By Gavin Boyle
REACHER star Alan Ritchson explained why he believes that spiritual discipline is even more important for a healthy life than physical discipline.
“Scripture talks about bodily training. 1 Timothy 4:8 says, ‘For training the body has some value but godliness has value in all things for this life and the life to come.’ So, there’s this call that scripture places on our lives to think about going deeper with our discipline, and I don’t think we focus on that. Like, I don’t think many of us train ourselves like we are getting ready for a race,” Ritchson said.
“Meditating on the word of God brings you to a place where it can equip you and arm you for the complexities of this life where we deal in the gray, the colorful gray between the black and white,” he added. “We can fill ourselves with wisdom that prepares us for that. I invite you to do that. Train your soul and see what it does for your life.”
Ritchson has seen the fruit of spiritual training in his own life, as it has allowed him to combat Satan when confronted by his evil. In 2023, a popular TikToker attacked Christianity when she stated that God does not answer prayers, but Ritchson was quick to defend his faith and explain that this person was missing the point.
“There’s a video making its rounds where a girl on TikTok confidently eviscerates a Christian for believing in prayer and ultimately concluded that God is evil,” Ritchson said, before playing a clip of the video. In the clip, Jessie Jarma, a satanist said, “I live in the Bible Belt, and I see people talk like this all day long on the internet. For one, God cannot answer prayers because that would be interfering with free will.”
“Basically, this comment is referring to the pain and suffering that lives in the world, the problem of evil,” Ritchson explained as part of his response. “But it is also God’s free will to decide when to intervene with the problems that we see in the world.”
Related: How REACHER’s Alan Ritchson Spreads the Gospel Through Non-Christian Roles
This problem is part of the gray area that he referenced, where there is a tension between how we experience the world as finite human beings, compared to God’s omniscient view of all of creation.
“God says…the universe is built on [wisdom], and we have to, like Job does, accept that we maybe don’t have the perspective that God has, and while we cannot answer that very painful question of why suffering exists, instead of hating God for it or refusing to believe in God because of it, we must accept that God, in due time, will have a response for each and everything that happens that proves it was ultimately for good,” Ritchson said in a later video.
The actor’s response to questions like the problem of pain prove just how valuable it is to build ourselves up spiritually. By being able to have deep, informed conversations about things that make people question their faith, we can help guide them to truth while also keeping ourselves from falling away from our own beliefs.
Read Next: REACHER’s Alan Ritchson Explores Intersection of Suffering and God’s Wisdom
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