A Sorry Tale

There he is: the big, head-of-household guy, waiting for dinner. What’s on the menu?

What he likes, of course. Well, what’s that? Meat, potatoes, any vegetable as long as it’s corn. Green beans? Nope. Carrots? Are you kidding? Broccoli? NEVER LET IT SET FOOT IN THIS HOUSE.  Salad?

I said corn. I meant corn. Only corn.

Pre-school self-will trapped in Adulthood

This is the (true life) sad result of parents who lost the two-year-old food challenge, because they lost the crawler control challenge, because they lost the infant contentment challenge because they wasted the parental preparation opportunity to nurture the anticipate, attend, and assure obedience psyche before it was too late.

The result of all those parental losses is a grown man earning a living, paying a mortgage, fathering his own children, leading them in family devotions (just likely NOT spending too much time on Genesis 1: 28-29), refusing to eat any vegetable other than corn.

Doesn’t some element of progressive sanctification deal with such a lopsided caricature of responsible eating as this? Does such a person ever feel guilty or ashamed about his lack of faith that God could sustain his manly self  if he swallowed a pea? How seriously could such a person evaluate surrendering for the mission field? Where is his food explorer spirit? How on earth can he lead his children where he has never gone? Forget Somalia or Kurdistan. He can’t even take them to the salad bar. Where is the chagrin when such pre-school behavior thrives in adulthood?

Likely as not, it is buried under the ponderous weight of control. First parents, now wife, never self.

Honestly, how creative do you think he can be in his spiritual meal preparation?

The Loss to Spiritual Maturity

The sorry-ness of this tale is not that he is missing out on taste sensations from the botanical world. The sorry-ness is that another adult is living his life unwilling to change where he is wanting. He has determined his standard, not submitted to God’s. Whether drunken, addicted, raging, lusting, lying, lazing, or not eating, it all points to being one’s own boss, rather than a yielded servant. No matter how often one shows up in church.

How lopsided is your physical food life? How lopsided is your spiritual food life? How lopsided will the next generation be because of you? Go eat a brussel sprout and mend your ways.