For me it’s been a yo-yo ride, since I cheat plenty, but I’m a huge believer in it. It’s been incredibly freeing. I’ve soaked up more of God’s love, and friendship from amazing people I wouldn’t have otherwise known, than I could have imagined when I started.

Twenty years ago as newly married young college graduates, my wife and I started dabbling in this. We both had cubicle jobs and lived for weekends, which we spent furnishing our apartment and hanging out with friends who were more or less like us. A popular board game in our crowd was Trivial Pursuit, which we played endlessly—not completely oblivious to the connection between the title and our 24/7 lives. But Melanie and I were Christians, of the Bible-reading sort. Spurred by stories of Jesus hanging out on the margins of society, we started looking around for poor people. Nobody in our suburb was starving, but there were recent immigrants who were clearly pushed to the edges. We signed up for English tutoring. We ended up in their homes and heard their stories. Our hearts started changing, and our weekends started changing.

What eventually happened was this: we resigned our cubicle jobs, gave away all our stuff (ok, like Ananias and Saphira we fudged and boxed up some things), spent our last money on plane tickets, and moved in with the poor in an overseas city. Friends thought we were nuts. They were right—we ended up culture shocked and homesick. But you know what? It was the Rich Young Ruler Miracle Diet. I think it saved our lives. It’s been a wild-ride adventure ever since, not without danger and heartache, but full of surprising joy. I shudder to think how dismal it could have been otherwise.

We’re in “inner city” Denver now, but somehow we’ve got more money and stuff than we ever had before we went on the diet. Hmmm, flab again. A lot of the time we find ourselves hungry for more, but that’s the irony of the symptoms. My wife and I have been talking about it. Some of our best encouragers, amazingly (or not?) are our kids.

I know lots of other people on this miracle diet. Most are pretty much normal American people, which is why they need it. I’m thankful for the company. Our stories are all different of course. Some work in cubicles and some work in horse barns. They are hesitant to give testimonials, partly because they cheat and fudge on the Diet, and partly because it sounds ascetic or heroic to the uninitiated. But it’s working, not because there’s any formula to it, but because it’s a way of knowing Jesus.

Oh yes, helping the poor? Well, some poor might be helped along the way. But the Rich Young Ruler Miracle Diet is part of a vision that goes way beyond that. (Jesus’ response to the ruler had to do with how the rich could be saved, not the poor.) It’s what Jesus called the kingdom of God, where rich and poor (and the forces that produce them, and the relationships between them) are completely transformed. In the economy of this kingdom, the rich need a whole lot more helping than the poor.

For my part, I need all the help I can get. I’d go so far as to say I’ve needed to be saved. You too?