It's Bacon!

The other day at my job, we had a holiday dinner at work.  Among the items served were, ham, beans with bacon, and green bean casserole with bacon.  For someone trying to cut out the pork products, that left me with the au graten potatoes, the dinner rolls, and the desert dishes. 


In a large setting you will always then end up with someone saying, "Aren't you having any ham?  It is so good!"  Followed by them trying to throw a big piece on your plate.  Then you explain that you are not eating pork and everyone suddenly kind of slides away from you at the break table.  They kind of get this, "oh, you are one of those" looks.


Seriously, If you are someone who has ever tried just dieting, you can have a hard time finding foods that will fit your diet.  But, you don't really notice that much until you start looking.  Going kosher is the same way.  Until you start making a conscious effort to do so, you just don't realize how many "unclean" foods we are being fed, and how much promotion goes into getting you to eat pig.


Have you ever tried going out to eat for breakfast trying to avoid pork?  You almost can't do it.  Bacon or sausage is the standard with nearly every meal.  Seriously, try it some time.  At McDonald's, for example, there are very few options that don't include pork.  A number of the small amount of items you can get are not even listed on the menu.  It's a secret menu item that you have to request.  Even the cashier are often unaware of them and have to call a manager to find it on the register.


It seems in the last few years, promotion of pork, especially bacon, has gone hog wild.  (pun intended).  I seem to recall this first with the old commercial with the dog  screaming, "IT'S BACON!!!!"  I think we people have gotten trained that way.  There are now bacon products for almost anything.  Bacon hot dogs, milk shakes, even edible bowls made of bacon that you can eat after you have consumed whatever it was (probably with bacon in it) in the bowl. 


People just seem to want to pig out on bacon.  (I know, another pun).  If you have a Facebook page, you can't escape people posting ridiculous bacon pictures of bacon wrapped in bacon deep fried in bacon grease, or some such thing.  It really has become a weird obsession with people; an addiction even.


Even Christians are in on this.  You will get a HUGE argument ending in being called a heretic and a false teacher if you happen to point out that the Bible says we should not eat pork.  That is one of the hottest no no's in all of Christendom it seems to say that God might want us to have a "clean" diet.  So many believers are stubbornly unwilling to give up anything they want as an act of service to God.  Our religion has become self centered and not God centric.  God serves us and we can do whatever we want is the easy believism cheap grace taught in many pulpits today.


No, choosing to eat kosher is not putting you or anyone else under the law.  No one is going to be dragging anyone to the edge of town and stoning them for disobeying God's and national law.  No one is going to hell, per se, for eating bacon.  But, there are consequences for our actions.


One of those consequences is our health.  How can anyone argue against God's diet as being the best one for us to live our days healthy?  Is anyone going to say God is wrong on His choice of diet that He would like us to consume?  Paul puts it this way, Is the law sin?  God forbid, for I would not have know sin if it were not for the law.  and John describes sin as being, "transgression of the law".  The kosher diet is the right one for believers, whether they want to admit it or not, or follow it or not.


The real question for believers is this, why are so many believers stubbornly opposed to what God has laid out for us to do?  The bible was fairly clear on this point that as a human, we are a stiff-necked and rebellious people.  There is none that seeks good.  We all want to do what is right in our own eyes, not God's.  It is our nature.


We have to be willing to and consciously submit our will to Gods each and every day, and on constant guard.  It is an act of praise and worship to be obedient to the most high.  It is putting God in his proper place in our lives when we submit ourselves to His ways and put aside our desires.  Is it easy?  No.  But, we have a helper residing in us when we are saved that will help us along the path of righteousness if we are willing to submit. 


Pork is not a need.  It is a want.  It is a desire.  When we put that want ahead of what God wants, we turn that desire into an idol.  With our actions, words and posts, we set up bacon as a false God to whom we are more willing to submit to than the Lord out God.  It is time we start paying attention to what God wants, and doing what God says we should do.  One can argue all they want about the "law", but when you look back before the "law" you see Noah loading animals based on clean and unclean standards set by God.  Something to consider.

Be Prepared

This blog is going to be rather short and to the point.  Folks, be prepared.  

I went to the store this week just before a potential snowstorm.  I went at the last minute, even as the first flakes began falling.  I got off work at midnight and went to my local wal-mart to be sure i had some cat food so I would not run out and have the cat mad at me.  This is what I found.














This was just a simple snow storm.  People ravaged the store of supplies.  What happens if it is a far more serious crises.  Are you prepared for empty store shelves that won't be stocked any time soon?  I was shocked to see this in the midwest, a place known for snow storms.  It is like everyone panicked.  In a REAL national or regional emergency, this is what will happen.  There is no more than a 3 day supply of food connected to grocery stores.  If transport is cut off, there will be problems.  Be prepared.  Learn how to garden, forage naturally, hunt, fish.  Learn how not to be dependent on what a society provides.  Learn to be self sufficient, and in the right ways.  There will be enough marauding bands of starving people willing to take from others.

Dietary Reaping and Sowing

Galatians 6:7

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Normally when we think of this verse, we think of people who have done some very bad things.  I see this verse often used with adulterers, or thieves, or some other such obvious criminal or sinful behavior.  This is a principle that goes far beyond just the obvious though and can be very subtle.  Even things that don’t seem so bad can have consequences that are quite negative that sneak up on a person. 

 

One of these things is our diet.  We hear all the time about what we are supposed to eat, but we are bombarded with what we can eat.  For the Bible believer one reads about what to eat and what not to eat in the scriptures, but tells himself that it no longer applies.  We are free from the law and can eat whatever we want to eat as long as we eat it by faith.  I’ve heard that.  I’ve even said it myself a time or two.  We are not as free as one would think though, when it comes to dietary law or principles found in scripture.  We reap consequences from eating unclean things.

Food today is far removed from the food people used to consume even 100 years ago.  It is processed with all sorts of chemicals that are foreign to the natural state of the food.  We even create foods today that do not occur naturally.  All of these unnaturally processed and unnaturally generated foods were not designed to work in the nourishment and strengthening of our body.  The intent may be there, but our bodies were not designed to function with these unnatural items.  

 

Many people today have a McDonalds and microwave diet.  They are in a hurry and just are thinking of filling the belly while they are on the run to do something else.  They are not thinking about the food, what is in it, how it was made, or what it might do to them.  Just fill the gut and run.  We as a people are reaping the results of that in record obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and many other maladies that is related to the food we eat.  I am not immune myself and am reaping some high blood pressure as a result of years of eating non-foods.

Many of the foods we eat today are not designed to keep the body running so much as they are designed to keep us buying a particular product.  I read an article once that a company researched that best configuration of a sugar molecule that would be the most appealing to people so they could cram their product with it and subconsciously get people addicted to the product.  Repeat sales is the name of the food business.  
 

In recent years, companies like Monsanto and others have even been making unnatural combinations of foods in a laboratory, genetically altering plants and animals in ways that could never occur naturally or even with selective breeding.  They have cornered our market with their unnatural foods that other places in the world will not even allow into their countries.  No studies have been done to see what effects these foods might have on humans.  Looking at the rises in various diseases that were once rare gives at least a clue.


I am going to meet what I have sown by putting my trust in the Lord.  In the Bible is outlines a diet that is good.  God would not order a diet that was bad for us.  God wants the best for us so I am (finally) going to trust Him on His word and learn to eat the way God intended us, and had ordered his chosen people to eat.  Going by the reaping and sowing principle God set, I expect that this change to cure me of my high blood pressure and take care of most any other malady that I may have as a result of poor nutrition.  Forgive me Father for not recognizing this sooner