Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Reason for Health Doctrine

Our physical habits, including our eating habits, have a relation to religion. Man is a complex being composed of body, soul, and spirit. Whatever affects one part of man affects, at least indirectly, the other parts. The medical world has recently come to realize this and gives particular attention to it in terms of psychosomatic medicine. This term simply means soul-body medicine. The medical world speaks of the interaction of the mind and the body of man, and sometimes of the interaction of body, mind, and spirit. Thus Mrs. White is building on an obviously rational foundation when she erects her health teachings, as she certainly does, on the premise that there is a definite interaction between the different parts of man. EGWC 362.4

Even Mrs. White’s critics will surely agree to this premise. They know that if evil ideas are brought to the mind through lewd conversation or pictures, for example, there may be calamitous effects upon the body in lustful excesses that break down the physical constitution. Here the scripture is fulfilled that evil communications corrupt good manners. The evil began with the mind, but it did not end there. The body, too, was affected. The reverse is also true, that words of cheer and happiness and hope spoken into the ears of an individual can mean new health to his body. Here applies the scripture that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine. EGWC 363.1

The critics will also agree to the premise when the action begins with the body and the reaction affects mind and spirit. They agree that liquor drinking is bad. They subscribe to the rather obvious truth that when liquor goes into a man’s stomach it reflexly affects his mind and benumbs his spiritual faculties. Here apply the warnings of Scripture against strong drink. To the extent that a person’s mental and spiritual faculties are benumbed, to that extent he is unable to understand the will of God or to give obedience to it. And it is because the baleful effects of liquor are in direct ratio to the amount consumed that temperance societies, which at first were only moderation societies, now quite rigidly insist on total abstinence. EGWC 363.2