Why Broccoli for Twinkies?

I've been through a lot in my life, but I think that's no different than everyone else out there. All of us have shared experiences and unique experiences that have shaped how we look at ourselves and the world around us. Our friends, family, teachers, colleagues, politicians, athletes, newspapers, reverends, commercials, movies, TV shows, music, video games, books, magazines...these are just some of the voices that influence us in our daily lives and we have learned from them and so many more how to interpret the world. Without any other guidance, these influences begin to shape the foundation of our thought. With so many voices out there, and a lot of them contradictory, it's ultimately up to us to decide what's correct and what is not.

With no other framework than our own intuition, we begin to test the various ideas against what we experience. Those ideas that ring true become a foundational block for how we will now interpret these and similar situations, people, places and experiences in the future. Reality gets filtered through that lens, right or wrong, so now instead of the next thing being just filtered through our intuition, it now includes this new lens. And on and on we go. Very quickly, reality slips away. We begin to build up fears, desires, wants and 'needs' as additional elements of our thought process and tell ourselves stories about how things "should" be. Our emotional response to things then becomes the basis for how we now continue to interpret our lives, ourselves and the world around us and anything that does not jive with that protective shell raises strong emotional objections within us. Commercials, movies, tv shows and the like play on these base emotions, desires and fears. Advertising agencies spend millions to study the ways in which people think and how they can influence us to do something, purchase something, or think a certain way that will benefit their clients. The unsuspecting recipient of this barrage of propaganda is left to now have to interpret these things. The younger and/or less experienced we are, the more effectively these messages can penetrate and become another building block by which we continue to develop our view of self and the world -- often with catastrophic emotional effects. What's worse is, knowing that this is how we interpret the world, we would then have to break down everything we think we know about ourselves and the world if we are to make a shift in thinking. Instead, sure of our convictions, we begin to defend our positions based on the foundation and resulting wall we've established for ourselves, even if we do not consciously recognize that we're doing so. And all too often, we have built for ourselves such a stronghold of warped reality, we can no longer see truth, if we ever had a chance of doing so from the beginning.

So of course I am no different from the rest. And it has taken many years and continuous work to deconstruct my own 'reality'. As a note, I am going to speak on things from a biblical point of view at times. I did not have a religious grounding growing up but through much soul searching, prayer, research and critical thought, discovered it as a source of truth for me, outside of me, which I found key to helping me break down the wall of false reality that was the framework of my perspective. I say that because I'm not here to debate the bible, I'm not here to force you to take my religious stance on any matter. Whether my foundational position is also yours is not as important as your willingness to hear the message that underpins my thoughts and then explore it yourself because at the end of the day, I am just another one of those voices attempting to influence your thought, right? I am open to that same exploration. But what I'm not interested in is dissecting unimportant details of semantics or dates, or carbon dating, or who wrote what or whatever else distracts us from the point of this blog and the point of life.

So what is the point of this blog? Having said all that I have already, I can explain Broccoli for Twinkies.  Some of you might have heard of Morgan Spurlock. He made a documentary a while back called "Supersize Me" which was an amazing exploration of the effects of fast food on the human body. Well, one of the ways we are influenced and so form opinions about things is how we eat. There are more avenues of influence that affect this topic than any other we experience on a daily basis. In fact, I submit that food is perhaps the most debated, researched, advertised, polarizing topic on the planet. It hits us where it counts, right in our gut. Research one week condemns a food, next week declares it the best way to ward off cancer. Food companies rave about their product's one ingredient that has been shown to reduce blood pressure, while conveniently failing to mention the other 100 ingredients that lead to other problems. Milk companies have told us for years about the benefits of cow's milk as a nutritional, calcium enriching staple of any household, while failing to recognize the many studies that say milk, for many reasons, including chemicals given to the cows, processing, and the very nature of what cow's milk is supposed to be for, is a poor choice of nutrition for anyone unless you are a baby cow. Certainly, cow's milk could be a delicacy, meaning not something you have regularly, but treated more like a dessert. But that is not what the milk industry wants you to believe, and it's no surprise, they have much invested. But I digress. I'll save the milk topic for another day. But it is a perfect example of a twinkie.

Twinkies, or pick any other dessert you adore, usually have very little value to our bodies. They are full of things that will not benefit us. But emotionally, we love them. They satisfy us on a number of levels. We crave them, we spend money, time and thought on them. We begin to associate happiness and fun with them and if we are not careful, they are what we run to when we are feeling down or tired or in some way unsatisfied. The danger is very real, and what's worse, the trend towards other behaviors that come of this one desire begin to crop up. Perhaps you eat less of the things you should be eating. Perhaps because you're eating all of this junk, you don't feel as energized, and stop exercising as much. Or maybe due to the changes occurring in your body, you feel more stressed, more agitated and your relationships become affected and/or you begin to have an increasingly poor self image. These are not just made up scenarios, they are all too common, and if you have children, you can see the physical and emotional changes play out before your eyes with even the smallest amount of sugar.

But what happens is we do not recognize that there is a problem, and of course, if we are feeling poorly, we run all the harder to the twinkies in our lives. What would happen if all of a sudden we were told there were no more twinkies? What would we do? Probably go after the next best substitute, right? But just imagine for a minute that you literally could not eat anything other than deep green lettuce, or broccoli? Raw. Straight from God's green earth. It would probably make you sick to even consider it. You may be getting a little queazy right now as you read this. But here's the honest truth. That is exactly what we should be doing. In our house, we've begun to talk about food in a different way lately. We talk about God's food. Meaning as God himself put it:

Genesis 1:29-31 - the sixth day
Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground--everything that has the breath of life in it--I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

Real food. Not the sugar-laiden, salt saturated, fried, pre-formed sit on the shelf for two years and it's still good kind of "food" we find in most aisles of the grocery store, but actual earth-produced and unprocessed food that nourishes the very soul. And when we do that, at first, we don't like it, do we? We're out of our comfort zone. We found "happiness" in satisfying our desires, wants and needs. Now we are forced to confront reality and the base aspects within all of us that crave and claw to satisfy our sinful nature. No journey that results in change is found on a perfectly well groomed road. Change is difficult and requires conviction, patience, perseverance, and trust that where I'm going will be better than where I came from. I know in myself that I cannot do this alone. It is impossible for me to even SEE the wall I have built up, let alone be capable of tearing it down. Only God can do that, and the saving power of Jesus Christ. For through him alone, do I begin to walk on that path. Because if I rely on myself, as well intentioned as I might be, I will eventually, slowly, find myself right back behind that wall. I have felt that transformation, and it has provided for me levels of peace, passion, conviction, joy, comfort, and the will to persevere that I had never before thought possible. And as we eat the broccoli and it begins to nourish us, suddenly we feel more energized. We drop weight. The cravings cease over time and new enjoyment and satisfaction is found in our nourishing food. Our eyes are opened to the destructive and powerful hold our old way of thinking had over us. We begin to see just a little more clearly and think more truthfully. And we are truly happy and satisfied because it comes from God himself. There is nothing more liberating.

Now, this is a metaphor of course for all twinkies in our lives that are slowly killing us and a call to have the courage to pull off our blinders and reveal those things in us with a perspective of truth seeking and love and discovery as we explore how we can trade them for the true God-given broccoli that will nourish us to our very soul.

Welcome, let's get started!

Welcome to Broccoli for Twinkies. I like so many of you have become saturated in the world we live in. This blog is an exploration of some of the things that control us, manipulate the way we think, determine our idea about what is right or wrong, good or bad, liked or disliked, and how the very root of all of our problems, in my humble opinion, is that we have strayed mightily and to an increasing degree from the foundation of our existence and become immersed in our wants and needs to the detriment of everything else, without even realizing it. I look forward to exploring these ideas with you.