Processed?

The news carried a ‘hard to swallow’ story this week. Apparently it has been discovered that eating too much processed meat shortens your life, and increases the risk of contracting diabetes, cancer and heart disease, as well as a list of others. A well paid group of academics are telling us what we already know, and the study has cost a lot of money. Will this stop me having my occasional ‘Full Scottish Breakfast’? I don’t think so, but then I don’t eat a lot of processed meats, except for the odd filled roll. Will the report make you change your eating habits?

However, this report actually said that good unadulterated red meat, is not bad for you, and there is no evidence that it would be a health risk or shorten your life through disease. Sorry my vegetarian friends, but it seems that red meat is ok after all!

The application to our Christian life is clear. Stay with the base gift of God. In its pure form, the gospel of Jesus Christ is good for you, and will add to your quality of life greatly. No doubt, and no question. My thought is that we have been guilty of becoming ‘processed Christians’, picking up bad habits and theology along the way, and yes even enjoying it! The base is good (remember the time you got saved?) but we have picked up some bad ‘christianity’ (small’c’) habits along the way, like questionable humour, inappropriate language and behaviour, gossipping, loose and insensitive talk, and the list could go on. Thankfully, Jesus is very patient with us, even Paul had some trouble with ‘processed christians’ in the church at Corinth. It’s the word ‘but’ in the verse that hits me, which suggests they should have known better, and so should we, my brothers and sisters in Christ! Let’s avoid adding the processed stuff. Just saying!

… nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. ‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say – but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’– but I will not be mastered by anything. 1 Corinthians 6:10-12 NIV

Horse Meat and Sin

The scandal of finding unlabelled horse meat in beef products in the UK has now spread across the European Community. Everyone is amazed and stunned that this should ever happen, and every country is taking their own steps to test thousands of samples, and clear the supermarket shelves of contaminated products. Every effort is being made to tackle the issue head on, isn’t it? Or is it?

I have watched closely while nations are dealing with the effects of the contaminated merchandise. Untold food testing and stock checks do not address the root of the problem. So far, I have not seen any reports which show where the horse meat started its journey into the food chain process. Horse carcasses have to be processed somewhere, and sold on to that unknown place where it is added to the rest of the meat, and ultimately on to our table.

It’s a bit like sin to my mind. We are so very good at tackling the effects of the bad stuff in our society. We pass laws to try to deal with paedophiles, murderers, liars, bigamists, child abusers, extortioners, predators, stalkers, human traffickers, and the list could go on and on! However the legal systems of our so called advanced nations are not so good at seeing and tackling the source, or root cause of these issues that blight our communities. Our civilised thinking doesn’t allow for the concept of good and bad now. We are discouraged from labelling anything or anyone as bad or evil. Then since everything is relative to everything else, there can be no ultimate good, so who needs God’s Law?

We cannot find the source of the horse meat, and we don’t want to see the source of the evil in our society. There is a link to the analogy, but it falls apart when we realise that eating horse meat will do you no harm, but sin will. Ultimately and eternally. So this question remains. Is it worth tackling the effects while ignoring the source? I would suggest the source of the horse meat will be acknowledged and tackled, long before we acknowledge and deal with the problem of sin!