Cocoa is the New Coffee

I don’t want to encourage anyone in error, but I believe the Mormons are right about one thing: caffeine is bad news.

God gave me a strong habit of daily prayer in tongues, and the more I did it, the less caffeine I was able to tolerate. I suppose that makes sense. Caffeine is a drug, and we use drugs to compensate for a lack of blessings. If you’re in line with God’s will, you won’t need drugs to get you out of bed in the morning or get you through the workday.

It’s funny how used we have gotten to taking this powerful drug. It’s as if it’s completely normal to get up in the morning and pour yourself full of something that speeds up your heart rate, jacks up your alertness, raises your blood pressure, and increases your ability to focus. Speed and cocaine do the same things, only better, and no one thinks it’s normal to start the day with several lines of blow.

It’s also funny that people don’t see caffeine as a powerful drug. Eat a tablespoon of instant coffee and see if it’s powerful or not. It will have you climbing the walls. You can overdose on caffeine. People have done it.

Every so often, I go to McDonald’s and get McMuffins to take home. I run out of the stuff I usually eat for breakfast. Problem: the McDonald’s kids don’t make decaf.

McDonald’s doesn’t care about decaf. It’s an afterthought. They don’t police their employees to make sure they have fresh decaf ready all the time. When you order decaf at McDonald’s, you will almost always get it one of three ways: 1. hot and stale and smelling like cat pee, 2. cold and stale, or 3. not decaf. It’s virtually impossible to get real, fresh decaf unless you ask for it and wait a long time for it.

The kids don’t care. They think you can’t tell the difference between decaf and regular. They just want you out of their hair. They’ll give you whatever looks like decaf just to make you shut up. They give me regular coffee all the time. Complaining to the kids doesn’t help, because McDonald’s employees don’t care at all about the quality of their work. Complaining to corporate doesn’t work, because McDonald’s only cares if a franchise makes money on the whole. They’re not going to go in and knock heads just because a few of their customers can’t get a decent beverage.

People who run McDonald’s stores don’t hang around keeping an eye on things. They buy franchises because they want money machines they don’t have to supervise. If you want an owner who cares about your happiness, you’ll have to go to Chick-fil-A, where you will be treated like visiting royalty every time.

There are no Chick-fil-As near me.

Yesterday the McDonald’s kids drugged me again. I was complaining about the perpetual decaf issues. They give you hot food, and then they tell you to wait for decaf to brew. Then you have cold food. They could tell I was not happy, so they drugged me.

I was suspicious, because the fresh “decaf” came out as soon as I complained, but I figured I would be okay. If it was regular, I would take two Benadryls to help me sleep.

I knew something was wrong after I drank the coffee, because I felt too good afterward. I was full of energy and caffeine euphoria. After that, I got what you always get when a stimulant wears off. I was cranky and somewhat depressed. I felt bad for hours.

I went to the corporate website and complained, but I knew I was wasting my time. From now on, I’ll have cocoa, and I’ll make it myself. Coffee makes McDonald’s a lot of money, because it’s practically free to make, but they’ll have to get by without my coffee money.

It’s weird, because all the other restaurants manage to serve people decaf. Denny’s never gets it wrong. The local deli never gets it wrong. Never. It’s not that hard to get right.

Cocoa contains a miniscule amount of caffeine, plus a chemical called theobromine which does not cause caffeine problems. Good enough. And the milk is good for my bones. I drink it every day anyway.

A long time ago, God gave me this: “Caffeine destroys peace.” Yesterday helped me understand how right he is. I was annoyed about things that shouldn’t have annoyed me at all. I was annoyed about being annoyed. I didn’t want it. I fought it. I didn’t want to be cross with innocent people.

I thought about the millions of people in this county who chug Cuban coffee all day. This is espresso with so much sugar it makes it thick. No one even pretends it’s a beverage. It’s just a drug. They sell it in tiny cups that hold about an ounce. Drink it, and get back to installing rain gutters. That’s the Miami way. And Miami is an extremely hostile city. People here are angry all the time.

I wonder how much of America’s anger and violence can be attributed to caffeine and nicotine (another stimulant). When the drugs are working, all is well, but the crash always comes, and then your patience and cheer evaporate.

I gave up cigars because the tiny amount of nicotine I inhaled started keeping me awake at night, and because I felt God wanted me to stop smoking them. I wonder what life is like for addicts who smoke 30 cancer sticks a day, inhaling as deeply as possible to satisfy a burning desire for nicotine. Smokers can be irritable and hard to deal with even when things are going well, and God help you if you’re around one when he can’t get his fix. My mother used to grab butts out of the car ashtray and unroll them to keep her going until she could get to the store.

I would hate to have a drug dependence that started to make me angry at people every 45 minutes.

Before Jesus, people who believed in God were concerned about what they said and did. External things. They couldn’t do much about their inner selves. Jesus demanded more. He wants us to change so the things that well up inside us aren’t black and toxic. Under the old system, it was okay to have a spring of filth inside you as long as you sat on it and restrained it. That’s not how Christianity works. Because we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, we have the power to change our roots. We can change our insides so the evil doesn’t rise up in us in the first place.

Pre-Christian Judaism will help you not to have sex with your neighbor’s wife, but it won’t keep you from thinking about it. Holy-Spirit-led Christianity will help you hate the thought of it.

I thought about things like this while caffeine had me in its grip.

TV is full of lying preachers who tell us to give them money in order to get God to fix our finances. It’s a crock. It makes people poorer. But the New Testament does provide perfect financial advice, and here it is: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” That’s a promise, from God itself. Either it’s true, or God is a liar.

Christians don’t know the Holy Spirit, because there is no one–no person of national prominence–who can teach us about him. I’m sure there are lots of obscure people dispending good advice, but there is not ONE SINGLE well-known preacher who can be trusted. The Pope knows nothing at all; he’s a garden variety socialist. Billy Graham is a nice guy, but he’s not that helpful. Rick Warren teaches pride and self-salvation. The money preachers are just pigs.

We don’t know the Holy Spirit, so we live like pre-Christian Jews. We try to fix ourselves, and we work on external things. We don’t have much confidence in inner change.

If you want things to go well in your life, you’re supposed to be focusing on building his kingdom, and as Jesus said, that kingdom is inside you. The kingdom isn’t a giant, money-stuffed church. It’s not a nation with laws taken from the Bible. It’s God, ruling inside a clean vessel. You have to be a place in which God is comfortable. You have to be a little tabernacle or Ark of the Covenant.

I thought about lust yesterday. Steve Munsey, who knows as much about God as a baboon, says it’s okay to look at women as long as you don’t touch. Jesus said that looking on a woman with lust was inward adultery. In the past, I believed what Munsey believes, so I got in the habit of fantasizing about women. I had a disturbing realization yesterday. I would not want to go anywhere near a porn theater, but I had turned my own mind into one, and I expected God to be comfortable there. How about that?

Here is what Paul said:

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

When I take stimulants, I invite things like anger and cruelty. Of course God dislikes stimulants! God doesn’t want to live on the set of the Jerry Springer show! How could I not have known this?

God’s truths are obvious. As soon as you understand one, you wonder why you didn’t see it sooner.

Last night I thought about the reappearance of Jesus. After the crucifixion, he appeared to the disciples and spent a long time with them, explaining things to them. They knew Jesus. They had traveled with him and worked with him. But when he reappeared, they had no idea who he was. It was as if they were Lois Lane and he was Superman with Clark Kent’s magical glasses. They thought some stranger was talking to them. Then he allowed them to recognize him, and they were shocked to see who their new companion was.

That’s how Christianity works. The truth is obvious and simple, but we can’t see it because we are supernaturally blinded and deafened. When God takes away the barriers, his truth is so plain it’s bewildering.

Lately I have been focusing on inner change more than ever, and it has paid off in natural rewards. I have more time to do what I want. My business affairs take up very little of my time. Problems pop up, and when I prepare to handle them, they disappear, or I find out someone else is taking care of them. Surely this is Jesus, adding “all these things” to me. It has to be true, because it’s what he promised.

It’s a disturbing process in some ways. I don’t know what it’s like to live a truly humble and honest life. I know how to be proud, and I know how to be defeated and full of self-loathing; those things are easy. Now I have to be humble yet untroubled and confident of my future.

I am not a person who is worthy of respect. No one who knew my worst thoughts would respect me. It’s not pleasant to have God remind me of this, but on the other hand, it’s the key to relief. The Bible says God fights the proud (including those who are in denial), and he helps those who have broken hearts and contrite spirits. Help is what I want. A little painful introspection is a small price to pay.

Pride is like a goalkeeper who keeps God from helping us, and humility is a key that opens the door to God. There is always symmetry in the supernatural

I feel bad about what I am and what I have wasted, but my situation is understandable. When I was young, I had absolutely no one to teach me, and that is still true. There isn’t one preacher on earth I care to listen to. I haven’t seen a single one who is even close to right. If they knew what worked, they would be focusing on it and giving practical instructions for making it happen, and they do not do that. I recognize God’s voice, as he said I would. I recognize an imitation.

Thank God for the Holy Spirit. If I had to rely on human beings, I would be as good as damned. We are as filthy and treacherous as rats. At best, we are ignorant. The Holy Spirit knows everything, and he is one hundred percent trustworthy and loyal.

If you rely on drugs, my advice is to go to God and find out why you need them. Something is amiss,and if you admit that, you can find the answer.

I’m going to get used to cocoa. I don’t want to have any more days like yesterday.