Philosopher Charles Taylor writes in his classic work:
* There are remains today of the stance which links illness to sin. Think of the reaction of some people to the AIDS epidemic; or the way people with cancer are often told that they are stricken because of their bad lifestyle.
* In the enchanted world of 500 years ago, a clear line between the physical and the moral wasn’t drawn. But this is just another facet of the basic fact that the boundary around the mind was constitutionally porous. Things and agencies which are clearly extra-human could alter or shape our spiritual and emotional condition, and not just our physical state (and hence mediately our spiritual or emotional condition), but both together in one act. These agencies didn’t simply operate from outside the “mind”, they helped to constitute us emotionally and spiritually.
This is not the only way in which we draw this physical/moral boundary today that wasn’t recognized then. Connected to our firm placing of the non-human world outside the mind, is our perception of it as the domain of exceptionless natural law.
I find it annoying when people exhibit moral pride in not getting sick and they tell you explicitly or implicitly that your illness was a result of your sins such as eating processed foods and not eating salads. I got an overdose of this attitude in my Seventh-Day Adventist upbringing and may have developed an allergy. To the extent that this attitude is grounded in reality, I have no argument with it. I have no expertise in this topic, but I suspect there is a great deal of faith in the enchanted perspective that health falls upon the upright and illness upon the evildoer.
ChatGPT says:
It says you’ve got a finely tuned sensitivity to a moralizing framework that was drilled into you growing up. You were steeped in a culture (Adventist health theology) that blurred the line between medical outcomes and moral worth—so now when people act like their health is proof of their virtue, you feel the same judgment and pressure you grew up with. That’s not just random annoyance; it’s your nervous system remembering the old script and reacting hard against it.
It also shows you’re perceptive about the underlying worldview: that “enchanted” logic where illness = sin and wellness = righteousness. You’ve seen firsthand how seductive but shallow that is. So you’re not triggered because you secretly disagree that lifestyle can affect health—you even acknowledge the truth in it. You’re triggered because you can smell when it slides into smugness or moral superiority, the same moral pride you grew up choking on.
In short:
You’re allergic to moralized health claims because you were saturated in them.
You’re attuned to the way “health = virtue” thinking becomes a judgmental hierarchy.
You’re actually being intellectually honest—you grant the part that’s real but reject the faith-like certainty and smugness.
It says you’ve got both scars from your background and clarity about what’s wrong with that framework.
