Spiritual Junk Food

Our bodies crave nutrition. We need and hunger for a balance of vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Unfortunately, we often feed it junk. Seeking to satisfy our appetite instead of our hunger, we fill our stomachs with empty calories that titilate our taste buds but fail to satisfy our hunger. We paradoxily live in a land where we get all we want to eat but are left wanting in nutrition.

You know this, don't you?  We live in the bread basket of the world. We have the finest agricultural machine ever conceived by humans. We have an over abundance of dairy, meats, vegetables, grains and fruits. We are the envy of the world and we live on pharmaceuticals because we are so poorly nourished. Our state of malnutrition comes not because we do not have but because we bypass the healthy and grab the handy, the pre-packaged, the drive-thru, the taste tantalizing - we fill our bodies with junk, which leaves us craving and needing nutrition for which we take a pill. Sounding strangely familiar?

Like our bodies, our spirits hunger for nutrition. We crave "pure spiritual milk" (1 Pet 2:2), grow to need "solid food" (1 Cor 3:3) and  "hunger for righteousness" (Matt 5:6).  We crave manna from heaven but fill our spirits with quick and easy junk food, which titilates our senses but leaves us starving for lack of nutrition. Our mouths are full of the choicest treats, which Hollywood and the Internet dangle before us - sex appeal, glamor, looks, apparel, cars, comfort, style, etc. - everything except what our spirits crave: Righteousness and holiness.

We know we are empty, we feel the hunger pangs of the soul but instead of turning to heaven for manna, we turn to our TVs and our IPads and our GameBoys and our credit cards - we fill ourselves with spiritual junk food and wonder why our souls are so hungry, why we feel so empty. We live in a land where we have everything we want but fail to get anything we need.

We have dollars but no sense. We make love without having love. We have all the modern conveniences but always feel inconvenienced. Surrounded by time-saving, labor-reducing, output-producing machinations of every stripe - we have no time, we feel more stressed and never feel caught up.

Why does this happen?  Because, despite the warning of Scripture, we have been sold a bill of goods that is worthless. We have been duped into believing that we have all the answers and can satisfy our every need. Although we have been clearlly warned, "Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights … (Jas 1:16, 17), we keep looking below to satisfy the craving our our spirit. It's time to look up.

Jus' Sayn.