MTP30 – No Additives

Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar. (Proverbs 30:5-6)

Food and drink today are not what they used to be.  I cannot imagine people of my grandparents’ generation being too bothered about whether their food was genetically modified.  I struggle to even see my mother taking on board all the information about E numbers and how many calories are in the meals that she’s about to  eat.  It certainly wasn’t like it used to be back in the day, little concern for all those kind of things.  It’s changed out of all recognition now and many people are going to the nth degree to ensure their produce is just right, untainted by the many chemicals that man as put in.

For all their concern, though, you can understand the thinking behind the thing in the first place.  Someone had a food type and discovered that if they added an ingredient it would enhance the taste, from there experiments continued and it was only a matter of time before man’s insatiable desire to explore would include his chemicals that he came up with.  I mean how on earth did we get Coca-Cola?

Those concoctions and mixtures and resulting enhancements of the food making and enjoying experience has brought much joy to many a hungry stomach.  Sure your hand didn’t make it, but as long as the processed food tastes of life of some sort then we’re cool with that.  Especially when you don’t have the time to get in the kitchen and go through that laborious effort to rustle up something, then it’s great to have those ready-made meals available to slap into the microwave and in a matter of a few minutes, dinner is served.

The problem with additives, though, is that in as much as they aim to bring out, add, enhance the taste, this is usually at the cost of the integrity of the original food substance.  In as much as you want to believe it’s harmless, the full effects of tampering with and adding to what is already available are yet to be fully seen.  That’s part of the reason why the fuss is made by the GM foods and the fight for the organic, because there’s something about the substance that has not been tampered that lends itself to some sort of safe approach to it.  It’s real because it’s been untouched, we know where it’s come from.  When we add to something the unknown factor can lead to mistrust and suspicion.

That same level of mistrust and suspicion needs to be heightened when it comes to approaching the Word of God.

Yet just as with many of the foods of today we feel the need to help God’s Word out.  It’s not clear enough for us, so we need someone to clarify it for us and in the clarifying it needs a bit of help to make it more palatable to a modern audience in case anyone gets offended.  It’s as though we literally cannot leave well enough alone and we must needs add just our little spin on it, just our perspective that will help enrich what the word says.  That way we can have more ownership of it, we feel as if it belongs to us now, because it has our mark of approval on it.

So God will say something about not being covetous, but we need to help him out and say there’s nothing wrong with desiring to be rich, and if you want to make millions then in the business world you have to do what it takes and that’s more than justifiable because there’s nothing wrong with aiming for that kind of thing.  So we add our spin, we add our bit and satiate our own desire.  It’s literally like what was flat before, has now risen in the oven and looks far more appetising.

Jesus warned his disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees, and today there’s plenty of leaven knocking about the place.  Little subtle hints here, church styles there, popular doctrines here and trendy buzz niches happening over there.  They take God’s Word, but they add their own little thing to follow to be cool with God, as if God’s Word is not enough.  Yet however appealing and authoritative these additives may appear, they are harmful to the integrity of what God is saying and can prove to be deadly.

That’s why there’s value and importance of sticking just to what He said – hard in practice, but always worthwhile, because what you don’t want is to be rebuked by God Himself and found a liar.  It’s all about the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth of God’s Word – no colourings, preservatives, flavourings or additives.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd