I have a dog, a beautiful female springer spaniel named Pepper. Dogs, as most of you likely know already, are much like children. They bring a near-infinite amount of joy to the lives of those responsible for them. But that joy comes at a price — a financial price, an emotional price, a time and trouble price. And for almost a full year now, Pepper has made it her mission to make sure we pay that price. Her specialty is food-related issues. She contracted an infection early in life and took way too many antibiotics in our efforts to help her fight it off. Ever since then she has had an allergy to chicken. And most dog food has chicken or chicken by-products as a main ingredient. So we have to buy specialty dog food, which naturally comes at a specialty price. Hal Hammons, famous tightwad. Good to meet you. Aside from that, the Hammons family (the humans, I mean) tend to eat a lot of chicken. So there is always concern that she might find a shred of meat or a drop of broth on the floor and get there before we do. You see, as bad as chicken is for Pepper, Pepper loves chicken. So those who know better than she does must intervene to protect her from herself. And does she appreciate our efforts on her behalf? No she does not. Not that I’m bitter at all.
This week we added a new chapter to the perils of Pepper. She managed to shut herself in the laundry room (don’t ask me how) and started snacking on dryer lint (don’t ask me why). We started noticing problems with her a day or so later. She didn’t want to eat her regular food. She was sometimes even hesitant to eat table scraps and dog treats. And when we picked up her stool, … well, I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say it was clear she was consuming something that was not actually food. Now that the humans have a better grasp on the issue at hand, I am confident the situation and Pepper’s stomach will settle themselves soon. She’s a dog. She needs food. Unless there is something radically wrong with her, her nature will reveal itself in due course of time. And if she goes 2-3 days without eating, it will only make the food taste better once she gets back to normal.
When it comes to the spiritual diet of humans, we are both better and worse than dogs. We are intelligent enough to diagnose our own problems, devise our own solutions, and monitor our own progress. But we are also intelligent enough (if you want to call it that) to convince ourselves that our own actions are not really the problem. We can think our way into believing pretty much anything — including that the poison we are ingesting and the life-sustaining nutrition we are avoiding have nothing to do with our long-term health and satisfaction.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” It’s not just a matter of getting hungry; we all get hungry, and we are all motivated to address that hunger. But we have to be wise enough to seek out the bread of life, as Jesus refers to himself in John 6:35. The true children of God will seek this bread out. We may deviate from the plan temporarily. We may experiment with other sources of so-called nutrition. But our true nature will reveal itself in time. The true followers of Jesus will show their connection to Him — hopefully sooner rather than later. We want Jesus. More than that, we crave Jesus. We will find a way to get an adequate supply of Jesus into our lives one way or the other.
It must be said, though, we have options. As ridiculous as it may seem, we are capable of finding and availing ourselves of spiritual food of a very different sort. And it’s not just a matter of finding food with too much spiritual fat and not enough spiritual vitamins. Some spiritual food works directly against the interests of Jesus. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 3:6, “In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following.” Sound doctrine — that’s the good stuff right there. But he follows that statement immediately by talking about worldly fables — the same sort of fake food he mentions in 2 Timothy 4:3. Those listeners, he says, want to have their ears tickled by teachers in accordance with their own desires, and as a result will reject the sound doctrine. Such ones will gorge themselves on whatever fake gospel might sound good in the moment; they very well may gorge themselves to death.
Why do people do that? And remember, we are talking about those who would consider themselves to be the people of God — people who look very much like you and me. Well, the answer goes back to the idea of nature. It very well may be that someone may warm a church pew for years, tote their Bible everywhere they go, and yet never really become the people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And just as surely as the true children of God will return to form in due course of time, so also the pretenders will return to form. And it won’t be a pretty picture.
It has always been this way. Isaiah wrote in ch. 55, v.1-3, “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies shown to David.” God has all the spiritual food you could possibly want. And it’s free, every bit of it. And the wonderful implication of this passage is that the listener, as bent on self-destruction as he may be, is capable of changing his nature. You don’t have to eat trash. You don’t have to poison yourself. If you listen to God, if you go where He says go and stay where He says stay, if you consent to sit at His table and eat the food He has prepared for you, you can and will live. It worked for David, who showed failures of character that stagger our imagination. If God showed faithful mercies to him, He will show faithful mercies to you.
So pick up your Bible and dig in.