​For the past couple of weeks I have been dealing with what the doctor called type B flue.  I don’t know what that really means but all I can say is that it didn’t feel like the flue.  Usually when I get the flue I don’t want to do anything but sleep.  I have no appetite, I have no energy.  This flue I had little to no energy but I wanted to eat all the time.  What made this worst is the doctor prescribed me a medication that made me hyper and increased my appetite. 

As I was reading the Bible the other day I couldn’t help to think about how much I wanted to eat while I was sick.  Then I thought, why do I not want to “eat” the word of God as much as I want to eat food.  This thought took me back to John 6. 

Jesus had fed four-thousand people the day before.  The next day the people went looking for him and found him on the other side of the lake.  He knew why they came, they wanted food.  This caused Jesus to challenge them and opened the topic about himself, which they need to consume his body and blood to have eternal life.  This teaching was too difficult for them to understand and many of them discontinued to follow him. 

As Christians our desire should to come to a deeper personal relationship with Jesus.  We are called to abide in him because he wants to abide in us (John 15).  As we abide in him more we then become fruitful and this brings glory to the Father. 

As I continued to think about our relationship with food today I couldn’t help to notice how covenant food is for us.  Think about not even 60 years ago fast food restaurants were not as numerous as they are today.  Even in the smallest towns you will find a McDonald’s and maybe a pizza place of some sort.  With even the slightest feeling of hunger but not the willingness to prepare a meal for ourselves we can simply get up and run down the road to pick-up a #1 in the drive through.  College students completely understand this behavior. 

There was a time that anything a person desired to eat had to be grown and prepared right at home.  There was not running to the store to get something quick.  The time and energy that it took to grow a garden and livestock made eating a meal much more grateful.
Scripture tells us that the desire for the Lord’s word, his wisdom, his instruction is greater than gold and silver and costly jewels.  Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to a man who was walking through a field and came upon a chest full of treasure.  He then covers it, sales all he owns to make the money needed to purchase the field and does so. 

I couldn’t help to think about how easy we can access information on any subject in the world yet thought do we know any more than we did.  A common attitude is that if the information isn’t in 140 characters or less their attention has been lost.  If they cannot watch it on Youtube then there is no interest. 

For the Christian I have to ask, is this our attitude to God’s word?  Are we really devoted to knowing the Lord or is his merely an idea that can be gained as information from google?  To search for costly jewels, gold, and silver one needs to spend some considerable amount of time digging.  We can’t simply skip our feet across the ground in hopes to find something of value.  We really need to get into the dirt of the matter.  Sometimes you have to use different tools to search for what it is you desire.  Why can this not be the same attitude?

Allow me to go another direction with this, more towards teens.  How much time do you spend on your devise, iPhone or Galaxy, Xbox or PlayStation 4?  How important is it to you that your “friends” like your comments and post on Facebook, Snap Chat, or Instagram?  What juicy gossip are you looking for on social media?  How important is it for you to make it to the next level or make the next achievement on your games?  Why not take that same amount of time and desire in those things and place them in coming to know Jesus, if you call yourself a Christian? 
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Let’s face the facts, we live in an easy access society today and we desire instant gratification for our desires.  Maybe that is the reason relationships are merely superficial.  Maybe that is why we do not really listen to people when they talk to us.  Time means nothing to us, our hunger for things needs to be satisfied and when it is we forget what we purchased to gratify our appetite. If not what we got perhaps what it tasted like.  Real relationships take time.  Something worth investing in takes time.  What we need to also realize is that is our hunger for what we want really of value or are we merely seeking to for a quick solution to our “problem”? 

​(An opinion piece)
 
            What’s going on with the church today?  Watch the news or check out the social media page and you will find that there is a fight in our country for religious liberty.  Why should there be a fight for religious liberty today?  Doesn’t the United States Constitution afford the people in our nation to worship freely and prohibits the restriction of assembling together?  How often are we seeing an atheist group rising up to fight against the use of the Bible being used in public school as a lesson tool?  Let alone a class merely on the Bible as if there is an attempt to turn children into Christians through brainwashing. 
            I recall back in the mid-70’s as I was in the first grade when my teacher would line us young students up for lunch.  Before we walked out the class door we would recite, “God is good, God is great and thank him for our food.  By his hands we all are fed, give us Lord our daily bread. Amen!”  Not even after a decade went by that all of this came to a stop.  Where did the church go?  Today we see less Bibles in school but more are in the prison systems.  There is something backwards with that picture. 
            The church has not gone anywhere.  The problem is what has not going on in the church and what has been substituted for Spirituality and Christian discipline.  Bottom line, the church has become biblically illiterate. When I say biblically illiterate I include theology, biblical and church history, apologetics, hermeneutics, the biblical languages, and the true meaning and purpose of discipleship and evangelism.  When I spend time with a Christian I can tell in a very short period of time that much of what they believe in is due to not what they have read in the Bible but what they have heard from the pulpit. 
            I grew up believing in many theological ideas, bottle fed this things.  I did not know any other way to think or believe about the Bible.  Not till I was in my late teens and early adult age did I seriously start sitting down and getting into the Bible. I also picked up different books on Spirituality and Christian thought.  As I continued to search I began to change much of what I was taught growing up.  As I started to attend Christian college I find out that there were many people who thought as I do and many of them go as far back as the second and third century.  I also found out that many of the ideas and thoughts I had come with names and titles. 
            I wouldn’t consider myself to a very intellectual person.  I am not a Ph.D. level thinker or writer but I cannot help to think, if a guy such as myself could come out of the traditional way of thinking as the church does then why are there not more people doing the same?  I strongly believe people are too comfortable in their traditions and presuppositions to really care.  And to object to their views will come with a strong criticism and insult.  I have been called Pharisee and non-believer just to name a couple. 
            All I know is that during the time Jesus was doing ministry the popular majority highly objected to the views and teachings of Jesus.  He was going against the grain of tradition and teaching.  He went back to the basics and brought them to light as they should have been seen. The Scribes and Pharisees were more concerned about their position in society than they were about obeying what God commanded and they used their knowledge to trap the people.  Jesus accused the Pharisees that anyone who followed them were twice as likely to end up in hell as they were. 
            I cannot help to wonder, has the church become very much the same as the Pharisees and Scribes of the first century?  Church leaders have mandated that their theological views are more correct than others, placing their theology before the Scriptures to justify their teachings.  Rather than teaching the church to be more Christlike and live in the world, the focus is to be more Calvin and fight against the Arminian heresy.  The idea is to follow after the more popular teaching, especially when Hollywood can turn it into a movie.  Congregants are less likely to go out to make disciples as they expect the senior pastor to do all the evangelism.  Then turning discipleship into a simply 12 Sunday morning class that new believers must attend before they can be connected in the church.  There is less focus on developing relationship and more time spent on developing programs.  The youth view God and Jesus as an idea that favors their emotions rather than helping them grow into having a deeper meaningful relationship with Christ and how to share and defend their faith. 
            The root to these problems, biblical illiteracy and all that goes along with it.