Sunday, November 13, 2011

Spiritual Spa #10 Offensive Cuisine!

John 6:
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
 41 At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
51 Jesus: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you?"


Dear family in the Lord!

Today's post is not going to talk about frog legs or escargot, but we are talking about the offensive request to eat Jesus and what we can learn from that about our spiritual and physical nourishment!

John 6 is loaded with deep, deep revelation about Jesus! I encourage everyone to read it in full, I only quoted the verses that I want to focus on today. Do you wonder why I underlined the part where Jesus asks his listeners if they are offended by the fact that he tells them to eat him? Do you ever see Jesus as someone edgy, someone who doesn't fit in, someone who walks around stepping on peoples' toes, offending them with truth?

It was my husband who introduced me to the idea (strongly shaped by 19th century Christian philosopher Kierkegaard) that unless we have been offended by Jesus we haven't truly surrendered to him. Today it's easy to believe in the sweet savior baby Jesus, or the almighty King that protects us; after all we didn't go to school with Jesus. We are so used to evangelical messages like "Come to Jesus, he will take care of all your problems", who wouldn't want to follow that invite?! But we didn't know Jesus as our physical brother, cousin or neighbor. Jesus is a powerful mystery to us and maybe there is a part in all of us in that we believe in him, because we get something from him. A blessing. Hope. Distraction. Money. Feeling welcomed. Yes, that is a point of view of someone who did not live when Jesus lived, and maybe you know what I am talking about. How quickly we can forget that we were saved with the purpose to glorify God, not the other way around.

Not so the folks that hung around Jesus! They did share their lives with him, home, city, market place, school, what not! They saw and would be the first to testify: Jesus was definitely human. Granted, they never saw him do anything they could judge him for, but the promised messiah? Naaaaah. The verses I quoted from John 6 portray in a beautiful clear fashion that they did like to be blessed by him (they had just been miraculously been literally fed), but to believe that he is the God send solution to mankind's sin problem?? Even worse, Jesus tells them they have to eat him!! They just ate the bread he gave them, now he says that they have to feed on HIM if they want to live?? And this is the point were it is not only getting interesting for us on our journey to a better understanding what we were created to eat for our physical bodies, but this is the point were his audience was DISGUSTED. In other words, they were offended.

What offends you? I am not talking about someone wearing jeans to a wedding (that's what my father would do to express to my extended family that he doesn't want to pretend to be someone who needs to wear a suit to be festive), I am talking about a serious affront to you. Maybe it is someone confronting you with a truth you wish wouldn't be so true. Maybe it is the realization that you aren't the best at what you always thought you had to be?

What ever it takes for you, when you are offended, you have two choices:
1. Be angry at the messenger and leave in denial.
2. Allow yourself to expose the reason of the offense and face the truth. 

Why, oh why were the people so upset with Jesus telling them they will have to become cannibals? Jewish tradition demands a quite restricted lifestyle. A lot of the restrictions have to do with don't touch this or that and don't eat this or that. From a post-Christ point of view one can say that God wanted to display with his people that he is holy (dedicated to a different cause, consecrated), and they have to be also if they want to be his children. Part of the intention was to protect the hearts of each individual member of his people from idolatry, anything that would lead them astray from knowing that HE is worthy of all their dedication, and that they shouldn't forget that no one loves them more than God the Father does and it hurts God if his children turn away from him.

They understood that we are what we eat. In their tradition pigs were declared "dirty". So to eat pork meant to become dirty. Eating what was declared "clean" meant being clean. Eating a man's flesh was beyond anything acceptable. It was repulsive. Eating Jesus meant becoming him. In their eyes he was just a man, they knew him, appearing to have a savior complex. It was against the law.

Have you ever allowed yourself to feel the offense they felt? How are you going to respond?

If you continue to read John 6 you learn that at that point Jesus lost a lot of his followers. But a dozen of guys who all had different reasons to stay, one of them making one of the strongest statements of faith ever so far: "No Jesus, I am not leaving. Yes, I don't understand what you are asking of me and it is against anything I have learned, but YOU HAVE THE WORDS OF LIFE AND WHERE ELSE SHOULD I GO HAVING TASTED THE LIFE YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT?" (I added some words to Peter's statement of true surrender, in accordance what I feel he went through.)

As always I am asking you, my highly honored reader, when I say this is a blog about nutrition, why am I laying such an emphasis on the "inspirational thoughts from the Bible"? This time I translate this thought or maybe even conviction about the offense Jesus was posing, to me challenging you that it is truly in your hand to eat in a way that you won't be hungry again before your body truly needs nourishment. I feel that this is quite a weak point, considering what we just talked about. Everything else seems so small and not important when I feel Jesus talking. I love how we can learn in our walk with God to surrender more every day, trust him more for who he is, realizing more and more that life is not about us, it is about him. He deserves our full dedication, he deserves us. We are not under a law anymore, we live in freedom to listen to his guidance.

Let me introduce you to a foundational hormone we need to understand and learn to control. It is called "Ghrelin".
It is released in your body when you are awaiting to consume food or crave something you know you shouldn't have. There are ways to reduce this hormone, which is good, because then you don't eat out of bottomless desire to fill your stomach, and there are ways to raise it.

What are ways to raise the hunger hormone?

- entering a movie theater when you haven't had a satisfying meal before. The smell of popcorn and candy is a safe raiser of the chance that you are going to have something that will work in opposition with your goals. Same with entering a grocery store, seeing all these temptations on a not well norished body will lead to bad choices.
- Fatty foods! It takes discipline to stop eating french fries before there all gone, same with chips and pretty much any other snack food the FDA approves. Processed fat is not capable of telling your brain that you had enough to eat. Do you understand now why you should stay away from deep fried foods?
- Alcohol! When my husband watches sports my stumbling block gets stumbling to infinity and beyond, part of the sport watching culture is drinking beer AND... eating terrible snacks. Lord have mercy! (Don't think I'm against having a beer, I'm trying to point out that these described factors are counter productive to achieving health goals if exercised on a frequent basis.)
- Refined sugar! Having a can of soda (no matter if diet or not) will result in increasing your appetite, you eat more than you need. If possible stay away from refined sugar in all it's versatile and vicious variations, that means all regular sugar + artificial sweeteners.
- Not enough carbs, protein, fat/ calories! Ever find yourself craving bottomless? If you still think you should cut out meals and lose weight like that you have to deal with an increased ghrelin level, making weightloss traumatic and not lasting.
- Eating at night. Simple rule: Don't eat about 3-4 hours before you go to bed or when you are in bed, especially no carbs. Eating at night will raise your level of hunger and that interferes with a good night sleep. Have a norishing protein dinner and sleep tight.


What are reducers of the hunger hormone?

- Start your day with a nourishing breakfast: A whole wheat sandwich with real butter, cheese, an egg. Or a bowl of refined sugar free oatmeal, fruit and yogurt.
- Plan to eat every 2-5 hours. 5 portions per day are recommended to keep the ghrelin level down and to avoid the body from entering "starvation mode", which will be the nail on your goals-coffin.
- Whole wheat products. Organic whole wheat bread, or sprouted wheat bread, will be a nourishing blessing to your body. You shall have it daily!
- Protein! Go for the real thing: Chicken, salmon, tuna, beans etc. Protein doesn't reduce ghrelin as fast as carbs do, but it works longer.
- Good sources of fat! Olive oil, eggs, real butter, coconut oil. Everything in needed moderation my friend!

If you are on my email list you received with the link for this post a 1 week food journal I created with the purpose to learn to eat on a schedule and what to eat at those 5 important island times during your day! Utilize it as you wish!

My dear family in the Lord Jesus, we are what we eat. If you are overweight you might find the reason in what you eat. This may be offensive to you. It was never the intention of Jesus to offend anyone. But truth is offensive. It is up to you to take the information I am sharing with you and toss it or test it.

Be blessed abundantly!