This afternoon as I began to make my Lebanon bologna sandwich, I had a bit of an epiphany. I hesitate to over-spiritualize it by saying that God gave me this epiphany, but maybe He did, in which case I certainly don’t want to take credit for it.
But at any rate, I got to thinking about different kinds of bread and how as a kid, white bread was the bread of choice and wheat bread, as a rule, was simply intolerable. Mom would want us to eat wheat bread and we would throw a fit, and she would occasionally give in. This, of course, was before we came to realize that she wanted us to eat the wheat bread because she loves us and wheat is better for us than white.
My epiphany, though, had to do with plain wheat bread, the bland economy stuff, and how this so closely relates to Christian spirituality.
Life without Christ, the epiphany goes, is like eating white bread. Non-Christians, all too often, see Christians sitting around with straight faces, eating their bland economy wheat bread, not because it is so good for them or so enjoyable but simply because it is not as bad for them (and this difference is one worth meditating on). Bland economy wheat bread is very similar to white bread, but just not quite as desirable. A lot of people who eat bland economy wheat bread would rather be eating white bread and many, unsurprisingly, end up reverting to their old ways sooner or later, unconvinced that the alternative is really worth it.
Let me suggest to you, however, that bland economy wheat bread does not represent real Christianity.
Real Christianity, the kind of life God intends for us, is like that 12-grain bread with flax, whatever flax is. We get stuck in a rut when we focus on keeping people from eating white bread, while offering them nothing worth desiring since the faith we embrace and espouse merely amounts to a bland economy wheat kind of faith.
Twelve-grain flax wheat bread is wholesome. It is good. It is good for us, and for all who give it a shot. Rather than white bread that lacks substance and unlike flavorless bland economy wheat, embracing the Way, the Truth and the Life means feasting on a rich and savory kind of bread, one laden with all kinds of little twists and turns and surprises in the form of kernels the size of mustard seeds, which Jesus happens to speak of in reference to the Kingdom of God.
I think of what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “When perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, I ate childish kinds of bread. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me” (I Cor. 13:10-11, TJHV, emphasis mine). OK, so this translation of the Bible hasn’t officially been published, and scholars would rightly take issue with translation liberties for the sake of effect, but you get the point, and I’m of the opinion that while my extra little phrase was not inspired by the Spirit the same way the rest of the Bible is, it is also not entirely out of place either.
When I shared this epiphany of mine with a couple of friends today, one commented that she sometimes finds herself wanting to eat white bread, even though she knows it’s not good for her. Another friend said she rarely ever eats white bread anymore, because it lacks taste and once you have tried the good stuff there is no going back.
There is an interesting paradox here, in that we as followers of Christ have tasted the 12-grain wheat and flax bread. We know it is much better than the white bread we craved as children. And yet all of us, spiritually speaking, in one way or another make decisions more often than we would like to admit to revert to what is lacking, instead of feasting on what is true and right and, well, good.
This is what it means, I suggest, to live in the tension of the already and the not yet. We have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved someday. God is redeeming us.
I also think it has a lot to do with what Donald Miller means when he says that God is fathering us, and (if I dare say it without sounding like God is a She) God is mothering us as well. We, in our immaturity and small-mindedness, demand white bread and insist that everything else is for the dogs. God is like Mom, packing our lunch in the morning before school, and though we wouldn’t guess it when He denies us what we want, He desires for us what is really best, and He has every intention of giving it to us. And remarkably, He gives us a taste for it in the process.
God, in His grace, knows the bent of our hearts and offers us a brown paper bag with our name written on it in cursive with a Sharpie. And when we open the bag, we will discover that it contains, among other things, a Lebanon bologna sandwich on 12-grain wheat and flax bread, and a note that says, patiently, lovingly, yet firmly: Taste and see. I am good.
