Devil's Food Cake

I have been thinking a lot about food lately.

Adrien is pregnant, and is doing a great job of eating healthy, not too many cravings for bad things, but obviously eating more than she used to.

In all the predictions of the baby's gender, miscellaneous well wishes, and words of advice, I have been repeatedly told about how I will also gain "sympathy weight."

Sympathy weight sounds great. That sounds like, if I am going to be a good and loving husband, then out of solidarity to Adrien, I need to match her gain pound for pound. It's expected and no one can blame me. After all, it's sympathy weight.

So I have rather subconsciously allowed myself to eat more for the past six months, feeling like it was the inevitability of being an involved and sympathetic father to be. However, as Adrien has been eating fruit and salads, I have been eating cheeseburgers and Chinese food.

The end result is that I am back in the land of the 200 pounders.

Like I said, all of this got me thinking about food. Why we eat so much of it, why we love it when we eat it, but we talk about it with such a sense of shame. We know what food is bad for us. We know what food is good for us. We know when we've had too much. None of that changes our eating habits, though. None of it changes our lifestyle.

Much of my view toward food is a guilt ridden sense of bondage. I bargain and rationalize with myself about how it's okay to eat this food in a way that I know that I shouldn't.

"Christmas is only once a year!"

"You have to have an Easter feast!"

"My friend only comes into town every few years, and we need to eat wings like we used to!"

"It's a graduation party - I need to eat some of their food to show to be a good guest."

"I love Devil’s Food Cake, and nobody makes Devil’s Food Cake like Francis! I have to have some!"

I know that eating the kind of food that I do in the amounts that I do is bad for me. It makes me tired. It makes me feel lousy. It makes me feel out of shape. It makes me have less energy.

And yet I still do it.

The short term thrill of eating things that are bad for me outweighs my clear knowledge of what will happen to me in the long term.

Not only that, but I sometimes get inclined to blame the food for me acting this way.

"What do you mean a Klondike bar is 50% of my total recommended fat intake for the day?!? Why would they do that! They should make that writing bigger!"

Each week, I make a resolution for this to be the day that I start eating right, start exercising, and get better control of my eating habits. Sometimes that lasts for a few days, sometimes only for a few hours.

A few years ago, it lasted for about 9 months. I started eating better, started walking almost every day, and I lost 40 pounds in about 2 months, going from 215 to 175. As soon as I got to 175 (what I was shooting for), I let up a bit, allowing myself treats here and there. I immediately gained 15 pounds back, and eventually working back up to 195. And just last week, I finally jumped back over the edge of 200.

My relationship with my weight is in a lot of ways a parallel to the relationship we have with sin.

We know the things that are bad for us, and yet we still do them.

Food is not inherently bad – it’s inherently good.

Our behavior with it is what leads us to take what is good and twist it to harm us.

Too much food, our misuse and abuse of it, is what leads us to harm.

The same is true of most sins:

Romantic Love is good, but can lead to lust.

Genuine Pride can be good, but can lead to arrogance and self-righteousness

Loyalty is good, but can lead to prejudice and intolerance.

We have our minds set on pleasing ourselves, even when we know that our behavior is hurting us.

Romans 8 says that "there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus," and that the Spirit of God "lives in us."

The Sprit of God lives in us. We are in Christ.

Do we live like we are in Christ though?

What is our response to our freedom from sin, freedom from condemnation?

More sin?

Freedom from sin doesn’t mean that we don’t ever sin anymore. It means that we are free from our bondage to it. We don’t have to live that way anymore.

We have no excuse. We know better.

We know what sin is. We can recognize it clearly. We are set free from it.

Is our response then to live with our minds set on pleasing God or pleasing ourselves?

Do we have the strength to look beyond our own selfish motivations?

Or do we simply want to have another piece of cake?