The Greatest Discoveries of a Lifetime as Seen by a Retired Physician

The greatest discoveries that we can make are not those of technology, but how to have health, happiness and purposeful living that brings a better destiny, says Richard Ruhling, MD.

At 75, Ruhling is enjoying all of the above better than when he was 35 and had headaches that helped him realize a basic truth, that our bodies are built from what we put in our mouths and how important it is to eat a well-balanced diet rather than what seems most appealing.

The same is true for the mind, but just as we like to eat things high in fat, salt and sugar, we tend to do the same with the mind. Filling the mind with fiction is like junk food for the body, and sooner or later it will make trouble for happiness.

Just as health comes from obedience to laws of the body, happiness is also a by-product of obedience to laws of relationships. Abe Lincoln said that the Bible is God’s greatest gift to mankind. “But for it we would not know right from wrong.”
Modern society is largely ignorant of the many benefits the Bible offers besides religion, says Ruhling, who sees it as a great book on health, happiness and purposeful living. Its wisdom enabled pioneers to settle America and establish a form of government modeled after self-gove
ment we find in the Bible.

God prefaced the Ten Commandments by saying, I brought you out of Egypt, from bondage, and because you love Me, you will have no other gods. Because you love Me, you will honor your father and mother. You will not murder, cheat on your spouse, lie, steal or focus on material things. And you will teach your own children these things.
Failing to focus on basics has brought a junk food Hollywood menu for the mind to every home with the result that Washington DC’s swamp is extending to across American and turning into a cesspool.
The Roman Empire fell because of ‘wine, women and song.’ We are doing these in overdrive, and we don’t have long, says Ruhling whose retirement to rural America offers protection from the ‘overflowing scourge’ that the Bible says is coming. In fact, it doesn’t take much faith to see how it can happen!

Speaking of faith, Ruhling affirms Lincoln’s recommendation to take as much as we can of the Bible by reason, and the rest by faith, and we will live and die better. As long as there is life, there is hope, but time tends to erode our inclination for change. Like quitting bad habits or addictions, the sooner we face the issue and overcome it with God’s help, the better.
The Bible teaches us that God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives, but man has a selfish nature that tends to pervert the good things into the wine, women and song that ruins us. Ruhling sees medical care as like wine—treating symptoms with little focus on causes. Education is like the song—sounds good, but with widespread ignorance of basics since we got God and Ten Commandments out of the classroom and replaced them with situational ethics and TV ideas of happiness.