Like catching the fish or eating the filet
is how Truth teaches and society sells;
only One empowers.
Recently I had a taste for Pop Tarts which became cause for an experiment. In my experience, these are discoveries of a spiritual sort rather than scientific efforts to prove or disprove a claim. So when I say experiment, what I really mean is that I am the subject, and the curiosity I seek to explore is a nudge into a process to learn a lesson God seems to have already planned.
I liked Pop Tarts when I was a kid and generally ate the trimmed crusts of my sister’s preferred brown sugar cinnamon toasted variety when putting away the before-school breakfast dishes, but did not often eat Pop Tarts myself because I noticed that I would still be hungry when I got to school. None of this was front-and-center on my mind when I opened the package of strawberry-flavored pastries, placed them on a plate, and enjoyed (toasting not required). The taste was pretty much as I remembered, but looking at the chalk-like rectangle, basically colorless against the plate, I thought, “What am I actually eating?” According to the ingredient list, I was eating food produced in a factory, perhaps even a lab, the result of someone else’s much more scientific experiment. I was eating a product, which was earning someone a profit, yet I was not being nourished or satisfied, and just like when I was a kid, felt hungry a few minutes later at which point I had to decide if I should eat the rest of the box or throw it away. Either way, we’re eating garbage because the industry is packaging and feeding it to us, and I realized my experiment was actually cause for real-life realization of what Isaiah meant when he wrote about putting bitter for sweet. This is what society sells.
Eat, drink, and be merry. Or so we’re told. We bought the lie, and yet we are not filled.
But the truth is free.
And what does the truth say? “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.” This is Jesus turning the world upside down with His teaching, for His kingdom is not of this world, and as God’s children neither are we. The world’s standard operating procedures do not apply to the wants, needs, and sensations we as humans will surely experience. Jesus is honest to name our need and promise a solution; the shift from society’s pattern to the way of faith happens through our orientation to the process of how a need gets satisfied.
The world offers transactions; solutions packaged, bottled, paid for – and who holds the power but those who profit?
Jesus asks for our relationship; He invites us to come close and get to know each other. “Why spend money on what is not bread? Listen, and delight and eat what is good.” According to the kingdom, the power lives in us.
