You Are What You Eat

"You are what you eat," we say. Eat bad stuff, and you will not be healthy. Eat good stuff and you'll be fine. We get that. Junk food produces junk bodies; health food produces healthy bodies. That's the idea. All well and good.

Why is it, then, that we fall so short on that? I mean, it's not really controversial, is it? And, yet, we all daily consume piles of junk food and wonder why we're not healthy.

We set ourselves in front of secular television and drink the koolaid. We plant ourselves on Facebook and Google for our primary news and wonder why we are not receiving good, godly information. We don't go to the Word as our source for principles for living, but to Twitter and our "sexular" society and cannot figure out why there is such a moral slide even in the church. Brothers and sisters, We do not well.

I recently read this quote:

I believe that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church. -Charles Spurgeon

I think it is not only true and even obvious; I think it is mandatory. To the extent that we Christians have built our lives on the world -- its values and morals and principles and structures and methods and all -- it would be an absolute certainty that we would model the world rather than vice versa. Let's face it, if "you are what you eat", we are imbibing the world and are looking just like it.

Don't believe me? Try some tests. Look at the majority of Christians who no longer believe that Paul forbade female leadership in the church (2 Tim 2:12-14). Try asking Christian women what they think about 1 Cor 14:34-35. (Note: If you point your mouse cursor at that text there, it should show you the actual verses.) How many will say, "Well, yep, I guess that's what we should do."? How many Christians do you know today that decry the "evil patriarchal system" that is biblical (1 Cor 11:3)? How many are incensed by the instructions on wives submitting (Eph 5:22-24; 1 Peter 3:1-4)? Why are these things so? Is it because it's not biblically apparent? Or is it because it violates the philosophies and principles of the day?

But, of course, there is, in a sense, no real point in me writing this. I can't fix this. I can't fix you. All I can do is work on me. What am I "eating"? Is mine a diet of worldly views and precepts, or am I informing my mind and heart with God's Word and godly input and actions? Am I being conformed to the world or being transformed in my thinking (Rom 12:2)? You'll have to figure that out for yourself. I'm simply here recommending you examine your diet.