I Can Eat Anything? ...

Clean versus Unclean … have the rules changed?  To begin, we need to understand extremes so that subtleties make more sense.  Assuming the new rule is that I can eat or drink anything – then it would be permissible to brew up a batch of Clorox soup.  It would be fatal, but permissible.  It would be stupid but permissible.  It lacks all common sense, therefore easily falls into the extreme’s category.  But what about eating duck versus chicken, or pork versus beef?  Sorry to be the harbinger of “bad” news but the same logic applies.  If it is permissible to eat things that are bad for us – even though it may prove fatal over time, and it may prove stupid over time.  Then is “permissibility” the true standard we should be aiming for, or is intelligent choices a better route to go?  As for Biblical permissibility there are a few interesting ideas to keep in mind.  God does not change (nor do His admonitions and laws).  God tells us what is good for us, because He LOVES us, not because He is trying to make our lives miserable.  Adam was given counsel about what to eat, and way back then, there were things he and Eve were not supposed to eat.  Disobeying that initial dietary counsel had profound negative impacts, even though it did not immediately kill them both.

At the point of the flood, a conveniently ignored fact in most Hollywood movies of this event, is that the animals considered “clean” by God to eat, entered the ark in groups of seven, NOT two by two.  God knew that our need of “clean” meat would / should exceed our “need” of unclean.  So the post-flood era would begin with a larger “herd” of the clean animals than the unclean.  Israel under Moses was re-given the councils with regards to diet, as father-to-son traditions had broken down by then.  So it was written down.  The faithful Israelites even in captivity by Nebuchadnezzar refused “unclean” foods, in addition foods offered to other gods.  And when Jesus arrives, his diet is simple and kosher.  Jesus enjoys pressed grapes to drink (unfermented as the language of earlier Biblical manuscripts reveal).  He also enjoys the foods served at traditional feasts, lamb, fish, pita bread, olives, oil, vinegar and simple herbs.  His example is not one of extravagance or of changing the dietary prescriptions that existed for 4000 years.  At the end of all things, it is hard to imagine that in heaven, we will still be killing God’s creations, in order to keep our thirst for meat alive.  I seem to recall something about “death itself” being cast into that lake of fire and being consumed (i.e. no more death). 

So considering that our Creator had a reason for us to segregate into our diet, clean things, and unclean things – He loves us – and He would know – Why would He change His own rules later on, when conditions in our world would only be worse?  Even the practice of animal sacrifice ended at the first coming of the Messiah (the Lamb of the world).  Hard to imagine that elective killing would be encouraged, let alone expanding that practice into animals He knows are not good for us.  There is however another way to examine the clean versus unclean question.  As crazy as it sounds, how about how “clean” you are when you sit down to eat?  If you work in an office doing “indoor” work, the chances of you getting filthy are probably limited.  So when your lunch break arrives, if you open up your sack take out a sandwich and begin eating, you probably start this meal fairly clean.  The invention of hand sanitizer bolsters that.

However, if you work outdoors, and if your work requires you to touch things that don’t exactly build an appetite in you – then perhaps cleaning up before you eat is a better practice.  This is not a rules thing.  This is simply a common-sense thing.  You wash car grease off your hands before you grab that sandwich because you do not want to taste car grease while you eat.  Same for a dozen other professions where it makes more sense to clean your hands before you eat.  This was the case back in the days of Jesus, and for centuries before that.  But the Pharisees were not content to stay with common sense ideas.  They took the common sense and made it uncommon and excessive.  Then they made that tradition.  Then they made that part of their law.  If it was a good idea to wash your hands once before eating, why not do it twice just to make sure?  And if 2 times was better, why not 3?  And over time washing becomes a full-time activity.  So it was in the days of Jesus.

In his gospel to the Hebrews Matthew discusses an incident in chapter fifteen where the Pharisees tried to use the failure of the disciples from not washing their hands before a meal, as a failure of following the law.  But Jesus instructed them that tradition is not the same as His Law, and their doctrine was in error.  This was not meant to be a wholesale endorsement of never cleaning yourself up before you eat.  Let’s face it, foot washing was not just a meaningless tradition back then, it was done to kill the ugly odor of feet in a room before you sat down to eat.  But Jesus was trying to make a point that failing to wash up is not a cardinal sin.  On this topic Matthew recalls the discussion picking up in verse 10 saying … “And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and understand: [verse 11] Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”

This profound statement was no more about clean and unclean meats as it was about throwing up as being a sin.  This was about taking common sense, creating tradition out of it, then elevating that tradition to being equal with God’s law.  Man does not get to do that.  We are not the same as God.  And what comes out of a man’s mouth (i.e. what he says, and usually what he does that follows that speech of intent) is not predetermined by his diet, or how clean his hands were before he eats.  Washing your hands 5 times before you eat does not make your heart any more loving – it may even have the opposite effect of being annoyed at a God you believed requires this of you.  The hands of the Pharisees who presumably followed this tradition were clean, yet stained with the blood of Christ they intended to, and then did, kill.  The connection was not there.  And while God’s dietary prescriptions of clean and unclean remain, these prescriptions were designed for our well-being because He loves us.  Staying to a kosher diet however, does not make you sinless either.  Making good dietary choices does not keep your heart free from sin, any more than eating Clorox soup does (though you won’t have long to think about how stupid a choice that was after doing it).

But as predictable as the seasons, the Pharisees were pissed off at this revelation.  So much so, that the disciples could visibly see it in them.  They felt the need to warn Jesus about it.  Matthew continues in verse 12 saying … “Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying? [verse 13] But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. [verse 14] Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”  Yikes!!  This response should reach into your heart and shake it to the roots.  Forget the Pharisees, this has a direct meaning to you and I.  Jesus says every plant (note the absence of meat … just saying) – which my Father has not planted shall be rooted up.  Think about this in terms of modern Christianity.  The Pharisees were the church leaders of their day in the “right” church.  But they were not planted by God.  You or I may be a church leader, or church member of what we believe is the right church today – but NOT be planted by God.

Instead we are planted by tradition, by following our guidelines and standards, by believing in scripture.  All the while we have never had a personal experience with Jesus.  We refuse to submit our will to His, just like our Pharisee forefathers, and we deceive ourselves that we are part of the “in crowd” where it comes to the kingdom of heaven.  Yet we are far from it.  We are destined to be rooted up.  The next thing Jesus says is “let them alone”.  This is scarier still.  The disciples who have the truth, because they know the Truth – are instructed to leave the Pharisees alone, i.e. don’t waste your time on them.  Could our certainty of who we are, and what we believe be so cemented in our minds, that people around us with the Truth cannot break through to us?  Have we embraced our blindness through our certainty so strongly that we will refuse to let it go, even when the Truth stands in front of us, because it does not conform with what we already believe?  In so doing we are blind, leading other blind, right into the ditch, and nowhere near His kingdom.

Peter is nervous.  He senses there may be a real problem here with beliefs he has long held to.  So he wants a little more clarification.  What an excellent idea!!!  Would it not be awesome, if we would let go of our certainty and instead keep asking Jesus for a little more clarification.  Matthew continues in verse 15 saying … “Then answered Peter and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. [verse 16] And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding? [verse 17] Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?”  Part one of the response of Jesus begins by discussing our digestive process.  What we eat goes into our stomach and comes out in our poo.  It has nothing to do with how we love.  Of course this does not mean we get to eat Clorox soup because that would be bad for us, and Jesus loves us too much to see us eat such things.  The same could be said for unclean foods that take longer to kill us, or harm us, and Jesus would still want us to avoid them.  But eating something stupid still does not have an immediate effect on how you love.  Consuming a little dirt on your hands wont either.

Jesus continues  in verse 18 saying … “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. [verse 19] For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: [verse 20] These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.”  And there it is.  What we say, expresses an intent of our heart.  And those intentions, and motives, are what defile us.  The last part of verse 20 should clarify specifically that “not” washing our hands does not defile us.  Especially washing our hands multiple times.  This entire passage in Matthew has NOT been about clean and unclean foods.  It has been about clean and unclean hands before we eat.  Those who would use this passage in an attempt to justify eating anything, are trying to get a pass on the admonitions of a God who loves you and wants only what is best for you.  Better to trash the bacon and trust the Lord, than to keep downing the bacon thinking your own dietary wisdom exceeds that of your God.  It doesn’t.

This passage is about surrendering your will to God, to Jesus, and letting Him adjust your desires whatever they may be.  Removing those intentions that are not the best; and replacing them with ones that are.  Developing tastes for foods that are good for you; and removing tastes for foods that are bent on destroying you.  Not focusing on the superficial of washing your hands and thinking you are clean, but instead having Jesus clean you from the inside out.  Changing your motives and teaching you how to love.  Will you hear?  Will you listen and understand?  Or have your already become the Pharisee, so certain in your likes and dislikes, and certain in your beliefs you will hear none other?

 

What is Perfection ...

Could one define perfection as the complete acquisition of everything one desires?  Or rather is the pursuit of what is desired considered perfection?  Even under these possible definitions, perfection is elusive at best, impossible at worst, and its attainment seems always just out of reach.  Given the state of the world around us, we hardly consider the attainment of perfection as plausible and consequently each of us learns to settle for a degree of mediocrity we are comfortable with.  We do not expect perfection in our relationships as we know we bring none to the table.  We do not measure ourselves against the standards of spiritual perfection, as for so long we have made abysmal failures of that quest.  So perhaps it is difficult for a finite mind to imagine a perfection it has never seen.  It must be a matter of imagination as none of us seems to be able to personally attest to having witnessed perfection in any area of our lives.  But despite our lack of personal experience perfection is held out to us as a reality.  The marketing machine on 5^th avenue attempts to color our ideas of perfection with imagery designed to sell products.  And scripture details a time before time when perfection was the norm of the day.  So if perfection does exist, what is it?  How do we measure it?  How will we know when we have achieved it?

Scripture says when God looked at the newly created world … “He saw that it was good” (Gen 1:31).  By contrast when scripture describes God it says … “as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48).  When the perfect God of creation looked upon the work of His hands, He saw that it was very good.  But Moses did not describe the wondrous beauty of Eden as being perfect, only that it was very good.  Perhaps perfection would have required the absence of potential for evil.  Perhaps since Adam and Eve had not made a final choice either for obedience or not, perfection was elusive in our first garden home.  But then on closer examination, despite all the glorious language describing the beauty of heaven, the city of our God, it too does not often if ever get described as perfect.  The term perfect does appear many times in scripture but seems to always be applied as a characteristic for us as people – either striving for perfection in how we live, or being made perfect by our Lord Jesus Christ.  It does not seem to be used to describe inanimate objects.  Perhaps this is because perfection cannot be found in or around our settings, our possessions, or our environments.  It may be that perfection itself is something that cannot be achieved in our surroundings as no matter how wonderful they may be, they could always be improved in some manner.

When God looked at His creation of this world, He spent time (6 days) in the infinite details of plant life, rocks, trees, seas, lakes, and all the living beings that would live in the nature He created including us.  But having created them, and having had Adam give names to all the animals, the remainder of His attention in our Genesis turns to the things God values most – namely us.  Perhaps this is because even God looks at the universe He has made, and can imagine new ways to see it improved.  Perhaps His own ideas of perfection include constant innovation and Genesis-style creation.  But regardless of His opinions of the environments He is able to create, where God centers His attention, His time, and His value is in the origination of man He intended to spend eternity with.  We were intended to be the perfect creation, His crowning achievement, patterned after His image and set just a little below the angels, it was to be us who would offer the universe an even clearer picture of what love is – and perhaps in so doing, offer a better picture of what perfection is.  This model however would stand in stark contrast to the idealization of “things” and would find fulfillment only in the actualization of “love”.

Our constant failures, inherent short comings, and repeated losses have trained us to become comfortable with mediocrity.  Compromise is the rule of our day, whether we curb our desires to what we believe to be attainable, or sacrifice our values to attain something we desire just a bit more than we value our ethics, compromise is our mantra.  For generations after the fall of mankind this was so, no less in our own day.  Therefore when something identified to be perfect comes along; it causes us to see our own imperfections in its reflection.  The law of God was such a thing.  The Ten Commandments given at Mount Sinai carved by the finger of God Himself in the stones of the cliffs and handed to Moses to take to His people were perfect.  “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” proclaimed David as He pondered God’s revelation of love in his Psalms (19:7).  God’s law was a beginning revelation of the nature of His love.  Well beyond merely a list of do’s and don’ts His precepts were summarized by Christ as loving God first, with all our hearts, minds, and souls, and our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40).  Christ did not focus on the particular points of the law; instead He focused on the motives behind it, something His contemporaries seemed to have lost sight of.

Perfect love revealed by God in His law, and by Christ in His life, reveals to us our own failures by contrast.  We see in the deeds that contradict the prescriptions outlined in His commandments that love of others does not always govern our motives and behaviors.  The law points out to us when self-love is responsible for what we do, more than self-less-love that the law proscribes.  When we examine the deeds, words, and motives of Christ, we see perfect compliance to not only what the law proscribes but to the motives that were its underpinning.  To attempt to discard the law, to state that grace has somehow overcome the law and made it of no effect, is to attempt to remove love as having meaning from the character of God.  Since God is love, this is simply impossible.  The freedom our God gives us is actually defined in His laws.  Consider for a moment what the law forbids; murder, lying, adultery, lust, dishonor to our parents, the pursuit of other gods, devaluing our God in vanity, discrediting His acts of creation, etc..  All of the things God’s law proscribes against limit our own self-interests that would come at the expense of another.  God’s law protects the rights of another person from us damaging them by our actions.  In essence, God’s law limits evil.  It does not however as Christ pointed out in His very words, put a cap on how much one can express love to God, or limit the expression love to someone else.  We are “free” to love others as much as we want, free without limits, free without proscriptions.  Christ Himself demonstrates just how far love will go as He offers His own life in exchange for ours.  Christ shows to love another is the nature of perfection.  His law shows to love self, is the nature of evil.

Our “human” limitations and history of failure to achieve perfect compliance to the law of God have caused us to believe it is an impossible standard.  We aspire to act as Christ acted, but find our implementation far from what He achieved.  So even within our churches and our Christian ideologies we begin to seek for excuses as to why we do what we do.  We offer reasoning that since we are unable to “keep” the laws of God, He must not have intended for us to do so.  Our ideas of spiritual perfection have been tainted with the reality of our expression.  Too often our failures and manifestations of self-love over self-less-love color our very ideas of what perfection should be.  As we lose sight of even the possibility of perfection, we lose the desire to be perfect.  We begin to think that God will “wink” at our imperfections.  We think His forgiveness will cover our actions, no matter how intentional, or repeated they are.  This is the thinking that springs from tainted minds, looking through tainted realities, at a future we can no longer imagine.  But it is not the reality God offers.  His ideas of perfection for us, can no longer originate within us.  Adam and Eve lost us this birthright at our origin, and in choosing to embrace evil began a legacy of inability on our part to achieve the high standard of love our God would outline in stone, and live in the flesh of His Son.  Instead we would require a Savior to save us from ourselves and our self-love.  We would require outside intervention, from a God of creation, who could re-create us from the inside out.  We would need not only a rebirth, but a continual reengineering of our daily lives until He returned and would be able to finish the work He started within us.

It would take more than 6 days to recreate a damaged human heart and psyche.  Not because God has limitations in His own abilities to create, but because the clay of our hearts and minds He is forced to work with now is so steeped in evil and selfishness it rebels against His work of recreation every time it has a chance.  Our greatest hope now lies in our pursuit of total submission, not total conquest.  Everything we have been taught in a society of self-reliance, and self-help, stands in stark contrast to the gift of salvation from self our God offers.  We are not to seek perfection in the strength of our characters and actions, but rather on our knees in submission to the only savior who is able and eager to remove from us what we cannot remove from ourselves.  It is in perfect surrender that we will finally find perfection achieved.  It is because we can only be made perfect, through the act of recreation, the discarding of all that is evil, and remaking of all that is love.  In this alone to we find hope.  In this alone is the grace of His forgiveness coupled with a change we so desperately need in our day to day expression of His ideals.  It is through our salvation from self-love that we find natural and perfect obedience to a law that is steeped in love itself.  And through the salvation from slavery to self, we finally see the freedom He truly offers us.  A life lived beyond the basics proscribed by His law, a life that is free to explore the infinite expressions of what love to another is all about.

Our interactions when fully surrendered to the process of His recreation of love within us, are no longer focused on what we cannot do to another person – but on what we might do to bring someone else joy, peace, life, and fulfillment.  Merely not killing, not coveting, not lying, and not defiling are way too small concerns for a life that is remade in the image God intended.  Instead, the quest becomes one of how to make the life of another wonderful, fantastic, and so much better, despite the circumstances we find ourselves in.  The life of Christ was set in difficult times where hard physical work was required to survive, when political turmoil threatened your very existence, where taxation was unjust and crippling, where the poor had great need and little help, where the spiritual leaders of the day had perverted a religion of love to one of aggrandizement at the expense of illiterate.  But Christ did not use the hardships of His day and circumstances as an excuse to love less, to do less, to show us less what He only “intended” to do.  Instead His actions were not bound by His environment.  Indeed no-one and nothing could prevent Him from showing us the love He came to show.  He was always tender, merciful, and redemptive to everyone He met.  He sought out the poor and downtrodden, He went to them not requiring them to find Him.  Where He met with the religious leaders of His day, He tried to teach them how far they had strayed from the God of love behind their laws and more importantly their traditions (which had no actual divine origins). 

The Pharisees and Sadducees of His day could not even agree on all points of religious doctrine, arguing over the resurrection.  They had taken the laws of Moses given beyond the Ten Commandments, which were given in a time in Israel just out of slavery, and extended their limitations even farther.  Instead of recognizing the progress that living a self-less kind of love will do to a person, they focused only the “justice” aspects of punishment that unrepentant evil would deserve.  They ignored all the proscriptions for mercy found within these same laws for anyone willing to seek forgiveness, and instead only focused on the penalties that would come to those who did not value forgiveness.  The religious leaders in the days of Christ made the laws of Moses seem the same as the laws of the Ten Commandments, even though the entire sanctuary services would find their fulfillment in the coming of the Messiah.  They equated all laws as being everlasting, all punishments as mandatory regardless of the pursuit of forgiveness, and thus all responsibility for achieving perfection would be left to the strength of the penitent.  This is what Christ would strive to correct, from the three days He spent in the temple when we was lost to Mary and Joseph on His twelfth birthday, to His endorsement of the ministry of John the Baptist, to His counsels on His travels throughout the countryside.  Christ outlined to Nicodemus, one of these leaders, the true nature of salvation – a rebirth to spiritual perfection that ONLY the Messiah could bring.  Perfection would not be found in the leadership of His religion, but in submission to the God of His religion.  Christ did reach a few of the religious leaders of His day, but too many were more comfortable with ideas of self-reliance that had led to such vast personal gain.

Is it any different for us today?  Our society values self-reliance, a good personal work ethic, and has little sympathy for the downtrodden and unfortunate we come across.  These values invade our Christian ideologies until we begin to believe that our salvation is our own responsibility, and that those who suffer in life do so for transgressing the will of God.  Like the Pharisees of old, we see those who are poor as being “responsible” for their own conditions either through being lazy and unmotivated, or from committing various acts of evil.  It even goes so far as to see diseases like Aids and STDs as punishments from God, instead of the natural consequences of sexual promiscuity.  Earthquakes and natural disasters get tagged as “acts of God” instead of merely natural phenomenon influenced by how we treat our planet.  In short even those of Christian ideology of today choose to focus on the punishment of unrepentant evil, rather than on the true transformation, and rebirth Christ would offer to all who will seek Him.  Salvation is not only for the rich, or for the poor, but for any who would wish to have a better life here and now.  Salvation from self-love was not supposed to be something that waited to only find fulfillment in heaven, but rather as a process that begins here and now, and reaches its maturity in the heaven we seek.  Christ said … “the Kingdom of God is come”.  Obviously He was not referring to streets of Gold, and pearly gates of His city.  He was referring to the establishment of His kingdom in the hearts and minds of mankind.  He was referring to wonderful gift of recreation He would offer us.  A beginning to the achievement of perfection was to be His gift.  We could not earn it.  We would not deserve it.  But we could finally attain it, by merely accepting it.

The religious leaders of His day rejected Christ because they did not want to remove the quest for perfection from their own hands and place it humbly in the hands of our God.  They wanted rather to believe they were good, and worthy to be saved, from the great deeds they did; not be forced to admit their hearts had not been truly changed.  They were still slaves to self-love.  They were still addicts to self-serving, even if it came at the expense of another.  Today, we cling to a similar ideology that states we find our salvation in the strength of our characters, or we negate its need clinging to the idea that forgiveness is offered even before we need it for the deeds we are about to commit.  It robs us of the power of our religion, and makes Christianity a joke to those who witness us committing the same acts, at the same frequency, as those who do not claim Christ as their savior.  If Christianity can only offer forgiveness for wrong doing it is indeed a poor religion.  Muslims share this ability, as do our Jewish brothers.  All three religions share the ideology of the great forgiveness of our God.  Christianity distinguishes itself in that Christ, being the son of God, offers us more than mere forgiveness, He offers us reform.  A true change in not only what we do, but in how we think; this is the gift of Christ to us.  He re-creates us anew, and re-establishes perfection within us as we surrender to Him.  It is NOT our own perfection that is created in us, but His perfection that reflected through us.  We become vessels of perfection, not fountains of it.  And when we finally reach our heavenly home, it is this work of creating perfection within us that is finally and fully completed – not started, and then ended.  It starts today.

In this sense, we need not run from the standards of Gods law as being unachievable.  Instead we can recognize our inability, and rest knowing that He will remake us until we find harmony with His laws our natural state of being.  We need not seek to delay our freedom from slavery to self, in order to continue committing acts of evil that hurt us and everyone around us.  Instead we can seek His salvation from evil and the pain it causes immediately, and begin a life of reformation today, powered by Him, and founded in our submission to Him.  As we surrender, our ideas of perfection are restored to what He intended.  The taints of our evil, and our genetics, are undone by the power of a regenerative God, who is able to create in us a clean heart, and a clean mind.  As the influences of evil are removed, our ideas of perfection become greater and more noble.  We begin to see what is truly possible, unbound by mediocrity we have come to accept.  We realize that we wish no more a compromise with evil, but its complete and utter destruction within us.  Perfection is so much more than we had hoped.  Perfection is so much better than anything we could have experienced.  And it is indeed plausible, possible, and part of our reality as we embrace our surrender to our Messiah of Love.  Christ offers what no other deity has ever purported to do, to reach within us (His enemies) while we are yet His enemies, and change the very nature of who we are, freeing us from evil, as His gift to us, if we but accept it.  It is the acceptance that we could not achieve this ourselves that is required of us.  It is the recognition of our dependence that is the beginning of the road to perfection.  And it is the embrace of His gift that can then transform our lives from the mediocrity of evil, to the infinite that perfection has to offer.

To begin to see perfection, to understand it, we must move past our “human” limitations.  To delve into what is by nature infinite; we must allow our creator, to remove what binds us and taints us.  We must let Him change the very nature of “how” we think.  Unbound by our past and our perspectives, we can begin to see perfection for what it truly is.  We can begin to appreciate it.  And through our submission to Christ, we can begin to see its potential within us.  Perfection then becomes more than an aspiration we can barely hope to achieve, but a daily reality that can be reflected in how we love another.  Our relationships will dramatically improve as we have something of His to bring to the table.  Our perspectives and priorities of what is truly important will alter as we forsake the pursuit of Madison Avenue suggestions of acquisition, and begin the pursuit of character transformation Christ alone can bring.  We can finally and fully embrace the Kingdom of God in the here and now, restoring the power of Christianity which is based in the power of love to others.  We can show to the world a reason to see this ideology as being superior to others.  Not because we are superior, but because we reflect a superior love through us.  In our weakness, in our surrender, we come to find that which is infinite, that which is perfect, the God of love within us.

What is Evil ...

And then there was poo.  In all the universe, for all time, there had never been anything before like poo.  No being could have ever imagined it.  How could something exist that could indeed be so utterly offensive.  Yes, poo may well be the most offensive substance in existence.  It smells bad.  It looks horrible.  It’s texture is repulsive.  One can only speculate at how horrible its taste must be, and even that thought is enough for some to throw-up (ironically producing possibly the second most offensive substance).  So why does poo exist at all?

Imagine for a minute your most favorite food, imagine it cooked to perfection, prepared by gourmet chef’s using only the freshest and highest quality ingredients – now imagine eating this delicacy until your heart, head, and stomach are completely content.  You are not overfull, you are not hungry.  You are completely satisfied and cannot even imagine eating again for at least a few hours from now.  This was normal life in heaven, before evil existed.  The food you would have consumed would have been converted into pure energy.  There simply was no waste.  There was nothing your body needed to separate and excrete.  100% of what you consumed was used and processed in your body, and provided exactly the nourishment you needed.  This was life in Eden.  This was the norm for Adam and Eve.  Poo, and waste byproducts, were a concept unknown.  No need to study something so offensive, when it was also completely irrelevant.

But with evil’s entrance to our world, came the inevitable entrance of poo.  The knowledge God would have Adam and Eve blissfully ignorant of, was on the topic of waste byproducts such as the entire digestive cycle including poo.  As the human body lost its perfection, it would now produce a number of toxins derived from its surroundings and diet.  No longer would perfect food from the tree of life be our daily supplement.  Instead we would have to “toil” or work to contribute towards our survival.  Our efforts would not yield perfect results, and the imperfect results would be what we subsist on.  All of this pain, heartache, and its link to evil – was the knowledge of Good and of Evil, that God would have kept our parents ignorant of.  It made no sense to compare perfection with what was not perfect.  They would have no basis to understand the comparison while they remained true to God.  But the devil knew, that experience would open their eyes to the addictive and destructive nature of evil.  He knew that a single bite of that forbidden fruit would immediately allow them to fully understand the concept of poo.  He did not lie when He said this was a knowledge only God had previously understood, and that like God, they would gain it too.  He simply omitted the fact that understanding poo is a level of information most people would choose to avoid.

There are those who say God created poo, just like God created evil.  He did not.  God created a method of dealing with both.  Poo, or waste byproducts, was a result of evil, it had no origin before that.  As disgusting as that substance is, it makes an excellent comparator for the nature of evil itself.  Evil is not just repugnant to God, it is naturally on its own – ugly, painful, smelly, disgusting, and something all of us should wish not to ever encounter.  Evil is the result of deviation away from all that is perfect.  Evil, as a logical matter has no place to wind up, but to become poo.  If God is the embodiment of fulfillment, love, and joy that brings life – evil by contrast will embody insatiable emptiness, hate and contempt, and pain that leads to death.

So how could something so horrific be embraced by so many, and then thought of as a good thing?  After all I have only ever heard of Alice Cooper actually eating poo in one of his concerts and that story could be the substance of urban legend.  If evil is so bad and so repugnant, and so painful, why do so many embrace it?  At least when you see poo on the ground, you take care not to step in it.  Not so with evil, people seem drawn to it, captivated by it, unable to escape its grasp.  The reason is marketing.  The first step in getting logical people to adopt something that is wholly repugnant is to lie about its features and nature.  We must distract people from the truth about evil, and make evil sound and look very good.  The second step in getting people to adopt something so horrific is to separate for as long as possible, the consequences of adopting evil from the actual act of embracing it.

For instance; if I were a salesman attempting to market an evil idea to you I could tell you the following … You sir, can I interest you in a guaranteed way to insure you will never really know the joy of loving someone else with your whole heart?  That woman you once thought to love completely will be so hurt by you, that over time she will seek comfort in the faithful arms of another guy.  I can add to that, you will lose everything of earthly value to you as it will someday be taken away or divided in half?  If you had kids, get prepared to see them only once in a while, while they learn not to trust or rely on you ever again – probably filling the void of your loss with drugs, prison bound behavior, or just loving some other dude more than you.  And the kicker is, enough time with this little evil and you are for certain guaranteed to die old and alone, after a meaningless life of emptiness and regret.  What’s more a trip down this aisle, and you won’t ever be able to say “no” again.  That’s right, your self-control will cease to exist (as if it ever did), and you will be a complete slave to very behavior that insures your doom, and you as the cause of pain to literally everyone you come in contact with for the rest of your life.  Interested?

Instead … the devil is smart.  He attacks you when your weak, after an argument about something meaningless you can hardly remember.  He puts in your path a sympathetic, caring, and attractive individual who’s own loneliness drives them to make bad decisions.  And there you have the makings of an affair.  At first it is considered risky, exciting, the lure of the forbidden and doing what you know you should not.  There is absolutely no pain involved immediately.  But it is coming.  The damage however is immediate.  Trust disintegrates.  The ability to maintain intimacy is destroyed.  The ability to truly love, is warped only into self-love.  All the destructive elements of evil are hard at work, long before the perpetrator is even aware of it.  And then, when evil has done a sufficiently good job at tearing away the fabric of a person, the pain comes.  And the pain ripples out, hurting those you would not expect, did not anticipate, and cannot prevent.  For the truth of pain is a constant for evil.  There is no escape.

Yet despite the facts of the damage done by evil, millions still choose to embrace it.  Part of the reason for this is that even limited exposure to embracing evil robs one of the self-control to cease future participation in it.  It only took a single bite of the forbidden fruit for Adam to degenerate from loving Eve so much he would share her fate, to blaming God for Eve’s existence and her participation in his fall from grace.  Adam lost his nobility, and he lost his power to choose.  When he lost his dominion over the earth, his most important loss, was that of self-control.  He was now slave to evil, bound by its chains.  It would take a savior to save Adam from himself, and us from ourselves.

There are those today, who have discovered the poo-like nature of evil, and desperately dream of relief from it.  They are sorry for their behavior, but unable to stop it.  They long for freedom, but lack the will to find it on their own.  But for those who see evil for what it truly is, they fall into two camps.  One group believes if they just try harder, they can free themselves from this evil, by their own sheer will.  The other group is aware of their addiction and has no answer for it.  Those who trust to removing evil from themselves on their own, or in partnership with Christ, fail.  They fail, and fail, and fail again.  They find themselves only able to seek forgiveness.  They become protective and begin to think the only way they will ever become pure is by controlling their environment including others around them.  They begin to focus on the sins of others, trying desperately to point out the error of other’s rather than face the failure in themselves.  They begin to think themselves better by comparison with other sinners.  And they completely lose sight of their condition, still locked in sin, with no way out.

The group, smart enough to realize they suffer from an addiction and are powerless to stop it face a choice.  They often rationalize that since there is no apparent way out, God will have to forgive them, for how He made them, and save them in heaven despite who they are.  They think themselves free of any religious restrictions or laws, and able through grace to do anything they please.  But what they forget is the poo-like nature of sin and evil.  Thinking yourself free to eat as much poo as you want, is no kind of freedom any rational person would ever want.  The whole point is to find a way of escape from the pain, not a highway to embrace more of it.

When one realizes they can do nothing to remove the sin from themselves, they can choose to allow Christ to do it for them.  In effect, to finally let the Savior of mankind, save them.  This is what it means to be saved, to be MADE free from sin.  12 step programs can manage behavior, but they cannot remove the underlying desire for the sin.  Christ can.  He can change how we think, what we want, what we like, what we enjoy, and what we do.  All we have to do, is let Him.  Our part in this is not to work harder, it is to stop working at all, and let Christ be the savior He is.  Our part is to learn through experience what it means to trust Christ with your own salvation.  This is what we are meant to do.  This is how we avoid poo, and the pain of all evil.  We quit wallowing in it, and allow our Savior, to clean us up, and free us from playing in it again.

Creation Revelation ...

The reason why our origins are recorded in the Book of the Genesis is for far more than a mere historical perspective on where we come from. It is more than an alternate theory to the one posed by evolution and its trillion to one odds of success. And it goes beyond describing the fall of man and a renewed hope for a second chance. The lessons learned from the study of perfection BEFORE the entrance of sin, give us an insight into the motives and intentions of our God. They foretell what He intends to restore unto us. They contrast the beauty of the plans of God, with the inevitable results of deviating away from God’s plans. And finally they predict the eventual reconciliation of our God with His created peoples.

What has happened since our fall, continues to happen today. We have an enemy who seeks our destruction. His entire aim is to distract us away from the source of relief. He lures us with the promise of power or wealth, or he tempts us with the idea of unlimited self-gratification. He injures us, and then reminds us that we alone need to be looking out for number one. And he has a skilled accomplice to help him carry out his mission of evil – it is the image you see in the mirror in front of you. You are not my enemy, but you are your own. It is why I entitled this work … “I am the enemy”. It is a hard revelation to face, but 6000 years of genetics, an environment custom tailored to feed my ‘need’, and a natural inclination to serve self – combine to form an unbeatable combination of originator of sin in my life. When being honest, most of us do not need to be tempted by the devil himself to fall into behavior we know to be wrong. Most of us, hardly need a gentle nudge to do what evil we are already inclined to do.

This was the contrast in Eden. And this will one day be the contrast between who we are now, and who we will one day become. It is our natural instincts to deviate from God and serving others, towards the gratification of self that MUST die in us before we will be a “new” creation. When he first walked this earth Adam had no desire to ingest cocaine and rape a strange woman on his way home. It was not the absence of refined cocaine, or perhaps other women, that restrained his behavior – it was natural for him never to feel these urges. His natural state of being, was to be in harmony with the character and nature of God. It was a conscious choice away from the plans of God, that led to Adam’s fall. Man lost his dominion over the earth, but way more importantly, over himself.

Man is no longer free to love as much as he wants. Instead he is the bound servant of the evil one, held captive to evil instincts despite his freewill, or inclinations to do better. Man is powerless to remove the evil he once invited inside himself, to leave once and for all. This is not the inclination of evil. Evil perpetuates like a cancer causing virus, seeking out as many as possible to hurt and destroy. It is not the questionable random acts we perform today that make us unfit for heaven. It is our natural inclination behind them, the motivation that drives each evil act, that is our real disease.

Alcoholics in society today, have a treatment option of a 12 step plan to help them cope with their disease. But for the remainder of their lives, they remain alcoholics (slave to the potential future drink they may indulge in). Generally when an addict relapses it takes time to restore their sobriety. Often they must repeat each step one at a time, taking each day at a time to regain any sense of composure after a significant failure. This is because the root motivation, and chemical genetics, that make us susceptible to become alcoholics remain in tact. The 12-step programs can do nothing to undo our genetic codes and responses. 12-steps are a wonderful disease management program, but not a cure.

In Eden there was no equivalent thinking that could describe addiction. Prior to sin, there was no basis for understanding truly what it means to be powerless to resist something we know will destroy us. This was non-sensible, it was illogical, and therefore it was highly suspect thinking – and yet every word of it was true. Prior to our fall, man had only the knowledge of Good. God alone, could foresee the horror of evil and where it would lead. This was the knowledge the serpent promised Eve, the knowledge of both sides of the coin – both good and evil. She was lured into thinking that she would have the knowledge without the personal experience but this was not to be. And once bitten, the evil fruit did its work, transforming the noble self-sacrificing daughter of Christ, into the temptress bent on securing her husband’s participation in her own doom. Had Eve been able to reason as she did before, her love would have driven her still farther from Adam’s side, so as not to risk his Salvation for the loss of her own. That is how perfect love thinks. It cares not about itself, only the object of its affection. But evil, cares not for the other individual, only for itself.

The creation story tells us right from the beginning that we lost. We were defeated in the garden, when perfection was our ally. Since then we have NO hope of defeating the evil one in our own characters, or using our own human wisdom and strength. The lost, require a defender, a champion, a hero. Those who are beaten require someone else to do the fighting and the winning, in order to reclaim them. In short, fallen man requires a Savior to be saved from the evil that infects our souls, and warps our nature. What was revealed to Adam and Eve in the garden has yet to sink in to the thoughts of modern Christians. Adam and Eve would be sent a promised Messiah … “to take away the sins of the world.” In short, to remove the sins we carry and commit from our very natures. To lift the burden of our genetic codes. To reroute the passages in our brains undoing the years of chemical neglect. The mission of our Messiah was not simply to perform the awaited sacrifice for our sins in atonement, but to free man from his bondage to those very desires to sin.

This is the Creation Revelation; that Christ can create us over again from the inside out. He does not need to wait till we walk through golden gates in a perfect city of His design. He can do it on the street corners we walk, in drug infested houses where we take refuge, in the gutters in which we live. He can meet us anywhere and begin the process of healing the pain we have so long heaped upon ourselves. The man in the mirror, can be transformed from enemy of the Lord, to humble servant of our King. I do not have to be destined to serve only me, and my desire to please only me. My desires can be rewritten. My wants and “needs” can be re-created anew back into His image. This is the hope that Genesis extended to Adam and Eve, and has seen its fulfillment in the ministry of Christ so long ago. We are not bound to our history of doom, but free to live in His Kingdom right now, changed through the power of His gift, and our submission to His will.

A Happy Couple (part 2 of 2)

“… in the image of God created He him; male and Female created He them” - Genesis 1:27. Being made in the image of God, we are able to sense and feel the need for companionship and love, as our maker created these capacities. God loves us, and we realize what it means to be loved, and to love another. God’s first lesson about intimacy was not to be His last. As such, the first marriage in Eden was not designed to be the last, but it and all that would follow were designed to last without end. God intended to use marriage to teach us what it means to love in a different way than we had already learned. Beyond how a spouse loves its partner, a child loves a parent in a completely different way. The romantic love was designed to come first, and through its expression came the familial love of parents and children, siblings, and extended families.

The first gift given to the newly married couple in Eden was the gift of procreation. We were counseled by God to “be fruitful and multiply” BEFORE any test of sin or disobedience. Therefore if our premise holds that what was perfect prior to sin, will one day be perfect after sin’s extinction; we can assume that procreation remains a gift given to loving couples who marry. Man’s repopulation could one day replace the loss of the angels who turned away from God and now delight in forming his demonic league, but there is no indication that once these numbers were met, we would suddenly stop our ability to procreate. God did not counsel us to be fruitful and multiply … to a point, or until we reach some magic number, but essentially “throughout the earth”. Our ability to create families from the union of two was established even prior to outlining our dominion over the earth, and before our first dietary menu was laid out. We could imply from this perceived pecking order, that family is MORE important than work, and MORE important even than what we eat; perhaps outlining a parent’s willingness to sacrifice for the sake of protecting and providing for their child.

Today’s parents struggle to provide for their children, often with both having to work to insure there is enough funds to eat under the roof of our own residence. But this was not the original intent of God’s plan. Survival was something He provided. Notice in these same verses, He spells out that HE GAVE us all the herb bearing seeds, vegetable, fruits, grains, and nuts for us to eat. He did not say, if you work enough, and to my satisfaction enough, then I will consider giving you what you have earned. Instead, He only focuses our attention to the “gifts” He has already provided. The devil has gotten good at using our need for survival to rationalize our priorities to earn money as being more important than meeting the emotional needs and companionship needs of our families. This is to our detriment.

Remember the feeling of “new” romantic love when all you really want to do is “be with” the object of your affection. Time together, i.e. companionship, is at the top of your priority list on the things you value in life. The same feelings occur again when holding your new-born child in your arms. Both the baby and you feel a bond from the close proximity of holding that new precious life in your arms. The baby is invariably happy as long as you’re around, the minute you’re out of view, the baby tends to get nervous, or cry. In short, a baby craves the tactile companionship of its parents. Over time, age will continually reduce the need for tactile assurance from mom and dad, but it never will fully go away. Watch a grand-parent of 80-90 years in age, hug a son or daughter who is in their late 60’s, and you still see a familial version of love that exists that is unlike all others.

This entirely new dimension of love opens the doors to even other possibilities. So we learn that love can exist in romantic form with a specific object of attention, or in familial manner with multiple objects of deep love – each with their own personalities and perspectives; and now also in a fraternal sense or perhaps better stated, between friends. Friendship of the deepest variety is a non-romantic love, but is also born of the choices to two friends. You are not born into your relationship as it is in families, but rather choose to share a similar kind of love with someone you develop a relationship with. The lessons of love than began in garden, ripple through time and relationships, and extend well beyond what we know today, and beyond our sin-sick-vision. For eternity we will study what love is, what it means to love and to be loved. It is a subject we will not tire of, grow bored with, or master fully; for as God is infinite, so Love also is infinite. We have only begun to scratch the surface.

All these lessons of love began in the Garden of Eden with our first parents Adam and Eve. It is believed that both Adam and Eve were naked in the garden, but covered as the angels are with a covering of light. This belief may well have been reverse-engineered from the descriptions of the Heavenly city to come, where each of the saints is covered in a covering of light. Apparently God’s “light” makes a good set of clothing. It was only after man sinned that he lost the cloak of lights, and realized his nudity. He then attempted to cover himself with leaves. God fashioned the first set of clothing from the skins of animals, a practice man would grow to emulate far too often. But these handmade clothes were only necessary after sin had been introduced to man. Prior to sin, a light, some say the light of righteousness, was what covered man, and will one day cover him again.

In my experience, sin is much like entropy. Entropy in the sense that everything sin touches disintegrates, falls apart, loses its value, and drifts towards nothingness. Evolution as a concept, stands in direct contradiction to the reality of entropy. Evolution would have us believe that everything around us is evolving into a better, more advanced state of being. Yet nothing in our reality supports this conclusion. Our cells divide, reproduce, and divide again – yet we all age and die. Prey evolve their camouflage and personal habits, but then predators adjust to continue to make the kill. It is said the level of naked self-interest grows with each subsequent generation. Everywhere I look, I see the effects of entropy at work. There are only certain areas where I see the evolutionary concept at work, such as computer CPU’s. They double in capacity as our manufacturing techniques improve, and has our ability to engineer more capacity in smaller spaces improves. One could rightly assert the computer CPU’s are evolving. Bu the people making them are certainly not.

It is believed that Adam and Eve created in perfection used 100% of their brains, we use around 6% now. If entropy were not at play, why not maintain our 100% usage. If we were evolving, why evolve more brain capacity than is required to survive as a species? That seems to be all the animals ever evolved into. Seems to me “cavemen” would have been the 6% capacity utilizers, with modern man being the 100% users. But science proves this notion untrue. Along with our 100% brain utilization in perfection, was a radical increase in proportionate sizing. It is believed man was somewhere around 15 feet tall and weighed nearly a ton. This radical increase in size would have made man much more formidable, and helped establish his dominance over the animal kingdom in the earth even after the fall of sin. But the Bible also states were given dominion over the fish as well. I guess we were much better swimmers then.

There was a certain strength formed in the union of man and wife. It was noticeable by Adam before it was present. It was appreciated by Adam after it was corrected. Men and women need to be together. They need to look to each other to complete themselves. It is not good for man to be alone. He needs a help mate. Men and women were created equal in every way, each different and with unique abilities and purposes, but equal to each other. But then too, the mantra of the day was not how much one could acquire, but rather how much one could do to serve another, and cause the happiness of another. A service focused society does not need to fear equality, but can rather embrace it, and demand nothing less. Our union was strong, and beneficial. Marriage became the building block of society. It is why Satan focuses so hard on destroying marriages as a means of destroying nations. With isolation comes inevitable failure. With concern for another, comes strength and unity.

The “image of God” was designed to teach us what love is. These were the lessons we were supposed to have absorbed from the study of our origins. But there was so much more to impart, a ton of things that must be completed, our first parents had as much on their plates and more as we today. But suddenly, after six days, God delays the work load, and takes a day of rest. Perhaps there is something more we are to learn …

 

God and Diet ...

You are what you eat, as the saying goes. If true, I must be a pizza, as I began my love affair with them in the form of maternal cravings my mother would get at 3:00 am and my poor father would have to try to accommodate in the late night streets of Los Angeles. Not much has changed in the 4 decades or so since then, other than developing hereditary dairy intolerance at age 30. Unaware of this condition, my solution was to eat even more pizza, you know, to clog me up. BZZZ, but thank you for playing – as anyone with IBS or dairy intolerance can attest, it will have quite the opposite effect. My solution – eat even more pizza. Finally a coworker clued me in on the facts, and with a reduction of dairy, my condition became manageable (for me and anyone in smelling distance). For me, much loved pizza is the dietary equivalent of Drain-o.

Americans have recently become known for being the most obese nation on the planet. With the excess of wealth (comparatively as even our poor are better off than the poor around the world) comes convenience and speed in our diets. Quality, not so much, but speed and low cost, we have in abundance. Our low quality, quick access meals, have led us to become nice and fat. Well at least fat. Apparently only the French are known to be more rude than a traveling American. And despite our condition, the news media is full of stories on how to eat better. Talk shows cover the latest fad diets. Info-commercials go on endlessly about the relative merits of their respective programs. Weight Watchers uses a support group approach with a controlled recommended diet. Everyone has a solution for our obesity, except the hungry guy in the mirror. His idea; more pizza of course.

So amidst all the fray, what does our God have to say on the subject of food, anything? Actually yes, He has quite a lot to say, but let’s begin with His original intentions for our diets. Get ready and hold on to your seats, you’re gonna love this one. Energy. Yup, that is pretty much the summation of God’s original factory made dietary plan. Energy. Not the kind of energy you commonly think about, such as the nourishment that may help you jog longer, or actually get up off the sofa. No, I am talking about converting whatever it is that you eat completely into the minerals, vitamins, electricity, and chemicals your body needs for survival on an infinite time scale with zero waste, and zero by-products. You see, another nasty truth about evil, is the curse to our bodies requiring a waste disposal system. It was not required in our original design, but had to be activated with our introduction to evil. No longer could our bodies be allowed to convert food into pure energy allowing us to live forever, as then evil would live with us forever, and we would know no end to our depravity. Thus food went from pure energy to only a subset of what we need, with plenty of waste that needs to be processed.

With the introduction of evil, came lust, greed, sloth, and depravity. All of these characteristics influenced our dietary habits. Taste became the paramount objective in fulfilling our dietary desires, and health concerns became a long-gone after thought. Decadence in diet was born. Exotic things and rare things became the highly prized and highly desired things. Oysters for example, no one can imagine eating one, until someone does, and now everyone considers them an aphrodisiac. I guess there has to be some reward for eating what looks to me like raw buggers from a child’s nose. The more unusual the food, the more our taste buds were conditioned to think it was “good”. And today, there is no lack of variety in our meat selections, no restrictions in how we prepare our foods, and no limits to the heart attack rates, obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes we develop as a result of our choices, and service to our taste buds.

Ever watch someone smoke for the first time. The predictable impulse to cough, is our body trying to defend itself from what it knows will kill us. But with persistence, we can overcome our body’s natural defense mechanisms until lung cancer terminates the process. The same effect happens when someone drinks alcoholic beverages for the first time. The natural inclination for our taste buds is to poo-poo the idea of drinking. But given enough persistence and connoisseurs can tell which red wine deserves to be in the $500 bottle and which one should be served in a box. In short, what we like, is what we condition ourselves to like. And most of the time, like in every other aspect of our lives when not submitted to the will of Christ, what we like is what will inevitably destroy us.

As with every other aspect of evil, the master deceiver paints our addiction to what would destroy us as the last remaining element of “fun” in our lives. To have to give up something we like to eat or drink, becomes tantamount to losing a foot. And so we cling to our dietary desires, fulfilling them with regularity, and suffering the inevitable consequences all the while asking why me, and how could God let this happen. As if God was silent on the matter. No such luck, or perhaps better worded, no such absence of loving guidance. God did not abandon us to our embrace of evil in our dietary world. Instead He setup for us His original modified diet. The first proposal was fruits, grains, and nuts. This is sometimes referred to as the Eden diet plan. It is said the tribe that lives high in the Andes mountains of south America still eats only these foods, and has an average life expectancy of 110. Of course, they have less pollution and a more active lifestyle as well.

Fearing that His simple plan would not be enough to satisfy the cravings our diets would impose, God amended His original simple plan to include vegetables and herbs. This second plan is more commonly known as vegetarianism, or a vegan diet (if you exclude animal by-products such as eggs, milk, and cheese entirely). The inclusion of the second set of ingredients to our diet offers us massive variety in what we can find to eat. But alas, evil was not satisfied with allowing us health, and so suggested that we needed to augment our bodies with the nourishment found in other life forms than plants – namely in animals, or living creatures. And so “meat” was introduced into the human diet. It was not God’s intent that any of His creations should have to die to supply man with food, but He reluctantly allowed the practice to occur with some additional guidelines.

Cannibalism is strictly forbidden, as is impersonating a vampire by trying to drink blood or eat raw fat. Animals were divided into two categories, the clean (of which we could eat) and the unclean (which we were to be forbidden to eat). Most farm animals (short pigs) fell into the clean category. Most exotic animals fell into the unclean. Fish were similarly divided, even insects segregated should anyone get that desperate. The preparation of meat was to remove as much blood and fat as possible, leaving what would be healthiest for us to consume. Jews and Muslims still adhere to these dietary ideals to this day as a matter of religious practice, though Christians have differing ideas on the topic. These distinctions predate Moses, as they were likely told by mouth to Adam and father to son for his descendants. At the flood, the distinction was evident again by how God moved the animals into the ark. Seven of the clean, only two of the unclean went with Noah during the flood. Those who believe this to be advice only for Moses, miss the larger lesson here.

So then, if we are trying to live a healthier lifestyle, and wish not to let our taste buds determine our destiny, there are some God given guidelines we could choose to observe. First, eat way more fruits, grains, and nuts. Second, augment our diet plans with a variety of vegetables. Third, eat clean animal by-products if we feel we must. Fourth, consume meat if there is no other way to obtain our dietary requirements than this source, but keeping only to clean meats, prepared with an effort to minimize blood and fat content. By following these proscribed dietary plans, we would inevitably reduce our health risks, and increase our quality of life. That is not what I call a sacrifice, it is what I call a blessing.

But what about our taste buds, do we have to eat food that tastes like dirt in order to be healthy? No. But remember that we condition our taste buds to like what we want them to like. They rarely act independently from our mental ambitions. As it happens, pizza is a vegetarian dish. It does contain animal byproducts in the cheese (oh how I love mozzarella), but then has tomatoes in the sauce, and I love to put mushrooms and onions as toppings. I spice up the pie with herbs like fresh ground black pepper, garlic, basil, oregano, cayenne pepper, and sometimes I even add sesame seeds for flavor. The crust is bread which comes from grains. So you would think I was eating right off of heaven’s menu. Being a pizza connoisseur I can tell you where the best places are in the country from all my travels. “Cove Pizza” in Stamford CT remains a favorite, “Mellow Mushroom” in northeast Atlanta, “Brother’s Pizza” in west Houston, “Pizzeria Tra Vigne” in Napa CA, and “Papa Anthony’s” in Orlando to name a few. Yet despite being on the “approved” list, this food still does damage to me personally.

While God wishes for us to enjoy our food, He also encourages temperance and balance in how we live including in our diets so that we can fully enjoy our lives. I can in fact, eat pizza, as long as I do not eat it every day. I could choose to eat things on the “non-recommended” list if I chose, but I see no benefit in that. If there is a reason why God segregated food in the first place, then perhaps I should trust His priorities and wisdom on the matter, after all it was He who wrote the owner’s manual so to speak. This is the core of the issue where it comes to dietary practices, do we trust God that all of His advice is for our benefit or not? If we do trust Him, then there should be no expiration date on what He recommends for our health and welfare. We can look forward and realize there will be no “meat” in heaven, so it may not be a good idea to become too dependent on it as a food source, if other choices are available. After all, God only allowed meat in our diets reluctantly, and with a fair degree of restrictions.

But then to know God, is to love God. God did not create our taste buds in order for us to suffer at the loss of excellent tasting food. In fact, quite the opposite. High quality food, tends to take time in the preparation and tends to taste wonderful. The kicker is, it is usually good for us as well. Fresh fruit, organically grown, with natural pesticides, and out of the way of pollution is some of the best fruit one can consume. Marion Berries (a large cousin of the blackberry) grows along the freeways of Portland Oregon and has a taste I have yet to match. But then, I imagine that in heaven the taste of Marion Berry’s will be infinitely better than here on earth as heaven will not suffer the effects of our sin. Everything in heaven will taste so MUCH better than what we can even imagine. Our taste buds are not a result of sin, they have just suffered from it. We will eat in heaven, and the food will not be open for comparison with anything this world has to offer.

I intend to make my own pizza in heaven. I will build a brick oven to cook it in. I will plant the grains to grow the wheat for the crust. I will milk the cows, and create the cheese (hope some bacteria survives). I will plant the mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and herbs I require. I may even open a Pizzeria for free once I get the process down right. I expect my love affair with pizza will find no equal in a place where perfection is the norm. My obesity will no longer be a side effect, and I imagine I will eat only what I need. And best of all, no more dairy intolerance, no more waste disposal, only pure Energy as God originally intended. Until that day, I take my taste buds to the foot of the cross, and ask for Christ to intervene yet again in my life. I ask Him to affect my appetite and my desires for food, to conform to the things He would like me personally to consume. My diet may be different from yours as my health issues are different than yours. But this is the beauty of submission to Christ, He takes that kind of personal interest in us, so as to perfect what we alone require to eat to stay healthy, and not give up an ounce of what we “like” as what we “like” conforms to His will and what we actually need. This is a diet plan I can live with.