"Normalize" Bulimia? Heaven Forbid...

Dr. Ed Welch has an excellent post on the pervasiveness of bulimia and the nature of "control" its practitioners experience over at his blog. (Ed Welch, whose excellent study on repenting from addictions, "Crossroads",  I reviewed here, is one of my favorite authors and biblical counselors. He is a licensed psychologist and faculty member at the Christian Counseling & Education Foundation, aka CCEF. I am currently working on a review of his new book, "What Do You Think of Me? Why Do I Care?").

Welch compassionately addresses the secretive nature of the bulimic behavior, and puts his finger right on the question a bulimic believer hates to ask herself:

First, if you have any interest in God, does the secretive essence of this behavior concern you? Secrets separate relationships. They separate friends and spouses, and become a private place in which you hide from God. 

 Second, has it improved your life? The answer to that is easy: no. But you say: “So what? It works for me.” Perhaps you feel as though nothing will improve your life so you might as well be thin while you go through the drudgery and misery.

Consider this from another angle. If you are a near-daily practitioner of purging, you are saying much more than “I want to be thin.” The word control is almost always a part of bulimic vocabulary. You have been controlled or dependent on the whims of people who treated you poorly, and you are sick of it. You live with incessant self-loathing and suicidal hopelessness and bulimia gives you some sense of control over this darkness. Its benefits, however, are ephemeral and fleeting. 

So what is the answer? How are we to face a God, when we feel He must be "disgusted" with us? Oh, how I wish someone had shared the Good News of grace with me back in 1989! Go read the rest of the post here: http://www.ccef.org/blog/bulimia-new-normal