Wednesday, October 08, 2008

This year I've just gotta start eating healthy...

In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:1,2)

Fellow Diners,

I'm just not going to go there anymore. But I'm probably not going to go there any less, either.

You know where I'm talking about: The Cultural Diner, of course. My mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health would certainly be a lot better if I could give up the regular table reserved for me. I want to improve my health, so this should be sufficient motivation to do it. Going cold turkey shouldn't be so bad. I can handle it...

First, I'll just turn off "The Bob and Tom Show" in the car on the way to work. Then I'll make Bible.com my home page, instead of MSN.com. Pass by all those People magazines in the waiting room. Newspaper, in the trash. No more Thursday appointments with "Survivor". No idolizing the "Idol". TV in general, out. The movies, out. Talk radio, out. Gossip, out. Brangelina and the Golden Globe's Best Dressed list, out. (Well, maybe I can make a little room for Angelina!).

Then the healthy stuff: Prayer, Bible study, other spiritual disciplines to fill the pantry and regrigerator. Exercise, plenty of rest, more time with the family, waiting on the cupboard shelf.

Aaah! This year is gonna be so good!
______________________________________

Probably a good many people in this fair land made sweeping resolutions for the New Year. Maybe even you did. Those resolutions will no doubt cover a broad spectrum of topics: lose some weight, get in shape, find a new job, learn a new subject, spend more time with my family, and so forth.

But there’s one subject I’ll wager very few of us have included in the list of things we resolve to do in the year to come. Repentance. “I resolve to repent of my self-centeredness.” “This year I’m going to stop lying to cover my backside.” “My New Year’s resolution is to give up always trying to be the center of attention and show a little more consideration for the people around me.”

Just doesn’t happen, does it? People simply are not given to repenting. And there are some good reasons for this. The first is that sin is our natural habitat. We are born into this world sinful and self-centered. It’s part of the original factory equipment of every human being. We spend all our childhood basically perfecting the skills of selfishness that, in adulthood, start making us inconsiderate, boorish, and mean. It’s so convenient just to be myself. It feels so right. Why try to go against my very nature?

There is a second reason that repentance is not high on most people’s list of things to do: sin can be downright pleasurable. We enjoy sinning. Delight in it. Try to get away with as much of it as we can, because, doggone it, sin is fun! Who’s going to give up all the fun that comes with those little flirtations, that carefully placed gossip, those indiscretions of this or that kind, that mean spirit that makes everyone cower in our presence, those exaggerations that easily bleed into lies? What’s wrong with a little fun? No harm, no foul. We simply like to sin. Repent? What will you offer me to replace the fun I’ll be giving up?

The third reason repentance is so unpopular today is because to repent means to admit wrong. If I’m going to repent from something then I have to admit I’m doing something wrong. I’ve made a mistake. I may have done a bad thing, or, heaven help me, actually be a bad person. In our “I’m OK, you’re OK” culture, we don’t want anyone to feel bad about himself, no matter what he does. Even in our churches we don’t like to talk about repentance, because we want people to be smothered in “feel-good-about-me-ness” when they’re in our midst, so they’ll be sure to come back next week.

So how’s this for a resolution—New Year’s or any time: Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. You'll not likely practice the discipline of repentance if you're ignorant of the law of God. You'll not likely practice healthy eating if the health food store doesn't advertise and educate.

Finally, you will be greatly aided in your practice of repentance by maintaining some kind of accountability. Be willing to be confronted, rebuked, and corrected by those who love you, and you’re on your way to a fruitful life of repentance, and a healthy meal at the wedding banquet. Share your needs for repentance with those who love you; seek their prayers and support. Repentance will become more a part of your life in the kingdom of God if you have a diet buddy to help you along the way.

For reflection: How could society be different if our churches were more faithful in teaching about repentance?

Cultural Nurse-in-Training,

~Bill

As John the Baptist said, "Bear fruit in keeping with repentance." Matt.3:8.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

How do you eat an elephant?

Answer: One bite at a time.

Fellow Noshers,

As I watched the other customers' order being delivered, my appetite really revved up. Sizzling plates, delightful aromas, silverware clinking greedily on their plates...

That's why I was so disappointed when the waitress got to my table. I tore into the steak before she had a chance to walk away...and it was COLD!

"Excuse me, miss, but this steak is cold."

"That's okay, sir. Usually people like their steak hot, but it's okay if you want it to be cold. We don't mind here."

"But, it really is cold. I'm not making this up. I don't want it cold."

"If you don't want it cold, then just drink some ice water. The difference in the two will make the steak hotter. Glad I could help, let me know if you need anything else."

So there I sat, not knowing what to think. Was I really the reason the steak was cold? ________________________________________

Try a little experiment: Next time you grow weary of the vapid chatter about the price of gas, the latest guest on Oprah, Trump and Rosie, and the merits of cable versus the Dish, try this the next time you’re in a social setting: Ask, “Who believes in truth?” After the room revives from the dead skunk you’ve tossed on the carpet, continue, “No, really; who believes that truth exists and that it is knowable?”

(In my experience, whether you do this with co-workers, neighbors, or church members, the conversation will proceed something like this:)

"You’re talking about absolute truth?"

Yeah, that’s what I mean.

Depends on what?

"On your viewpoint. Have you seen that sketch—the one that looks like a hag or a beautiful girl."

Yeah.

"Well, which is it—a picture of a girl or a hag?"

"Exactly! It all depends".

Can we get off this gerbil run? Depends on what?

"Okay. We’re all products of nature and nurture which causes us to see things differently. As to the sketch—I may see a hag, but that gives me no right to claim that it is a hag, or that others are wrong if they see something else. In the end, who’s to say what it is, or if it’s anything but a poor artist’s scribbling?"

The responder reflects the prevailing sentiment of the day: truth is not an objective, overarching statement about reality; it is personal perception shaped by our genetic makeup and experience. Among sophisticates and intelligentsia, such relativistic thinking is all the rage. Yet few realize that their fashionable ideas are really quite old.

Like the modern-day hag/girl drawing, a favorite illustration of yore was the parable of the wind: One person feels the wind as cold, while another feels it as warm. And since the wind can’t be both warm and cold, it’s the individual--not external reality--that determines its properties. In fact, maybe it’s the individual that determines the very existence of the wind.

Maybe.

Relativity theory and quantum theory form the backbone of modern relativism. Together, they validate the “truth” about truth that the Eastern mystics had been telling us all along: objective truth is an illusion.

Then East met West in “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” In the famous fable, six blind investigators examined different parts of a pachyderm to conclude that it is like a tree, a rope, a wall, a branch, a fan, a spear. The lesson? They were all right. The application? We, too, are blind men with no privileged position to judge the perspectives of others. The conclusion? If all we have are the experiences of our diverse fumbling in the dark, practically speaking, there is no elephant!

But if truth cannot be discovered and, in fact, does not exist, it is our creation.

Even better than creating the new "truth", are the reasons we've created for giving up on the old "truth": “We don’t know the whole truth” (So I guess we just make something up?); “It’s good to raise questions” (Maybe we should also question whether 2 plus 2 really equals 4?); “It stimulates critical thinking” (About as much as wasting thought on Holocaust denial theories). But my personal favorite, the American Bandstand answer, is: “It's a catchy, hip idea, with a cool soundtrack.” That oughta do it.

Resist the siren song of the modern-day Relativists: Truth is independent of us. Truth is true regardless of our perceptions or beliefs no matter how sincerely we hold them. Neither is it something we invent. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, “We can no more create truth than we can create a new law of nature, like the law of gravity.”

Busy creating my own truth,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Infidel,

~Bill

You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose...

The old joke ends,"But Dr. we really need the eggs."

Fellow Diners,

Well, it may finally be time to send for the guys with the white coats to wrap me up and cart me off. (I know, I know...)

It had been a while. Probably a month or so since I'd last visited the Diner, and that's just wrong. Not only did it feel good to get back in here, in a way it is good, for the body and the soul. In the same way our immune system needs exposure to pathogens to generate and maintain resistance, so our value system requires the occasional irritation or poke in order to remain strong and vigilant. But this didn't strike me as right.

The service is normally superb here. They bring you anything you want, and I mean anything. Don't misunderstand; the staff here knows the meaning of suggestive selling. In fact, they invented it. This time was different, though.

I ordered the chicken. So you would expect, they bring me the chicken, right? The waitress smiles, calls me "Hon'", refills my drink, and unveils a plate full of...roast beef!? Not wanting to be rude, I say this must be a mistake, I ordered the chicken. And what do you think she tells me? Most minimum wage servers working for a big tip would be right on that one, whipping the incorrect meal back to the kitchen, returning with the right vittles and an apology for the inconvenience. So imagine my surprise.

"No, that's right sir. I know it looks like roast beef. But the chef really wanted it to be chicken. In fact, the whole time he was cooking it, he kept thinking that it was chicken. So now, it must be chicken."

Hmmm. Times they are a changin'.

___________________________

It used to be, in the old days, that the biggest decision new parents had to make was the name of their baby. The one thing they didn’t have to decide was the kid’s sex—that decision had been made for them, all they have to do is take a peek. That would be that.

Well, not any more, at least not in New York City. You see, under a proposed Board of Health rule, “people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates.” They would need only to provide “affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex.” They would also have to promise that “their proposed change would be permanent.”

The proposed rule isn’t aimed at people who have had “sex-change surgery.” They are already permitted to do this. Instead, it’s directed at people who “had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years . . . ”

Read those words carefully: adopted and especially gender, instead of sex. It is a big hint that there’s some major postmodern mischief at work here. “Sex” is what scientists call “binary”: You either have an XX (that is, female) or an XY (that is, male) chromosome.

But, if nature can’t be twisted and shaped to suit our ideological predilections, words, especially in the hands of postmodern vandals, can be. If the goal is to separate anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, then the use of the word gender is a must.

You see, transgender activists can get away with saying that gender is just “socially constructed” and more than “the sum of one’s physical parts” because gender is a word that most people don’t regularly use. Substituting an obscure word, in this case, gender, for the more common one, sex, is intended to confuse and obscure. It’s the kind of verbal tactic George Orwell would be proud of, akin to a squid squirting ink to confuse its predators.

Of course, what makes this squirting necessary is the denial of the obvious: “Living as a woman,” whatever that means, no more makes you a woman than hiding a pot of gold makes you a leprechaun.

These verbal parlor games may wow them in the faculty lounge or the counter seat at the Diner, but nature is unimpressed. They remind me of the hoax perpetrated by physicist Alan Sokal. He submitted a paper to a leading postmodern journal filled with postmodern gibberish like “physical ‘reality’ and physics. . . is at bottom a social and linguistic construct.”

After the paper was published, he revealed the hoax, that it was all gibberish, adding that those who believe that physics really is a “social construct” should test their beliefs from his twenty-first floor window.

Christians should not be shocked at any of this. Romans 1 tells us that God’s truth is made plain in creation, and to deny this truth—in this case, “male and female created He them”—is to exchange the truth for lie, which Paul illustrates by an example of men lying with men, in other words, rejecting their God-given gender, which is a challenge to God’s created order. Well, today we have renewed that old lie—that we can create ourselves the way we want, and peeking doesn’t make any difference.

I don't know what I just ordered. Do you?

Your Friendly Neighborhood, Puzzled, Still Hungry but Willing to Give Them Another Chance, Because I'll be Hungry again, Maybe I Should Just Shut Up and Eat What They Give Me, Apatheist,

~Bill

The NY Times covered this all very well Nov. 7, 2006.

We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service...

Faithful readers,

You've seen the signs, right?

I don't mean the "No shirt, no shoes, no service" ones. Those are right at the front entrance, and are placed at the order of the Health Department. Those are for the good of everybody.

I mean those little signs, behind the counter. They read something like this: "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, at anytime, for anything." Ostensibly, they mean to let you know that if you are going to act like a jerk, you run the risk of being "86-ed". (Anyone know where that term came from?). But tell me, in a multi-cultural melting pot as America claims to be, don't those signs sound slightly discriminatory?

I made a mistake the other day at the Diner. Normally, I think of this as a place I can go to get away and just be myself. After all, everything and everybody is supposed to be tolerated, accepted and loved here at the Diner. And so it may be, except for...those who criticize the menu.

When the server listed the specials of the day, I said,"Oh my gosh, no I don't want that! Don't you know that stuff will kill you?" Immediately, the management gave me the opportunity to eat somewhere else for the evening. The shame of being kicked out of the Diner! In effect, they said my money was no good there, and neither was I.

----------

Were the Nazis wrong to murder millions of Jews? Is it wrong to practice human sacrifice? These questions may seem like obvious no-brainers. But prepare yourself for a shock. Many young people today consider genocide, human sacrifice, abortion, murder, and suicide open questions. (Does anyone remember the story The Lottery?)

Lately teachers have noticed a troubling trend: Up to 20 percent of students are unwilling to say that mass murder is immoral. Oh, they usually say they disapprove of what the Nazis did—but they consider this merely their own personal taste. "Of course I dislike the Nazis," a student may say. "But who is to say they were morally wrong?"

This moral malady is not new, but let's give it a name-- "absolutophobia"--the fear of making absolute moral judgments.

How did we reach a point where young people refuse to condemn mass murder and human sacrifice? The answer is that, as children, these kids were spoon-fed moral relativism along with their Gerber and their ABCs.

In grade school, they were probably subjected to various forms of "values clarification," a idea that teaches kids that morality is merely a matter of personal preference—that no value judgments are right or wrong.

When these kids reached high school, they were doubtless taught the philosophy of multiculturalism, in which moral truths are reduced to cultural values, none of which is morally superior to any others.

And when they reached college? There they would have been exposed to postmodernism, which teaches that values are all relative to race, gender, and ethnicity, and that any statements of moral truth are merely attempts to exert power over others and oppress them.

Clearly, many of today's students have learned their lessons well: They exhibit a severe case of absolutaphobia when they can't even bring themselves to raise moral objections to genocide and human sacrifice. They reject all moral absolutes as restrictions on their freedom.

But what they don't realize is that moral absolutes are our only guarantee of freedom. Without a set of transcendent moral truths that are above individual cultures and preferences, it is impossible to protect human rights.

Christians are getting kicked out of all of the Diners these days. You're getting kicked out of the classrooms, the courtrooms, TV land, proper social and academic circles, and politics. You're even getting kicked out of prisons! It seems like you are no longer wanted, because the perception is that you believe in absolutes, that some ideas and choices and lifestyles are better than others, and that you should say so.

The Christian doctrine of general revelation tells us that we all share a common human nature. As a result, you can often agree with nonbelievers on basic principles, such as honesty, courage, and respect for others. But talk about a God behind those principles, and you're out of line, mister.

You and I ought to support efforts that teach our kids the values on which most citizens can agree. We must help our neighbors and our children understand that without moral absolutes, there is nothing to stop the culture from drifting back toward human sacrifice… or from embracing another Holocaust.

Your Hungry Apatheist,

~Bill

It's an interesting thing that Google did recently. You see the Google ads everywhere, their searchboxes are on almost every website. One can, so I've heard, even visit the porn sites, and find Google. They seem to have no problem with this. Maybe I shouldn't, either. What I find interesting is that, though Google supports porn as long as Google gets paid, they refused to allow a Google ad to be placed on talk-show host Michael Savage's website; they say he is too "controversial".

Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Patiently Waiting Patient

Dear Readers,

Waiting is one of the most difficult characteristics of life. We wait for the bus to come; we wait for class to start; we wait while someone is in the bathroom ahead of us; we wait for the dough to rise. Wait, wait, wait, wait, and wait.

All this waiting requires a great deal of patience. I have heard patience described as, the ability to live peaceably with situations or people we do not like. I can buy that definition. This sort of waiting, with patience, makes all of life so much easier when we can actually achieve it.

This patience needs to be examined, however. Sure, it is a necessary part of most processes. And it is of primary importance when dealing with the sorts of processes surrounding many of the events and conditions encountered in the hospital setting. How could we say otherwise? Decisions that affect our life and death, and the lives of all around us, cannot be taken lightly.

Dilemmas such as experienced in cases of terminal illness tear me apart intellectually. All such moral problems do, as I suppose is the same for many, if not all, people. I try to have a consistent worldview. Sometimes this is easy. For instance, part of my worldview consists of the belief that human life is special, more so than any other life Earth. Being made in the image of God, placed as stewards of this planet and each of its inhabitants, comes with great responsibilities as well as privileges. Thus, it follows that I believe human life is to be protected at all costs and in all cases. Often the decisions to be made following this worldview are no-brainers. Abortion, for instance. Wrong in all cases; a no-brainer. In no instance does abortion not destroy a human life.

Sure, there may be sticky instances such as threats to a mother’s life. These instances are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things. Most such abortion decisions are made simply for convenience’ sake, which in no instance is a valid reason for taking a human life.

On the other end of the spectrum are the cases of terminal illness and end-of-life decisions. They are not always so clear-cut, waiting becomes a crucial part of the process of decision-making. The differences from the above abortion example are many. The most important difference, though, is that in these cases a human life will be lost, no matter what. The paths that must be taken are not so clearly seen as when we are protecting a life, made in the image of God that in one sense, has yet to be lived.

I believe, now, the emphasis shifts to taking care of a life, still made in the image of God. This life, ending now, must be protected in a different way; one that preserves the human dignity and eliminates suffering.

Patience now can appear to be a refusal to deal with circumstance and make decisions that are unavoidable. Patience now is no virtuous trait. Patience stymies our growth, frustrates our desires, and just generally makes us crazy waiting for something to happen or get done.

Who knows how I would react when actually faced with the decisions that must be made in these terminal cases. I sit here now with as clear a mind as I can have, and believe that part of preserving my dignity and that of those around me would be to see the inevitable and not avoid seeing it. There is no dishonor in laying down your king and surrendering to an opponent who has played a good game. Exit stage right.

I simply hope that I know all the conditions of the game I am playing; that the doctors and nurses and families helping me play this game, will speak frankly and clearly to me of all that I face in the game; that they will support me in the decision to lay down my king; that they will help me see that I have played the game with dignity, and am now ready to go on to the next game.

Your Hospice-Friendly, Neighborhood Apatheist,

~Bill

Where is the Health Inspector?

Fellow Noshers,

I usually like a corner table here. One that allows an unobstructed view of just what is going on. Some people are just people watchers, and I am one of those. Other nights, though, the most interesting seat is one near the window. Here, you still get a chance to see the circus inside; but often the best show is the one out on the street.

There are the folks who ate at the organic fod place down the street, or maybe those who do their own home cookin'. Doesn't matter. They share a common mission: improve diet and nutritional status, for everyone. They seem to believe the best strategy is to harass the Diners' patrons before they can enter. "Dont' go in there! That stuff is gonna kill you! How can you eat that crap? You people are sickos and perverts for liking that stuff! You should have seen the health inspector's report! He's gonna shut this place down someday, just you wait! And then how are you gonna like starving to death? You people are going to rot from the inside! The surgeon general warned you about places like this!"

What does it mean to have mercy on the Diners' victims? The voices offering solutions to the crisis divide mainly into two camps: those who view the diseases in purely physical terms to be handled with a purely physical approach, and those who understand the spiritual and moral dimension inherent in this pandemic.

Critics of the demonstrators, however, warn that even if they do care, these believers offer the wrong solutions—solutions that jeopardize health and alienate the needy in the process. Critics complain that the demonstrators show "too much morality" and "too little sense" in their fight. The critics, defenders of the Diner, claim that nutritional deficiencies and progressive food-related illnesses affect everybody.

But rather than answer the root causes of the disease, they are in denial of their sickness and insist that to advocate moral changes is to pass judgment. The disease is AIDS, and it usually strikes at fairly discrete groups such as homosexuals, prostitutes, drug addicts. It is no respecter of morals, and will affect the general population, including the innocent.

It is exactly for this reason the demonstrators should discourage risky behavior (unfaithfulness, promiscuity, drug use) that brings it into the rest of society. That is not finger-pointing or judging; that is true compassion. This includes discouraging dehumanizing situations, including prostitution and sex trafficking.

The critics will say that such attitudes will leave the drug addicts, homosexuals and prostitutes in the cold. The real test for the demonstrators' beliefs will be to bring those in to a warmer place. Those who disagree with promoting abstinence and fidelity in the AIDS fight seem to believe proponents are just moralizing—standing in judgment of victims. But Christians realize that AIDS requires more than physical answers. Most of the situations that lead to the contraction of HIV are not merely physical: They begin with a decision (with the exceptions, of course, of rape victims, vulnerable children, etc.).

The AIDS crisis is about evil—"the sanctity of life” (people devalue their own lives and resign themselves to contracting AIDS); “disproportionate suffering” (one bad decision could lead to unimaginable suffering); “and a dozen other things—trust, fear, weakness, traditions, temptation”: intangible realities that cannot be quantified, nor treated with physical solutions.

Those who eschew any moral dimension to AIDS prevention seem to believe humans are good already and don’t need to change—that AIDS is something completely disconnected from human nature that needs only to be wiped away with condoms and drugs.

But this denies truth. Life is not the way it's supposed to be. This is more evidence of the Fall. And because of the Fall, we are not any "good". If we were any good, then what would happen if there were enough clean needles and condoms?

Without internal change, would we still have predatory men, prostitution, drug users in slavery to mind-numbing chemicals? With enough condoms and clean needles, would you be able to say your job is done, their lives are whole?

Every franchise of the Diner needs a good soup kitchen next door.

~Bill

A Hammer With Which to Smash It

"When your judgements are in the earth, the inhabitatants of the world learn righteousness." Isaiah 26:9.

One of the virtues of each visit to the Diner is that it provides a kind of reality check on America's continuing moral decline.

I don’t eat much when I'm here, but enough to notice dining habits and trends, and maybe overhear the talk about hot new TV shows or a movie. This fall, as far as I can tell, we’ll be treated to a series that glorifies the life of “cool crime.” Another series—the continuing story of a group of classmates-turned-near-adults—features a woman who can spell “denial” and has a penchant for falling in love with homosexual men. And, of course, we are promised new and more outrageous “reality programs” that have nothing whatsoever to do with the reality anyone ever lives, but everything to do with such skills as getting the best of someone else at anybody and everybody’s expense, all for the sake of fifteen minutes of fame and a big chunk of money.

Television serves as a mirror of society, in a strange kind of way. It reflects what many people think and feel, but typically keep to themselves. By displaying for public scrutiny what we’re secretly thinking and feeling—but wouldn’t dream of acting on—TV encourages us to go on and let it all hang out. Which, as we do, has the effect of moving the moral boundaries back a little more toward decadence. But before we blame television at the cantina of corruption for our moral slide, we need to consider what, in particular, is responsible for creating this favorable climate for increasing numbers of selections from the dessert menu at your local Diner.

It’s not TV. Rather, it is the Church’s indifference toward, even scorn for, the Law of God as the primary source, that fuels America’s continuing moral slippage. This "Christian nation", if it ever truly was one, has lost its anchor and is drifting. It seems it no longer matters if we're eating at the Cultural Diner, or in the Fellowship Hall.

Active or passive rejection of God’s Law is nothing new, not even among believers in God. Throughout most of her history, Israel in the Old Testament ignored, fudged, and blatantly disobeyed the Law of God. It was for their persistence on this course that God ultimately brought them to judgment. The books of all the prophets are filled with warnings, threats, and denunciations against the rulers and people of Israel for their rebellion against the Law of God.

There are two types of abuse of God's Law. The first, that of the Judaizers, tried to make obedience to the Law a prerequisite of salvation. According to them, one is saved by believing in Jesus and submitting to ritual requirements of Jewish law. Paul rightly identified this teaching as “another gospel.”

The second error, the other extreme of the pendulum swing, wants to do away with the Law altogether. Paul addressed this incipient problem in the book of Romans. The moral corruption, seen so often in Church cafeterias today, takes the latter form. The Food Pyramid is posted, the talk is of Food Groups and healthy eating; but the patrons say they are not bound by the RDA, as though they had to make any effort to follow them. We live in a time of grace, not law. The Spirit is our guide in ethical matters, pouring forth the love of God from within us, so that we do not need to exert ourselves, laboring to understand or keep the Law of God.

While we loudly protest the removal of the Ten Commandments from the public square, we are shamefully silent about their absence from the pulpit, Sunday School classrooms, and church discipline. Instead, in all these places the Beatles' ethic is all that remains: “All you need is love.” You know, just love one another, as Jesus loved us. Don’t try to put anybody under the Law—except, of course, those pagans and secularists who insist on removing the Commandments from court houses and schools.

The result is that, as a community, the ethic we demonstrate is not much different from that of the increasingly decadent society in which we live. Except for our “church activities,” we as a community are not that much different from our neighbors. We are nearly as materialistic, spend as much time watching television and participating in other frivolous diversions, have about the same divorce rate, and in just about every other way demonstrate that we’re just “one of the guys” when it comes to everyday ethical behavior. We actually show favor to unGodliness—greed and lust, anger and gossip, Sabbath-breaking and blasphemy, stealing and murder, lies and hypocrisy, adultery and incivility.

Drifting on the sea of love, untethered by the Law of God, the church is under the shadow of perilous icebergs. Having refused to decisively proclaim the goodnes of the Law, the church has opened the door and welcomed in every form of unrighteousness. The church has encouraged corrupt and decadent dining, and made it increasingly difficult for the world to make healthy choices.

Nutrition-related illnesses are progressive, debilitating, and often go undetected for years. How long has it been since your last check-up?

Cultural Nurse-in-Training,

~Bill