Tag Archives: Thinking Straight

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Sixteen Sausages in a Row

A few days ago, I republished a post from a few years back on food allergies. This was mostly because I am still sorting things out in my new WordPress surroundings, and wanted to see how to repost something. Tinker with this, click on that, you know. A new commenter had just referenced that old post, so I just reloaded that one, just for grins. But it has generated some fresh discussion, as these things always do, some in the comments, and others with me in real time.

I know that when I write on things like this, I routinely try to qualify what I am saying, so that nobody can say I am mocking the sick and the infirm, or being hard-hearted toward those who are truly hurting. But those qualifications can be taken (as some have taken them) as simply a pro forma sort of thing, giving myself plausible deniability, in case someone’s feelings get hurt and I wanted to have something to point to while maintaining that I didn’t say that. But no, I really believe my qualifications. So in this instance, let me frontload them, and then after that move on to the basic points I am seeking to make in these posts.

So here is a full paragraph of qualifications, and a longish paragraph it is too. First, I understand that these things operate on a sliding scale — it is not the case that you either go to the hospital all swoll up with your life on the line, or your problem is entirely imaginary. Some allergies are very serious immediately, while others should be filed under certain foods “not agreeing with” your constitution. There are food allergies, with varying degrees of seriousness, and there are food intolerances, with varying degrees of seriousness. The law of love should govern in all instances. Hosts should be thoughtful hosts, and guests should be thoughtful guests. Also, when it comes to particular cases and instances, with people I deal with directly, I am not trigger-happy in offering the suggestion that the problem might not be “real.” Actually, the problem is always real in some way, but it is sometimes not real in the way that everybody first thought. But if I am counseling someone, for example, and begin to suspect that some kind of self-delusion is going on, it will usually take me months to get to the point where I would suggest that directly. There would be a lot of other ground to cover first. And what this means is that I am not making snap-diagnoses at a distance of particular individuals in any of my posting on this subject.

I have been dealing with people in pastoral ministry for decades, and have pretty much seen it all. I have seen enough to know that there is a true category out there of hypochondria, and there is another category of people who are genuinely sick — and some of them with illnesses that are quite mysterious, and hard to pin down. Now the fact that I believe there is such a thing as the former category does not mean that I deny the existence of the second, or the seriousness of what people in the second category face, or the difficulties they confront when they are afflicted with something that might look to outsiders like they are making it all up. To all such — my heart goes out to them, and they don’t have worry about any snide comments from me. I have never been talking about them.

This being the case, why do I run the risk of being misunderstood by some with a genuine ailment? When I am attacking abuse in this area (as I frequently do), it is because I have seen the real damage, in real time, that play-acting can do to marriages, families, and friendships. I have also seen a situation where someone in genuine pain just soldiers on through because she will not be lumped in with those who have their boutique allergies. This is a situation created by the fakery, and not by recognition that there is such a thing as fakery and/or self-deception.

Here are the principles I am most concerned about:

1. The first point is that table fellowship is one of the most important ecclesiastical issues found in the New Testament. We need to remember that, and act accordingly. Some of the fiascoes I have seen were the result of ignoring that truth. We have gotten to the point where there is widespread disruption of such table fellowship, and I simply think that more of us should act like it is a big deal. Just to be clear on the point, genuine food allergies, etc. do not disrupt table fellowship because they provide an occasion for love. The disruption is caused by manipulation and selfishness, which is the opposite of koinonia fellowship.

2. The second issue concerns the nature of knowledge. I could care less what other people eat — provided they are having a good time with it. But I care very much about truth and verification. I care very much about irrationality being given a free pass simply because it is what Smith or Murphy “are into.” Once the principles of unreason are well-established in our midst, we will find that we cannot turn them off with a switch, simply because we are now dealing with something more serious. We are to love the Lord our God with all our minds, and I have to say that I have seen some striking instances of that not happening. The post hoc fallacy is not the queen of the sciences.

3. The third point concerns frequent abdication on the part of fathers and husbands. Many times, emotional and spiritual issues show up in the lives of women as food issues, and the men involved are often too weak, or cowardly, or defensive about their own causal role, to address it in the way they ought to. Women are prone to be deceived (1 Tim. 2:14), and men are prone to let them be deceived. This is an area where I have seen radical unsubmissiveness on the part of some wives, and radical cowardice on the part of some husbands, conspiring together to destroy families. The food is just a symptom; the real problem is located somewhere else entirely. And wives, don’t read this and go off to demand that your husband tell you if this is true. It might not be, but if it is, you are unlikely to get a straight answer from him. Get on your knees and ask the Spirit if it is true. He’s not afraid of you.

4. And last, if any reacted to my earlier use of the phrase boutique allergies, and assume that anyone who uses phrases like that must be attacking you individually, then this illustrates the heart of the problem with “qualifications.” There is no good reason I can think of for someone with a real broken leg being defensive on behalf of someone who is faking a broken leg. To make the point bluntly, referring back to my second concern, if I write that Smith is faking his broken leg, it is not germane to the discussion to post a picture of your son, who is not a Smith at all, with the bone sticking out. My belief that there is such a thing as a boutique allergy industry does not mean that I believe that you are a customer. I mean, I don’t even know your name. But those shops are out there, and they do have customers.

But let me return to my earlier qualification. I really believe that there are many genuine food allergies and intolerances. I myself react quite poorly to sixteen sausages in a row. Um . . . joke . . . didn’t mean to make light of . . . no, no, not really . . . sorry.

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Allergic to Other People

The church is capable of including any number of subcultural groups within her pale, and can do so without great difficulty. Ham radio operators, rodeo riders, surfers, and rock climbers are all welcome. And what they all do the Saturday before worship does not disrupt the reality of their worship together.

But food subcultures are a different matter. Food scruples are the deathly enemy of church unity. Every pastor is called by the Lord to hate food divisions, and every pastor who does not hate them is an enemy of his own peace. I don’t want church splits, even if they come in a reusable bag.

The central pastoral issue of the New Testament was a dietary one — whether Jews and Gentiles could eat together. And if the apostle Paul fought so long and hard on this one — to keep the body of Christ from being divided this way — when the issue really was created by the laws of the Old Testament, how much more would he be militant about food divisions that resulted from an article that somebody read on the Internet?

I am not talking about genuine allergies. Everybody should know what those are. You serve your guest ground up peanuts in that Thai dish you’ve been wanting to try out, and forty five minutes later he looks like the Michelin tire boy, and the dinner party concludes late that evening in the ER. That’s an allergy, and the apostle would not mind if we accommodated such food restrictions in charity. That is a beautiful opportunity to exercise charity — checking with those you invite about food restrictions.

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The Need to Cross-Check

How do we know things? How do we confirm things? With regard to any claim that matters enough that we need to check it, the Bible teaches that we look for external corroboration, internal consistency, and a clear willingness for the claim to be falsified.

“In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established” (2 Cor. 13:1).

“But neither so did their witness agree together” (Mark 14:59).  

“He that is first in his own cause seemeth just;
But his neighbour cometh and searcheth him” (Prov. 18:17).

Consequently, the big concern that I have about many believers going in big for foodie concerns, or those with treatments for designer allergies, or exotic treatments for various ailments, is not the proposed treatment itself. The issue is the nature of knowledge, not the nature of the stuff in the world. If oils made from pine needles were able to do marvelous things, there would be no one happier than I. But if no one is allowed to ask any judicious questions, then you may depend upon it — a scam is being run. We live in a world full of lies, and we are servants of the truth. Our approach should match that fundamental reality, and sadly, it often does not.

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That Magnificent JuJu Bean

One of the larger pastoral problems in the church today is the trend to ever-increasing fruitiness, coupled with the cowardice of those who see what is happening, and yet say nothing.

Whenever someone proposes any particular pursuit in a singularly fruity way — and I am speaking of weird diets, oils with superpowers, medicinal oddballery, and other variations on the ancient spirit of haruspicy — and someone objects to it, one of the first things that will happen is that someone else will point out that there are all sorts of connections and remedies that we could not have anticipated beforehand. The whole world is weird. Well, yes, the world is weird, magical, uncanny, and penicillin is a fungus that kills bacterial diseases — ho, ho, ho. If we compare this to the folk remedy of trying to cure a sore throat by wrapping your neck in bacon before bedtime, which one is “weirder”? They are actually on the same plane.

But the point isn’t weirdness at all. When I shake my head over the fruitiness of some proposed remedy, diet, or alignment of the furniture with cosmic forces, the point is never the odd juxtaposition of this with that. The world really is weird. But some things about it aren’t weird at all. Let us invite Chesterton into our discussion, so that he may dispel our foolish superstitions with the laws that govern all magic.

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Why Chesterton Doesn’t Fit in Skinny Jeans

In my review of the The Truth About Organic Foods, I had occasion to quote Chesterton, and this raised an important question in the minds of some — where do I get off quoting Chesterton in the midst of a post that, for all intents and purposes, looked to some like a valiant attempt to keep my Monsanto stock from collapsing completely? It didn’t look that way to others, like to me, but let’s leave that to the side for a moment, and simply address the Chesterton question.

Chesterton was the geunine article, and the contemporary organic foods movement isn’t. He wore an artificial and manufactured cape to cover a heart that did nothing but overflow with Christian insight. This, as opposed to those who wear a Central American coarse-woven authenticity cape to cover up the aching hollowness within. There is a difference, as he might say, between a man who stands in the face of all the prevailing winds, and the one who is driven before them. And when we have grasped the difference, we will have also grasped that the difference is not a subtle one.

He had no use for cant and the poseurs who delivered it. The contemporary hipster is a recent phenomenon (in terms of what we used to call in the Navy the uniform-of-the-day), but the broader category of hipster has been with us since at least the time of Rousseau. The type was well-known to Chesterton, and had there been a Whole Foods in Victorian London, we would have had some choice epigrams from him on the kind of poet who shopped for exotic cheeses there. In fact, here’s one, written long before the word metrosexual was even coined.

“The old artist remained proud in spite of his unpopularity; the new artist is proud because of his unpopularity; perhaps it is his chief ground for pride.”

If you can’t find an outlet to plug this into, then you clearly have the wrong kind of adapter.

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All Hipster Mortifications

“Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh” (Col. 2:20-23).

The prohibitionist streak that is so attractive to many Christians is a religious streak. And we must come to understand that this religious streak goes as deep as the flesh does. There is a kind of religious duty that is of the flesh, for the flesh, and by the flesh.

We do not have to reconstruct the particular rationale for the prohibitions that the Colossians were having to deal with. What we have to do is simply recognize that there is something like this out there in the world, in the religious world, and in the religious heart. There are certain practices which will have the appearance of wisdom for Christians, but which are of no value in actually dealing with the flesh. This is because this kind of ascetism does not mortify the flesh — it is the flesh. This is why anyone serious about the Christian life will want to guard himself against falling into this particular kind of trap. The traps that have the appearance of wisdom are the camouflaged ones. This means they are the ones to watch out for. There is this kind of trap? What should I watch for?

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Parkas at the Pool

It has been some time since I posted anything under Global Swarming. But now with Colorado burning down, and Kansas at 118 degrees, and a commenter making a good-natured jab about my radio silence, I thought I should at least mutter something.

My silence has been a function of watching various scientists jumping off the U.S.S. Climate Change, and believing (in my innocence) that her once proud prow was shortly going to be pointing at the moon. Ah, but there’s life in the old girl yet, and so it seems that I shall have to rummage around in my bag of skeptical observations to see if I have any left.

Here’s one. If global warming is indeed occurring, we need to get us some here in Idaho. Here it is late June now, and it would be nice if my grandkids didn’t need to take their parkas to the pool so much. But it does cut down on sunscreen costs.

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Phevered Phood Pharisaism

What do you think of when you think of someone with a seared conscience? The natural thing that might come to mind is the image of a sociopath, someone who has no compunction about doing anything whatever. “Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron . . .” (1 Tim. 4:2). That is a  natural move, but it is a mistaken one. In scriptural terms, when a person’s conscience is seared with a hot iron, he doesn’t become an anarchist, he becomes a fierce moralist. Notice the next verse — “forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth” (1 Tim. 4:3). A man with a seared conscience is the prohibitionist, the wowser, the fusser.

On reflection, this should not be surprising. As long as we bear the image of God, we have to function in terms of antithesis, in the light of a foundational right and wrong. But because we are in rebellion against God, we violate His holy commandments. But we still have a need to feel righteous, and we have a desperate need to shout down our guilt. What better way to shout down the guilt than to go on a compensatory crusade? This is displaced moralism.

Thus we have a man who screams at his wife, but who drives a Prius with a smug look, a man who uses porn, but who is fastidious about avoiding gluten, a woman who has a botoxed face and siliconed chest, but who eats plenty of leafy greens because it seems “more natural,” a man beset with homosexual lusts who is on a fierce crusade for wealth redistribution, and so on.

Nothing is being said here about the gourmand who knows and understands good food, and would consequently prefer a meal bursting with the interplay of numerous intelligently placed spices to a meal on the couch from a crinkly bag, the name of which ends with that pervasive food group suffix -itos. That is simply a man getting good at something, just like other men get good on the guitar, or laying down asphalt, or building skyscrapers, or writing novels. Good on him, and maybe he should think about becoming a chef.

No, I am talking about the crusader, the devotee. I am talking about the person who, having eaten the cibus prohibitus, feels guilty. I am talking about the person who, observing his brother at Quiznos (from a high and lofty perspective), feels censorious.

The point is not just that this displaced moralism is a bad thing in itself, which it is. The point is that it is often a smoke screen distraction, an attempt to persuade himself, his family, his church, and his pastor, that he is a morally serious person — despite the hidden drunkenness, porn, anger, homosexuality, and so on. We are so constituted that we do not just set aside the Word of God. We do it by means of our own traditions.