You are what you eat

Bill Cosby recently wrote a book titled “I Am What I Ate...and I'm Frightened!!!” in which he describes his horror of having discovered what the food he ate all his life had done to him. Medical research in recent years is waking us up to the fact that what we put into our bodies affects how these bodies function. When my wife was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 she began researching nutrition and as a result our household diet transformed literally overnight: No processed foods; few, if any cooked foods; no meat and no dairy. Not only did we become vegans overnight, we were raw vegans – as extreme a diet as I’ve ever seen. ("Vegan" in diet only – not ethical persuasion. There’s the time I went into a vegan restaurant wearing my black leather jacket…)

Although it didn’t cure Yvonne’s cancer, within a few months my cholesterol level had dropped from the danger zone to low normal, my blood pressure was back to normal, I lost 25 pounds (back to my young-man weight), and experienced my first allergy-free spring in 30 years. Clearly, what I was putting into my body made a difference.

I began to suspect that this principle also applied mentally and spiritually when I walked into our family room one evening where the kids were watching a sitcom - Friends or Will & Grace, can’t remember which – and saw them blithely absorbing language, images, ideas and morals from a completely godless world view. As I listened to the dialog I had this mental image of the television as a huge sewer pipe, pouring filth into my home. And the more I started paying attention to what was on television, like Bill Cosby, I became frightened.

Even then it wasn’t until recently that I had a blinding glimpse of the obvious, when I read Jesus’ words “I am the bread of Life” and really made the connection: Jesus is saying that He is the food that gives my spirit the nutrition I need for true life. In contrast, so much of what I read, watch or otherwise sit and soak up is mental and spiritual junk food – or worse, poison to my spirit.

I’ve started taking inventory, not just of the quality of things I feed my mind but also the quantity, comparing those things to the amount of time I spend in the Bible, in the works of other Christians, and time spent praying. It’s no longer a mystery as to why I feel spiritually stunted. If genuine Christianity truly consists of relationship with God – and I do believe it does – then it’s no wonder any more why I feel such a stranger to God since it’s obvious (I would have thought) that you can’t have a relationship with someone you never spend time with.

I’ve begun making changes in my spiritual "diet" and it is making a difference. And I can’t help but wonder what would happen if all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus stopped feeding from the same menu as the rest of the world and ate only the Bread of Life; maybe then we really could be, as Paul said, “blameless, sincere and wholesome, living in a warped and diseased world, and shining there like lights in a dark place”.

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
Phil. 4:8