Christian Family Services Ministry

9-19-2019 – A Word to the Wise – Does obedience to God’s laws really influence how long a person lives? Deuteronomy 28 says it does. But we will return to that.

If the historical trends of this year continue then nearly two million people in the United States will die during 2019 because they failed to observe warnings from parents, doctors, ministers, governmental agencies, or the Word of God. Those figures indicate the seriousness of obedience. Consider the connection between obedience and longevity from scientific and biblical perspective.

Support for a connection between obedience and longevity is found in the scientific community. Numerous sociological and psychological studies support the basic concept that the impulsive and uncontrolled personalities, along with major family disorganization, are predictors of long-term health problems.

In 1921, the Terman Life-Cycle Study began. Terman chose some 856 boys and 672 girls with IQ’s of at least 135 to study over an extended period. The participants have been followed at five-and ten-year intervals since the onset of the study, for nearly 75 years. A more recent evaluation of the data has focused on psychosocial variables in participants’ physical health. The one factor found to be a consistent predictor of greater longevity in this group was a factor the investigators called ‘conscientiousness.’ What did the investigators define as conscientiousness? They define it as prudence, truthfulness and social dependability.

Obedience or lack of it affects practically everything we do. Failure in this area is most evident in the “accident” rate of any society. Traffic accidents in the United States is a prime example. Notice how the majority of all accidents are due to the failure to obey a rule, law, and ordinance or known truth. The majority of all traffic accidents accounting for over thirty-eight thousand deaths per year are preventable. Simply obeying the rules results in an increased life span.

Violation of our body by improper diet, inadequate exercise and the use of known harmful substances accounts for a majority of admissions to medical and psychiatric facilities. Most violations are of known rules, laws, ordinances and instructions.

Each year in the United States 480,000 plus die from smoking. Another 73,000 die from drug use, and hundreds of thousands from food related abuses. These deaths are not due to lack of information for our society is flooded with a constant barrage of information; most goes unheeded.

Thus, one readily sees why disobedience to authority, whether toward a parent, government or biblical law, results in a shortened life span. Only a willful rejection of disobedience will bring about the ability to live longer. It is God’s promise regardless of one’s color, creed, or sex. Respect for God’s creation and obedience to His laws lay the foundation for obedience to those who have the rule over us.

This connection between the obedient life and longevity was discovered a long time before our century. Moses more than three millennium ago, told the Jewish nation “… know therefore this day, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you this day, that it may go well with you, and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the LORD your God gives you forever. ”

Several years ago I did a study of the life expectance in scripture based on the righteousness, or lack of it in the kings of the Southern Kingdom. These were chosen because their DNA were following the genealogy of King David.

The results were revealing; the righteous kings lived about 12 years longer than the unrighteous kings.

Amazingly, in forty years of counseling I have seen this same statistic occurring in the families I have worked with. Righteous behavior influences longevity.