Potato Chip Christians

Potato chips sit in my kitchen and call my name, begging me to munch and crunch. Chocolate ice cream shouts my name from the freezer, offering its sweet, smooth delights. And crisp peanut butter cookies stalk me and practically leap into my hands.

Sometimes I yield to the siren call of these treats, munching my way into the resulting dullness. Carrying around the “ghosts of munchies past” is tiring and awkward, and then there are the costs of lost productivity from the sugar-high stupor. These results should be reason enough to avoid these toxic taste treats. Another problem is revealed by closer inspection.

The earliest memory any of us have in this area is our mothers chiding, “Don’t eat that now; it’s too close to supper and you won’t be hungry if you eat that now. Put it down, I said!”

The child’s mind is dizzied by the absurdity of abandoning the luxuries of cookies, sodas and chips in anticipation of those veggies, fruits, and proteins. Who needs nutrition anyway? And, doesn’t vitamin C stand for cookies? What kid in her right mind would choose peas over ice cream? (Vitamin I, that is.) Which grade-schooler would pick corn instead of corn chips? Not too many, I would imagine. (Especially since corn chips can be expressed scientifically as Vitamin C2.)

Kids of all ages know perfectly well that they can exist forever on an endless diet of chips, ice cream, cookies, cake, and popcorn. They would never be hungry and they would never realize the actual starvation they were creating. The youngsters would blithely munch their way to nutrition deficiencies, inadequate mental and physical development, and ultimate lethargy, never discerning their path to destruction.

Another group of folks, older and supposedly wiser, are known for the same unwise behaviors in another realm. (Some of them also cling to the “Vitamin C for Cookies” philosophy in the process.)

These quasi-adult Christians stuff their soul-faces with TV sodas, movie ice cream, cheap novel chips, and magazine popcorn. They have the strange idea that these imitation soul-foods are nutritious, helpful, and healthy so they pack them in, hours at a time.

Fake foods like this do stave off spiritual hunger, or at least mask it by covering the hungry spot in their souls, just like the kids covered the hungry spot in their physical stomachs with junk food. Spiritual junk food junkies gobble their way to deficiencies of faith, strength, joy, and Word-food. They live in a state of twilight-dull believism, never experiencing the vibrant, crisp, sharp, piercing reality of healthy wholeness in Christ. Everything is blurry, limp, lukewarm, and tired in their faith and their lives of faith.

Just like the kids who weren’t hungry at supper time, these adult kids arrive at the spiritual supper table of Sunday morning’s Bible preaching with no hunger, no desire for real food and they’re bored with it all, complaining that the preacher is too dull, too long-winded, too funny/humorless/old/young/tall/short/fat/thin…and on and on.

The real problem is not the sermon, though some are certainly better than others. The real problem is the condition of the hearers.

He who is full loathes honey, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet. Prov. 27:7 NIV

The full soul loatheth an honeycomb, but to the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet. Prov 27:7 KJV

No preacher can prepare a message that will taste good to the souls that are stuffed with spiritual junk food. The junk food-stuffed soul will refuse the finest food and go away quite hungry, and oblivious to the hunger as well. Just as children cannot appreciate the nutritional value in peas and carrots, these adults are blinded to the spiritual food in scripture and preaching because they have indulged in fake food for six days and arrive at the real supper table without hunger.

The person who arrives at the Sunday table hungry, with sharp hunger pangs, will find food in even the bitterest of sermons. Hunger just naturally creates an appetite that will appreciate food, regardless of the seasoning, presentation, or recipes involved in preparation. The hungry human wants food, period.

Children have mothers to monitor the junk food situation. Adults need to govern their own spiritual junk food intake.

A week filled with TV shows, soap operas, sports events, magazines, cheap novels, endless phone calls, movies, and music will produce a Sunday morning pew-sitter who feels no hunger at all and, as a result is unable to eat at the table of food prepared for him.

Jesus himself said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” KJV

A modern paraphrase of this verse, Matthew 5:6 says, “You’re blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.” (The Message)

If I know I’m headed for a big, nutritious meal, I try my best to arrive hungry. I do not fill up on junk food of any kind because I want to savor each bite of the food prepared by a kind hostess. I don’t eat cake, cookies, ice cream, chips, popcorn, or sodas en route. Actually, most of us have the good sense to follow this smart practice.

Why is it, then, that we prepare for Sunday morning’s meal by chugging down baskets of spiritual junk food? We arrive at the finest meal so dull and lethargic from the junk that we are totally unable to eat from the table prepared for us. And then we gripe that we are never fed spiritually!

The blame rests squarely on us, the spiritual junk food junkies. If we would arrive hungry, unaffected by the movies, magazines, sports, TV, and music, we would find the Sunday Supper Table full of nutrition from God’s Word and we would leave “fed with the finest of the wheat,” and satisfied with “honey out of the rock.” (Psalm 81:16 KJV)