Jesus used some of His strongest and most rebuking language not for prostitutes or the soldiers who nailed Him to the cross or swindling tax collectors but rather for the social elite of His day and their strict adherence to nit-picky laws, rules, and traditions. They were quick to tithe their 'mint and dill and cumin' and to chew out the disciples for not washing their hands or fasting and to decry the horrifying fact that someone's grievous disease or disability had been healed on the Sabbath but neglected the 'weightier' matters of the law, namely to 'love justice, seek mercy, and walk humbly with your God.' And some things haven't changed all that much, or rather things have cycled back to the senseless asceticism of those days, wherein Men thought a list of rules could save them, but rather made them 'white-washed tombs,' pretty without but inside full of filth and rottenness. Our morals have atrophied in all things save our menu.
Sadly I've been haunting gluten and dairy free recipe blogs searching for alternatives to old favorites, due to severe dietary sensitivities, I can't consume them anymore. What fascinates and horrifies me is the comments section. It is hard enough getting edible results leaving out the wheat, butter, cheese...but the list of dietary sins or no-nos is staggering and I'm left wondering what can I eat? Just look at your salt container or any random food container in your fridge or cupboard, it lists proudly what it doesn't contain but who cares that my salt is gluten free, I want to know what it does contain! By that reasoning, jelly beans are healthy because they are fat free, vegan, cholesterol free...and maybe even a vegetable. I still love the concept of organic Oreos, as if that somehow makes them even remotely healthy! But everyone in the comments has their own ideas of what you cannot eat: fat, sugar, carbs, starch, animal products, cholesterol, salt, genetically modified, non-organic, grains, tree nuts, coconut, vegetable oils, hydrogenated fats, artificial anything, preservatives...and then they change the recipe and complain it doesn't turn out. What are we left with but soggy rocks when we won't allow the neighbors to put the wrong things in our stone soup!
And why the moral outrage over a disagreement on food? I will admit I get a little annoyed with people who choose to eat a certain way and then complain that they miss whatever they are intentionally abstaining from, especially when they are being rude to others about it. I feel rather embarrassed going out to eat, at potlucks, and friends' houses because there are so few things I can eat 'out' though at home I can make almost anything (except stuffed crust pizza, fake cheese just doesn't right that grievous wrong!). Then to hear someone making a big deal out of the fact that they can't eat X because it is their fad diet of the month and ruining everyone else's dinner/enjoyment of the event thereby really gets my proverbial goat. If you want to be a vegan, by all means do so, but don't write scathing reviews on a recipe that heartlessly includes eggs as a necessary ingredient or make your hostess miserable by telling her how horrible she is to not center the entire menu around you and your preferences. A little kindness, or at least tact, would do far more to improve the world than eliminating X, Y, or Z from our cultural menu. We do not differ in the least from the Pharisees who were so put out that a crippled man was made to walk on the wrong day of the week. We hear much about justice nowadays, which in itself is no bad thing, but we cannot have justice without kindness (aka mercy) and humility, but it seems we are still determined to crucify anyone and everyone who disagrees with us, especially over dietary matters, or is so overbold as to tell us that perhaps our feelings and opinions are not the most important thing in the world or beyond it. Jesus tried to tell us in His day, but even two millennia later, will anybody listen?
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