Food Over Family

Quick cultural observation:

As a real estate agent, I can’t help but notice that dining rooms are no longer in vogue.  If families no longer need/want a room for dining, then it would be natural to assume that eating is becoming passe…

…or not.

We are eating, but I would have to guess that the new visual focus of a group of eaters is the television, not each other.  Yes, you could make an argument that this has been happening since the 50s, but at least here in Sacramento, CA, homes built as recently as the early 90s still have dining rooms.

So in 2014 we still eat; we’re just allowing relationship to fall into the background, perhaps.

It all makes makes me kinda sad.  It seems something of the evening routine needs to be redeemed…thanks to TiVo, this shouldn’t be too hard!

Share a meal with loved ones this week, and comment here how it went!

Receive. Reject. Redeem. Repeat. (If Hitler…Bad Idea Part 2 of 2)

In a culture that polarizes almost everything, it’s understandable when someone is trying to grapple with a new Jesus-centric worldview and attempts to sort all areas of life into good and bad.

This is, I believe, what is going on when some Christians get rid of books, movies and music that aren’t explicitly “Christian” (whatever that means) and start buying media that is.  There’s just one problem with that: the Bible.

The story of God is not one of Him sorting the good people and bad people into two separate piles and burning one.  The story is of an entire race(human) rebelling against God and being “bad.”  It’s a story of that merciful God dying in the place of the guilty to create a third pile:  the redeemed.

So when I come to Christ, what do I do with music?  Receive it as it is?  Reject it?  Or redeem it?

When I come to Christ, what do I do with sex?  Receive it as it has been?  Abstain altogether?  Or redeem it?

What about food?  Before I knew Christ, I was a glutton.  Do I keep eating as I have?  Do I never eat again?  Or do I use it as something to sustain the body that God has entrusted to me?

You could summarize the Christian life, if you wanted to, into these four words:

RECEIVE.  REJECT.  REDEEM.  REPEAT.