CHOCOLATE IS A FOOD GROUP

CHOCOLATE IS A FOOD GROUP

It was a few years ago that I was sitting in the doctor's examining room listening to his telling me something I'd never heard before. Oh, I'd heard it about others, but, like the saying goes, "That can't happen to me. Those words are for somebody else; not me." 

What had prompted my visit to the doctor's office happened while I was running with a friend: all of a sudden, I had this perplexing, penetrating, pernicious pain. I described it to the physician: "It was like somebody came up behind me, hit me in my lower back, left side, and just kept on pushing."

He told me right up front: "You have a kidney stone." 

Me:"Does that mean surgery?"

Doctor: "By the time they're through with you, you'll wish you'd had surgery."(This scared me. I thought he was talking about the doctors, but he was referring to the stone as "they.")

So much for bedside manner; this doctor never went to charm school. 

He went on, "Drink eight glasses of water a day, and you'll never get a kidney stone. And no soft drinks."

Me: "Now  you're telling me?"

Doctor: "Eight glasses of water a day, and no Dr. Peppers." That sounds boring, but I believed him.

The Mayo Clinic says that I should exercise 150 minutes a week and do strength training at least twice a week to live a healthier and longer life. I trust the Mayo Clinic and the study they did. It rings true.

Dr. Lilian Cheung, a lecturer in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, says that I need about two cups of fruit and two and a half cups of vegetables per day. I believe the good doctor Lilian when it comes to nutrition.

A man and his fiance are having a disagreement in his driveway. He's a Christian. The argument  heats up. He loses his temper, his face is turning red and she's not backing down in this verbal battle. He clinches his fist and hits her right in the face, knocking her down. Her head hits the concrete and she's dead on impact. Long story short, he sits in a Dallas prison today, a convicted murderer.
You ask, "Can a Christian do that? Kill someone?" 

People answer: "No way. A Christian couldn't do that. He must not have really believed or he wouldn't have done that."

A believer looks a man right in the eyes and, with intent to deceive, lies to him. He's lying and he knows it. Given another opportunity, he lies again and he knows he's lying. Can a believer do that?

People say, "No way. He can't be a believer and lie like that, maybe once, but surely not twice."

 Billy Graham and Charles Templeton were partnered in evangelistic campaigns in the late 1940's, both fast friends who spoke in tandem to great crowds. But Graham wasn't the big draw. It was Templeton who drew the crowds that Billy also spoke to. The big name was Charles Templeton. He made the headlines, not Billy. Billy was second fiddle. People came to hear the first oratorical fiddle and that was Templeton. Templeton was the man. He knew it, the crowds knew it, and Billy Graham knew it.

One day, Charles calls Billy to a meeting and tells him, "I no longer believe the Bible. Jesus was the the best there ever was, but He wasn't God. I'm quitting, resigning everything. I'm going to school, to Princeton, if they'll take me, so I can study the new theologians. Come with me, Billy."

And Templeton, the best there was at the time, did just that. He denied Christ and Him crucified, denied His deity, His resurrection, all the miracles, and headed for groves of academe, where he studied the neoorthodox theologians, especially the German ones.

Wait a minute! All that time drawing great crowds, all that time preaching the gospel. What a fake! He must never have really believed. A true believer couldn't ever deny Christ, could he?

The scenarios above are real events. The Christian who killed his finance in his driveway joins two believers who murdered someone--Moses and David ("a man after God's own heart"). The man who lied twice and compromised his wife by doing so? You know him, that was Abraham, the man the Bible calls, "The friend of God."Believers one and all.

And Templeton? He joins Demas, co-worker of Paul, who deserted the faith, and left Paul in the lurch. Why? Because his love "for this present world" overwhelmed his love for Christ (II Timothy 4:10). It happens all the time. Send a Christian kid to college and he comes back spouting atheism.

We can add David's son, Solomon, to the bad boy list. If you want a sordid snapshot of the last years of King Solomon, author of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, read I Kings 11:1-8 and note his turning into a rampaging polygamist which led to his prostration before Chemosh, Molech, and other gods and goddesses of stone. Solomon, Demas, and Templeton are in the line up of those who left the faith.

Can a "real" Christian do any of those things, really?

Of course! A Christian can do anything he wants to do. Sure, he pays a price, a high one, like jail, for example, and/or divine discipline and self-induced misery, misery like Abraham endured when his wife wound up the personal property for another man's pleasure because he lied and put her in that position. (You can read the rest of the story in Genesis 12 and Genesis 20.)

Peter turned coward and denied the faith. (John 18 and Galatians 2) In the Galatians text, when Paul confronted Peter, he didn't say, "Peter, you must never have really believed, or you wouldn't be doing what you're doing."
Nobody says of the liar Abraham, and the murderers Moses, David, and the deserters, Solomon and Demas, and the coward Peter, "They must not have really believed."

Let's back up.

 Here's a confession, a mea culpa: I don't drink eight glasses of water a day. Maybe some days I do, but not many. I don't exercise 150 minutes a week; there are just too many other things that need to be done. Sometimes I get in an hour a week. Strength training? That means a gymnasium and people sweat in those places. Fruits and vegetables? Fruits and vegetables are rabbit food; I consider chocolate a food group.

Nonetheless, I really believe that I should drink eight glasses of water a day and walk 150 minutes a week. I believe I should eat a prescribed number of servings of broccoli, spinach, and turnip greens (the nastiest vegetable known to man) and two cups of apples and oranges a day.
You can say, "You're inconsistent. You believe those things, but you don't do them," and you'd be right. But you can't say that I don't trust the study of the Mayo Clinic or that I don't believe the doctor with the poor bedside manner is right when he prescribes eight boring glasses of water a day. I do. My being inconsistent doesn't mean that I don't believe what they're saying.

Are you always consistent with what you believe? Do you believe the highway speed limit is 55? Do you go 60? 70? 80? If so, you're inconsistent with what you believe, but you believe the posted speed limit. Your inconsistency doesn't mean you don't believe the signs on the Interstate.
Our inconsistencies, even severe ones, blatant ones, heinous ones, don't mean that we never trusted Christ. Our inconsistencies mean that, during that time, we're being carnal, living like the unbeliever. Those patterns of carnality don't mean we're lost or didn't believe the gospel in the first place.

(What about Templeton's denial of the faith? Did that mean he was lost?--see Romans 11:29 and II Timothy 2:13.)

Always remember: It's the Object of your faith that saves you and keeps you saved, not the consistency of your faith (Hebrews 10:10, 14).