Three million books. That’s how many are published every year. Each of them is a pebble landing in the lake of humanity, aiming to create ripples. Some of them make a bigger splash than others. And Good Energy (Avery, 2024) by Casey Means has certainly been one of them. It’s not just that the book made the New York Times Bestseller list and blew up in a Tucker Carlson interview. It’s that the book offers one of the most systematic critiques of contemporary American society that I’ve read. If Christians don’t know about the book, I believe they should. It’s bound to alter conversations in the United States going forward—conversations about medicine, food, lifestyle, education, government, and even spirituality (more on that later). Even if you never read the book, you should at least know its broader message and how you might consider its claims as a Christian. I hope this review helps you to those ends. Keep in mind that I write as a theologian, not as a medical doctor or nutritionist. In fact, if you know doctors or nutritionists, ask them what they think.
Background
To start, where did this book come from? Begin with the author. Casey Means (MD) is a Stanford-trained medical doctor who left the field because she found it to be a broken system—riddled with corruption and paralyzing atomization. To her, the medical field is so immersed in “specializations” that it misses the common origins of our health problems. She ends up criticizing not just the medical and healthcare systems, but the food industry, government, big pharma, and pretty much every other institution you can think of—either directly or indirectly.
It’s important to remember that Means is critiquing larger systems. She is not taking aim at individual people within those systems. That doesn’t mean those within such systems won’t be offended by what she’s written, but it’s fair to say that her aim is not to pass judgment on those still working in these areas. Instead, she is calling for (1) more radical change on a nutritional/health level, and (2) open communication about what happens behind the curtains of the medical, healthcare, pharmaceutical, and food industries. This includes profit motives and conflicts of interest, which ordinary consumers don’t see.
She wants to offer her own medical expertise and critical analysis of the current health crisis in America (both physical and mental). Some might fairly argue that she is not academically equipped to do this, which may certainly be true. (A systematic critique of major American systems and culture is immensely ambitious, no matter what your credentials are.) Nevertheless, she tries to provide a positive way forward for people to live healthier, fuller lives. That positive way forward is a strategy for acquiring and using what she calls good energy, hence the title of the book. The opposite, bad energy, is responsible for slowly killing America. It may be easier for some readers to interpret this as "good health" vs. "bad health."
Is there some reductionism here? Probably. Always keep in mind that what you read from any author is (1) limited in scope and (2) simplifying things to focus your attention. Sometimes that simplification is permissible and valid; other times it is deceptive and invalid. Usually experts in a particular field can help you tell which one is happening. For instance, I consulted with someone in the medical field to get a second opinion on how fairly the data is being represented concerning how our mitochondria function. Do they do more than process energy? What things affect their function besides food? These aren't questions Means deals with, but that doesn't mean they aren't questions we should ask.
For Means, Good energy results when we treat our body’s cells in a certain way—largely through diet but also through exercise, lifestyle, and mental/spiritual formation. It just so happens that, according to Means, most of the systems in place for the United States seem set against our production and use of good energy. In other words, we are living within systems that are bound to make us sicker and to keep us that way. The cynical side of all this is that people in high places tend to profit on others’ problems, and that adds an element of foul play. For instance, she doesn’t shy away from making claims like this one: “Every institution that impacts your health makes more money when you are sick and less when you are healthy—from hospitals to pharma to medical schools, and even insurance companies” (61). As an aside, I’m a Calvinist, so it’s a bit easier for me to process this cynicism. Those interested in the foul play dimension of all this (especially the drive for profit and conflicts of interest in big pharma and the food industry) will find plenty of that in the Tucker Carlson interview. But once again, remember that Means is critiquing "institutions," not individuals. She readily admits that many (perhaps most) doctors certainly work hard to get patients healthy and strive to serve them well. But she sees the overall trend at the institutional level as seeking to profit off of people's problems.
The human race in America is slowly killing itself, while ironically claiming to be one of the most advanced countries in history and spending more than any other country in the world on healthcare.
In sum, Casey Means argues that our current systems and lifestyles are setting us up to run on bad energy, which means a host of horrific things—heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, anemia, anxiety, depression, and much more. She believes we’re in a crisis. Put starkly, the human race in America is slowly killing itself, while ironically claiming to be one of the most advanced countries in history and spending more than any other country in the world on healthcare. Something is seriously wrong. And she’s drawing a line in the sand.
The Basic Principles of Good Energy
So, what does Means argue for in terms of a positive solution? The short answer is good energy, but how does that work? Let me set out a selection of the main principles she advocates for in as plain a language as possible. The book is far too dense to capture in a summary. But the following points at least present the heart of it. As a caveat, know that medical professionals do not agree with all of the interpretations and conclusions Means comes to. In what follows, I do my best to present what she argues, not necessarily what I support.
1. We need to treat our cells differently by reducing inflammation. Means goes straight to the smallest level of human biology: the cell. More specifically, she focuses on our mitochondria—the part of our cells responsible for converting the food that we eat into cellular energy. She argues that we are feeding our cells things that are literally tearing them apart or impairing their function. The main culprits are what we might call the sinister triad—(1) refined added sugar, (2) refined industrial and vegetable seed oils, and (3) refined grains. Think here of high-sugar, ultra-processed foods—items with an ingredient list several lines long, which means lots of human tampering and added chemicals. Eating these sorts of foods is damaging our cells. When our cells are damaged or attacked, the body fights back by sending more cells to help, which is what causes inflammation. (Helpful tip: every disease or condition that ends in itis is about inflammation). As a country consuming large quantities of the sinister triad, we’re in a state of constant inflammation. That, for Means, is the underlying dietary problem in our health crisis. We can reduce inflammation in our bodies by changing what we put into them. So, what should we put into them?
22. We need to consume foods that help our cells produce good energy. Cutting out the sinister triad is only a first step. The next step is adding in foods that lower inflammation and minimize something called oxidative stress. Basically, while trying to process all the junk we put into our bodies, our cells create waste that goes out and damages other cells. The damaged cells then “call” for help from other cells, which is where we get inflammation. Foods high in antioxidants can combat this process (e.g., almonds, apples, asparagus, black beans, dark chocolate, black tea). But note that things are not really this simple, since some of these foods Means lists are high in other substances that can lead to inflammation. So, take these recommendations with a grain of salt.
The food Means says we should be eating includes a long list of organic, minimally processed fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes; pasture-raised organic meats; pasture-raised organic poultry and eggs; dairy products from pasture-raised and grass-fed animals; wild-caught salmon, tuna, and mackerel; and plenty of healthy probiotics to feed our gut-health or “microbiome” (e.g., yogurt, saurerkraut, kimchi, tempeh, kefir).
None of this was that surprising to me. What caught me off guard as I read was just how deadly a consistent diet of the opposites can be. But even that shouldn’t be a revelation. Do we really think there won’t be consequences for pumping our bodies full of chemicals, food dyes, and a host of unnatural ingredients that have been banned in other countries?
3. We need to respect our “biological clock.” This means doing much more to follow the natural rhythms of light. We should be active from sunrise to sunset, and then reduce the amount of artificial light we expose ourselves to (i.e., don’t stare at your phone until 2:00am). We also need to get enough sleep—aiming for the recommended eight hours. The timing of our meals is key, too. Our body needs sufficient room to reset before we begin eating again. The habit of eating late into the night makes it harder for our bodies to shut down for sleep and commence digestive recovery.
4. We need to reclaim an active lifestyle and stop prioritizing comfort. It’s no secret that humans were not made to be sedentary. And yet we often live and work in a routine of sitting—we take breaks to stand and move around sometimes, but mostly we sit. Means laments the state of our current culture, comparing it to the one portrayed in the 2008 film WALL-E: weak, unhealthy, and obese humans being driven around in hover-carts so they don’t have to walk—all while drinking meals through a straw. There shouldn’t be an hour that goes by when we don’t stand up and move around. Walking outside, in particular, is an age-old healthy habit to develop throughout the day. This has the added benefits of exposing us to natural light and giving us fresh air. In conjunction with remaining active, we need to stop focusing so much on controlling our climates and eliminating extreme temperatures from our lives. The extreme heat and cold have health benefits that we remove by trying to remain at the same temperature—in our homes and cars.
Do we really think there won’t be consequences for pumping our bodies full of chemicals, food dyes, and a host of unnatural ingredients that have been banned in other countries?
5. We need to combat anxiety-inducing media. People forget that prior generations were much more localized. They didn’t just not worry about problems on the other side of the world (at least not instantaneously); they didn’t even know about them. A hundred years ago, people were rooted in their own local communities, and that means their exposure to massive problems—which they can do little or nothing to solve—was limited. That’s not to say that “ignorance is bliss.” It just means that the anxiety and fear embroiling our modern Western cultures are only fueling the mental health crisis and driving fear and anxiety through the roof. If we focus on our own local communities and real engagement with concrete problems we can solve, we remove the global anxiety machine of popular media—where there’s always another major catastrophe or environmental threat or hint of nuclear disaster ready to knock down our sense of stability.
More detail on each of these topics (including lists of foods to eat and foods to avoid) is in the book and may be a help to those who are interested. But this is more than enough for a summary.
I found that much of what Means is putting forward overlaps with the study published as The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner, which is now also a Netflix documentary. The “blue zones” are regions of the world that have the longest-living populations. In studying these regions, Buettner discovered many of the same practices that Means is advocating for: eating natural, organic foods; maintaining an active lifestyle; being more mindful of our eating and our community; focusing on solvable problems in our immediate context. Buettner draws associations to get to his conclusions (rather than raw data), so that's important to remember. But the conclusions, to me, seem fairly obvious.
In this sense, Means is not arguing for anything new. What she does is argue for how sick Americans are because of what they eat and how they live. And, yes, she does peel back layers of the medical field, the FDA, and big pharma to show the prevalence of profit chasing and conflicts-of-interest. We are caught up in systems that are not just imperfect, but majorly broken. And many of us (myself included) keep plodding along in relative ignorance. Now that I’ve read the book, my conscience won’t let me do that anymore. And I’m grateful. This brings me to the benefits of the book. After that, I’ll get into the theological problems that Christians should be aware of.
Benefits for Readers
I made many positive changes in my own life after reading this book. As a lifelong candy addict, cutting out refined sugars was hard. And I was an incessant snacker, which meant I was eating a whole lot of seed oils and chemically processed foods. But within two weeks of cutting out the “sinister triad” (refined added sugar, refined industrial and vegetable seed oils, and refined grains), I lost fifteen pounds and felt much better. For starters, my blood sugar levels were more stable. I had assumed for over two decades that crashing after running a few miles—with weak muscles and shaky hands—was completely normal. Now I go on runs and come back feeling energized.
My cravings for various kinds of food faded and disappeared. It also became easier to focus for extended periods of time. And I’ve lost that almost-constant sense of feeling bloated or stretched, which was perhaps the result of continual inflammation.
As parents, my wife and I have worked to help our kids (within reason) begin treating their bodies better. They are more aware now of how much sugar affects them (along with food dye), and they can make informed decisions about what they eat as they grow. For now, we’re trying to instill some healthy principles so they are more mindful of what they put into their bodies.
Eating food that comes straight from the earth is a Genesis thing, not a good energy thing.
The dietary and lifestyle principles that Means presents are ultimately biblical, not merely things we learn from Good Energy. Eating food that comes straight from the earth is a Genesis thing, not a good energy thing. God made us to be gardeners (Gen. 2:15–16), after all. And later on, after sin entered the world, there were still people like Daniel who advocated for a diet of fresh vegetables and water (Dan. 1:12). We are a long way from that time. We live in a post-industrial age governed by efficiency, mass production, and profit. But that doesn’t mean that going back to eating things that come from the earth is a modern discovery. It’s ancient practice—one that we find when we first open the Bible.
Still, had I not read Good Energy, I would likely remain convinced that what I eat and how I treat my body are peripheral concerns. I have a renewed conviction that part of treating our bodies as temples for the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19) involves diet, lifestyle, and intentionality. And if we leave those things behind, we should expect to live unhealthy (and likely shorter) lives. I believe a majority of Americans need to wake up to this reality and start making changes.
Theological Problems
For all the benefits I’ve enjoyed from this book, there were many things I took issue with as a Christian. And, as I’ll argue, my critiques are not tangential. They get at the underlying assumptions that Means has, and how those assumptions affect her conclusions. Let me present four points of critique: evolutionary naturalism, behaviorism, spirituality, and materialism.
Evolutionary naturalism. Vern Poythress defines evolutionary naturalism as “the framework of assumptions that says that all living things today came to exist by gradual processes of impersonal law and chance, with no role for God or a supernatural being” (Making Sense of Man, 682). As is the case with a majority of secular books, Means takes this as her grounding assumption. I wasn’t surprised—and no Christian should be. But try to remember that whenever Means is pushing for certain values or purposes in human life, they ultimately have no ground—no stable meaning. Why? Because the triune personal God of value and purpose is not there. Whenever we try to establish meaning, value, and purpose apart from God, we end up being short-sighted, arbitrary, and contradictory. Look for marks of this as you read the book.
The trouble is, without God, there is no purpose—no eternally personal and intentional plan that gives meaning to all the particulars.
This isn’t to say that Means doesn’t have well-intended and precious values or purposes in life. I’m sure she does. But she cannot account for (explain) them if all she can do is relate them to an impersonal, ever-evolving world order that keeps churning on without divinely-bestowed purpose. Means wants to base a lot of what she says about human life on some kind of purpose or goal for humanity. The trouble is, without God, there is no purpose—no eternally personal and intentional plan that gives meaning to all the particulars. As Van Til once put it, “there is purpose within the universe because the triune God has a purpose for the universe. Every purpose within the universe must, in the last analysis, be referred to God. Without this reference to God, no purpose within the universe has meaning" (Christian Theistic Evidences, 161). We can chase all the "good energy" we want to, but as Jesus said, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" (Mark 8:36). Having good energy does not mean we are living a good life. A good life is a God-centered life. If we are pursuing the goal Means put forward without embracing the God who made us to glorify him and enjoy him forever, then what are we doing? Nothing that truly profits us, Jesus says.
Behaviorism. Now, the second critique is related to the first. Evolutionary naturalism has no place for sin. Sin deals with a violation of ingrained morality, but evolution has no ingrained morality. Right and wrong may have a few actions that fit neatly under each heading, but the categories are fluid. Now, why is that a problem? Well, as is usually the case for what we call humanism, the solutions to life’s problems lie entirely in education. If people know the “right” information, humanists assume, they will make the right choices. Notice how this views humanity as fundamentally good (contra the Bible). Means does something similar when she argues for something called "good" energy. What makes the energy in our bodies good? She is trying to provide a moralistic basis for energy, but she doesn't have one—not apart from the God who reveals to us what is good and bad. "Good" and "bad" are personal judgments (ultimately given by God); they are not embedded in the physiological order of things, as if we can know what "good" and "bad" are apart from knowing something about God and his character. We learn as much from Romans 1.
But, more to the point, as I spoke with a friend in the medical community, I was reminded of how big a blunder this is—the assumption that humans are fundamentally good and that goodness can be extracted from the physical order of the world without reference to God. Means, like all humanists, does not give weight to the heart of humans. She focuses on their minds, on what they know.
But think about cigarettes and alcohol. People have known for decades that smoking and alcohol abuse leads to cancer. Cigarettes and alcohol are among the most common carcinogens. People know this. But does that mean a majority of people have stopped smoking and abusing alcohol? No! Educating people is not the end-all solution. And that’s because the problem is in their behavior. In biblical terms, we would say the problem is in their heart.
The writer of Proverbs said, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23). And Jesus told the crowds, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:20–23). People smoke excessively and binge on alcohol, according to Jesus, because they are heartsick. The same goes for people filling their bodies with substances that make them sick. Means seems to think that educating people will solve the problem. While education certainly helps and is an important part of the healing process, it does not get at the underlying cause of the behavior. And that means the same abusive, self-destructing behavior will only crop up somewhere else.
Educating people is not the end-all solution. And that’s because the problem is in their behavior. In biblical terms, we would say the problem is in their heart.
So, what are the deeper reasons for people putting tons of refined sugars into their diets? The reason isn’t a lack of information about what’s healthy. That certainly plays a role, but it’s not the deeper reason. The reason isn’t that foods high in sugar and ultra-processed ingredients are easier to afford. Again, that certainly plays a role. But it doesn’t go deep enough. The issue isn't even that sugar is addictive and that people are microdosing themselves to relieve their stress and anxiety. That's true as well. But the deeper issue, for Christians, is far more serious. The abuse of anything in creation—the treatment of anything apart from God as fully satisfying and life-defining—is idolatry. Idolatry is a heart problem. People like me abuse sugar because, in some way, it seems to satisfy a craving or provide an experience I enjoy apart from God. I crave the thing itself, not what I can learn about or enjoy in God’s character through it. I admit that tons of people can see the goodness (and richness!) of God through sugar. But I wasn’t one of them. The fact that sugar was an idol for me was abundantly clear when I walked away from it and felt such a sense of loss. I was in mourning . . . for sugar! As Dan Strange said once, every idol over promises and under delivers. That’s definitely true of sugar, as silly as it may sound.
My point here is that Means does not provide a deeper understanding as to why people do what they do, or even why she does what she does. And that’s a major problem. David Powlison once wrote, “There is always some sun around which the planet of our lives turns.” If we don’t identify the sun, we’re left in the dark. We’ll just keep spinning. And I fear that many readers will perceive Good Energy as a silver bullet. While it can certainly help people make positive changes in their lives, it’s not going to change hearts and replace our idolatrous suns with the Son of God. That’s a matter of glorious grace, not good energy. It’s a matter of shattering idols, not shaking up our food choices.
Spirituality and the “Miraculous.” I’ve written elsewhere about how important it is for us to define the words we use from a Christian (even trinitarian) perspective. Throughout the book, Means refers to biological and digestive processes as “miraculous.” In encouraging mindful eating, she reflects on her “appreciation of the miraculous interaction between food and my body” (135). She talks about “the miraculous flow of cosmic energy from the sun” (136). And she draws attention to “the spiritual dimension of food” (183). Throughout the book, she views the human body with an almost sacramental respect and awe.
More directly addressing her beliefs, she freely admits in interviews that she has been influenced by texts in the great religious traditions (e.g., Rumi, Lao-tzu, Marcus Aurelius, and plenty of contemporary spiritual writers). She also recounts with sincerity how her mother’s final words were that “we are here to protect the energy of the universe” (243). What does she mean with all of this language?
That’s a good question. The short answer is that “miraculous” and “spiritual” do not mean what Christians assume they mean. Although there is plenty of room for awe in Means’s worldview, there isn’t any space for the supernatural. She has effectively redefined these words, as many do in secular circles. The authentic, biblically grounded meaning for the word “spiritual” comes from the Holy Spirit, from the God who is Spirit (John 4:24). This is a tripersonal-centered spirituality, tied to God’s purposes for history and human life. At best, by “spiritual” Means only intends to convey something like “deeper” or “beyond appearances.” It adds an earthy feel to her prose, and perhaps it reflects a longing for something beyond the material world—but that is another problem. She also appeals at a popular level to people’s knowledge of God (Rom. 1:18ff) and spiritual things without asking them to face their own corruption and evil. So, people get a sense of deeper meaning but are free to walk away with a clean conscience. That's deadly.
Means appeals at a popular level to people’s knowledge of God (Rom. 1:18ff) and spiritual things without asking them to face their own corruption and evil. So, people get a sense of deeper meaning but are free to walk away with a clean conscience. That's deadly.
Materialism. The most difficult component of the book for me to grapple with is the fact—likely missed by many readers—that Means is a pure materialist. Here’s what that means (no pun intended). Everything she believes about value, purpose, and meaning ultimately comes back to earthly materials in an eternal cycle of birth and death. Listen to how she describes herself and her late mother:
Days after she died, we buried her in a natural cemetery along the coastline. How profound to lower her beautiful body into a small patch of dirt among the endless expanse of the ocean. This woman—whom my brother and I had lived inside of, our source, who built my body and consciousness, who traveled the world, and who impacted thousands of people—disintegrated into the earth to feed the trees and flowers and mushrooms above her in an eternal cycle. Worrying about the years her physical body existed on Earth seemed so irrelevant. All my years of anxiety about my mortality and the mortality of my family had been wasted energy. Death is uncontrollable and it is OK. I feel that because when I held my mother as she took her last breath, she was OK. In her final waking moments, she whispered to me that we are here to protect the energy of the universe. That it all—the life, the death—was perfect.
Lowering my mother into the soil, I felt the deepest sense that my mother and I—and everything and everyone else—are inextricably intertwined, and nothing about death can change that. Despite the human-made forces creating the overwhelming perception of separation, scarcity, and fear in order to exert power, create dependency, and extract money from humans and nature—just as the forty-two specialties of medicine obfuscate the reality of the one body—we can push back and we can embody a different truth of total connectedness and limitlessness. I felt Rumi’s words wash over me: “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form” and “Why think separately of this life and the next when one is born of the last?” (242–243)
Earlier in the book, as she reflected on eating mindfully, she wrote,
All the energy stored in the cellular bonds of the plants I’m eating was originally a packet of photon energy that started in the sun, traveled through space, and then was absorbed by a plant’s chloroplast, transformed into glucose, and taken up by an animal that I might eat. Chloroplasts in plants are remarkably like the mitochondria in humans, which ultimately convert that glucose formed in plants from the sun into ATP that I can use to power my life and my ability to think and love. And when I eventually die and go back to the earth—hopefully in a natural burial like my mother’s, where my body is put directly in the soil to be decomposed by worms, fungi, and bacteria and reenter the greater ecosystem—my body’s material building blocks will help grow new plants that will convert more of the sun’s energy into glucose in an infinite loop of mystical transformation. (135)
Never-ending cycles of material turning into more material. Yes, some of that material has consciousness (animals and humans) and some doesn’t (plants, sediment, energy, minerals). But it’s all material. “Eternal life” for Means is simply a continuation of material transformation—a glorified version of the circle of life. And because she sees this process as eternal, we can infer that she believes creation is eternal.
While material creation is a good gift from the triune God, there is more to life than material.
That’s a major red flag for Christians. Cornelius Van Til once said that a position is best recognized by its most basic distinctions. For Christians, the most basic distinction is that between the Creator and the creature. Creation is not eternal. And while material creation is a good gift from the triune God, there is more to life than material. There is the God above creation, for starters, but there is also the reality of the human soul and its eternal fate—either in communion with God or separated from him.
Conclusion
What do we make of all of these theological problems? Do they matter? They do. Of course, Christian readers can benefit from the book in lots of ways. I certainly have. And yet the lack of a biblical anthropology and hermeneutic for the author leads to two major obstacles: (1) Means cannot fully or accurately diagnose the underlying and true problem with humanity, and (2) the underlying motive for our behavior is misplaced, which will have consequences. In light of this, Christian readers can only benefit from the book if they reinterpret what they read.
First we have the problem. The problem lies not just in a lack of education concerning the secondary causes for a health crisis. Being educated about what our dietary and lifestyle habits do to us is critical. But the deeper problem is all the way down in the blood of humanity. Why do people profit off of others’ illnesses? Why do we tear apart the earth to make food products that don’t satisfy our needs and lead to mortal diseases? Why are we rushing through our days in chase of something that, we think, can only be delivered through the avenues of “efficiency” and “comfort”? The answer lies in blood: the blood of Adam and the blood of Christ.
Adam’s blood runs in our veins, and the DNA of sinful rebellion against God and his good order lives there. Sin—that continuously foreign concept in today’s world—is the cause of abuse, profiteering wickedness, carelessness, and self-destruction. But sin is so broad a concept that people—even Christians—seem to think it useless in these debates. Carl Trueman once remarked in class that you could say that the reason the Twin Towers fell on 9/11 was “Gravity.” But that doesn’t tell us a whole lot about the situation, does it? It can be similar with claiming “sin” as the root cause of a problem. Does it really help?
Well, here’s how I believe it does. Humans are fundamentally worshipers. As Matthew Roberts put it in his book Pride, “Who we are, and who we understand ourselves to be, are grounded more than anything else in whom we are made to worship, and whom (or what) we do in fact worship.” James K.A. Smith adds to the centrality of worship the primacy of the heart: “the longings of the heart both point us in the direction of a kingdom and propel us toward it.” We are heart-propelled to pour ourselves into what we love, what we value above all else. And we were made to love and honor God above every created thing. Whenever we love something or someone more than we love the God who made us, we get idolatry. One way to think of idolatry is devoting our “energy” to something that really only has the power to destroy us or, at best, leave us unsatisfied. The negative consequences of that idolatry work themselves out in a host of ways, including abuse, profiteering wickedness, carelessness, and self-destruction—the very things Means identifies in the broken systems of the modern West. These consequences will not ultimately change until hearts change. And that is the work of God alone.
One way to think of idolatry is devoting our “energy” to something that really only has the power to destroy us or, at best, leave us unsatisfied.
To say that the problem with the current health crisis is sin may not seem that helpful at first. But if the heart is not addressed, humans will not change. That’s how we’re built. That’s why people will continue to abuse alcohol, cigarettes, refined sugar, and ultra-processed food even after they’ve read Good Energy. The problem is not in the head; it’s in the heart. Heart problems can lead to head problems, of course. But the reverse cure doesn’t work. You cannot heal the heart by healing the mind. You cannot educate evil and selfishness out of people. It simply doesn’t work. And it never will. That’s not for lack of effort; it’s for misdiagnosing the problem. The correct diagnosis of the problem puts Jesus Christ front and center. And that is often too offensive for people to bear. But, as T. S. Eliot once wrote,
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The sickness grows worse because we need to be led to our utter helplessness before we ask for restoration, which happens to be a divine door (John 10:9), not a dietary overhaul. One day, people are going to confront Christ—for good or ill. He, by the work of the Holy Spirit, is the only one who can deal with the sin issue. And once that sin issue is dealt with, we receive new hearts. And that’s the beginning of redemption. With a new heart, we can pursue the good care of our bodies for all the right reasons—not to partake in a never-ending cycle of organic decomposition and growth, but to bring glory to the God who loves his people so much that he gave himself to redeem them and welcome him into his presence forever.
Motive is one of the most potent sources for growth and change.
Second, we have the motive. On a popular level, the motive issue for many people is peripheral. “Who cares what my motives are, as long as I get healthy?” But motive is one of the most potent sources for growth and change. And, to me, striving to replenish the decomposing organic matter with my own body—stuck in a never-ending cycle of birth and death—is not very motivating. For real motivation, I need purpose. And that’s not something Casey Means can give to her readers. In fact, it’s not something any human author can give to readers. Purpose is a divine gift, not a human construct. We don’t make our purpose; we receive it. And thank God we do! What human would ever have the audacity to state that our purpose is to dwell forever in perfect loving communion with the all-powerful, all-knowing, three-personed Spirit who is God? What human would ever say that our purpose is to be conformed to the Son of God himself (Rom. 8:29), to look more like God!? Those claims are, frankly, ridiculous to our ears. But that’s because we didn’t come up with them. These purposes for redeemed souls are given in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And when Jesus Christ, through his Spirit, tells us we need to treat our bodies as living temples (1 Cor. 6:19), you better believe we’ll be motivated to do it! And if we aren’t, then I guarantee you idols are right around the corner. Idolatry is the thing that keeps us from chasing our God-given destiny.
Final Thoughts
My main takeaway from Good Energy is this: There is much that we can change to be better stewards of our bodies, but we need to keep in mind whom we were made for and why we aim to change. If we don’t do that, we’re being short-sighted, and we shouldn’t be surprised when we fail.
Let me end by saying that Christians are living in an unprecedented time of global-awareness. We have never before been so instantaneously connected to others across the globe. And that has implications. When it comes to apologetics, it means Christians need to practice the skill of engaging with those who differ from them. That is one of the reasons why I read Good Energy. I knew up front that I would have major disagreements with Casey Means. But I read the book anyway because I knew that, in God’s common grace, I would learn things. And I would have an opportunity to engage with the book while presenting the gospel to those who don't believe it, in love and with an earnest desire to communicate (not monologue, but communicate). More and more of this will need to happen if people in the world are to give any heed to the Christian message of hope in Christ.
So, read books you disagree with. Read people who differ from you. But do the extra work of figuring out how your biblical values reinterpret what you find on the page. That work will serve you well, and it will be a testament to the world that Christians are ready to listen before they speak (James 1:19).
In the end, Good Energy is a book given to a lost world. And a lost world has no hope apart from Christ and the enlivening Holy Spirit. We need more than good energy in a lost world; we need the Good Shepherd.