sardines and Greek yogurt and sourdough and tomatoes and avocado and cacao. Am I saying that right?
- [24:20]
B
There are no avocados in the Bible.
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A
Avocados come from the new world, Right? Yeah.
- [24:26]
B
There you go. Yeah, Same thing. Yeah. Come on, Come on. It says in this article that bee pollen.
- [24:32]
A
Okay. That's the Bible.
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B
That the people in her influencer ecosystem resolved to slim down with more than the 100 foods mentioned in the holy book. So that's pretty limiting. That's very, very limiting.
- [24:48]
A
So you stuck to that. Yeah. So this kind of reminded me. I think we talked about this in another episode, but, like, the Jesus glow up. Is that what they call it? The Jesus one is like, the Jesus glow up?
- [24:58]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [24:59]
A
That's right. Like, these women will post these before and after things on, like, TikTok or Instagram, where it's like, the Jesus glow up isn't real. And then they show themselves before and then after, and they look way more beautiful and fit and happy. Of course, all because of Jesus, presumably. So, yeah, I don't know. This is. You know, this brings back a painful memory. So a few. This is a few years ago. This is probably like 15 years ago. I was part of a church that did the Daniel Diet. Do you remember that? That, like, swept the nation. Okay. Everyone's doing the Daniel Diet. And if you remember the story from the Bible, Daniel just subsists on vegetables, basically. And so some people started doing that for a certain amount of time. So I'm doing it with my church. I'm about four days in, and I'm just delirious. Like, I'm seeing mirages of burgers and shakes and stuff. And I show up to a Bible study that we're doing that was led by the pastor who initiated the whole thing. In the middle of the study, he whips out a bagel and starts spreading peanut butter on it and munching on this thing. And I'm going, what is going on here? And he says, you know, it's been tough guys this week not using cream cheese on my bagels. I'm like, that's not the Daniel Diet. There were no bagels in Babylon. What's going on here?
- [26:08]
B
Did you immediately leave that church for the character displayed by this pastor?
- [26:13]
A
I should have. I felt betrayed. But I'll tell you what, I went home and I ate all the bagels that I could fit in my mouth because of the past. Anyway, that's irrelevant. But I tried the Bible diet is what I'm trying to say.
- [26:24]
B
Okay.
- [26:25]
A
Didn't work.
- [26:26]
B
Okay. So many things. Again, first of all, the fundamental misuse of the Bible. The Bible has no dietary wisdom in it. I'm sorry. Whether it's Daniel or maybe accidentally. No, I know it's not the point. It's not the point.
- [26:45]
A
They're just.
- [26:47]
B
This exemplifies people who approach the Bible as a manual. Right?
- [26:54]
A
I think she calls it that.
- [26:55]
B
Yeah. This book is. I mean, people joke about it. Basic instructions before leaving Earth, right? B, I, B, L, E. And it's got all of the necessary wisdom for all of life's problems, whether it's how to manage your finances, how to raise your kids, how to have a godly marriage, how to run a business, and in this case, how to have a healthy body with a diet. And so we're only going to eat the foods that are in the Bible, or we're going to take the Daniel Diet, whatever. And it's just like it's a perverse misuse and abuse of the Bible because it's not what it.
- [27:25]
C
Don't worry, this is not the end of the episode. There's actually plenty more. But to listen to the rest, you need to be a Holy Post plus subscriber. So head over to holeypost.com skypod and sign up for just $5 a month. Not only will you get uninterrupted episodes of the Skypod, which means you'll never have to hear this dumb announcement again, but you'll also get access to everything else at Holy Post plus, including episodes of Getting Schooled by Caitlin Chess, bonus interviews, live streams, the Holy Post Book Club, exclusive merchandise, and a whole bunch more. And you'll get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing that you're supporting our work of creating smart, pro neighbor Christian content. So head over to holypost.com skypod and subscribe.