Church on Wednesday Morning

I had an interesting morning at church. I went up to have a meeting about the book I’m helping the pastor write. He hired a publicist for the church, and he put us together so we could talk about the project.

This lady is the daughter of a guy who had a huge church, and she knows all sorts of people in Christian publishing. She and the pastor are making plans for a whole series of books. Oddly, I’m working on the second one, before the others come out. In any case, it will be great to have someone else involved, who can put in the time the book needs. The pastor is just too busy, and it’s not really his thing, anyway. He already created the DVD series this book will be based on, so it makes sense to hand the writing, editing, and PR off to someone else.

I’m starting to feel like people there know who I am, and that I will be able to be a part of the operation, instead of wandering in, warming a chair, and going home. I hope my involvement continues to increase. It can be tough to do well in the secular world once you’ve sold out to God, so I need all the support I can get.

I went to lunch with the pastor and the PR lady, and one of the church leaders joined us, and I met a few other folks. I can never remember names, but I’m going to make an effort.

The church has a cafe. If you’ve been reading my blogs for a while, you can see the potential for hilarity here. I was telling them about my book and the horrors I have created. This weekend, I’ll be helping out in the cafe. They’ll probably have me emptying trash bags and cleaning up, but if I end up helping with the cooking, I’ll try not to give in to my natural instincts.

The food at the cafe looks really good. The pastor says people from the area drop in and eat. Heathens, I mean. Okay, not heathens. Necessarily. But not church members. I think he said it’s five bucks for a meal. Not bad.

The pastor says he wants a copy of my book. I guess I’ll give him one. After reading it, he may wonder if he picked the right guy to write Christian material. On the up side, I might make a good subject for a sermon.

I talked to him about gluttony. He agrees that it’s a sin, just like drunkenness, but you don’t hear much about it from preachers. Strange. Think about it. If you gluttonize consistently, you ruin your knees, your arteries, your heart, your pancreas, and maybe your brain. You can become diabetic and end up having your feet amputated. If you become obese, you annoy and inconvenience other people all the time. Have you ever lived with a food addict? You can’t have decent food or drink. They inhale it before you can get to it. You buy six tangerines on Monday, and on Tuesday, they’re all gone. You have to eat peanut butter sandwiches because the jelly disappears in two days. Gluttony causes a lot of problems. It’s not a trivial thing. How can a thing that makes you ugly, sick, uncomfortable, and annoying be trivial?

That being said, I do miss it. But I still enjoy food. I just enjoy it in human amounts.

There are demons around us. Christians get embarrassed when you mention them, but they surround us. Jesus and Paul talked about them all the time. I think every person has a certain number of resident demons who work to control his life and lead him to ruin. What else do they have to do? I don’t think you have to be foaming at the mouth and bending bars in your teeth to have one or more demons. I think addiction, which is less spectacular than foaming at the mouth, is generally demonic. It controls your life, against your will, like the Biblical demon that made the boy fall in the fire. And gluttony is addiction. If it were not, people would be able to control it. They can’t. Almost every person who diets down to normal size blows back up again. How is that different from cigarette or heroin addiction? You have a self-destructive habit you can’t control…isn’t that addiction?

Surely one demon will attract others. Isn’t that the way life works? If you have a serious problem you can’t control, you tend to get other problems later. If you can’t control what you eat, it will weaken your will in other areas, and sooner or later, you’re likely to have other moral problems. At least I think so.

It’s natural for Christians to think they have to have one area in their lives where they can let loose. But we’re not supposed to be natural. Shakespeare used the word “natural” to describe men who were controlled by their primitive urges. The idea that we have limited strength, and that we can only expect to win in certain areas of our lives, is probably wrong. I think we were probably intended to be hooked up to the Holy Spirit, in a way that gradually rids us of destructive urges and habits. Maybe we’re not supposed to be perfect, but I don’t think we’re supposed to dedicate portions of our lives to failure. Isn’t that what you do, when you decide it’s okay to smoke because you’ve quit taking drugs and drinking too much? How is it different if you decide you have to give up all your vices except for stuffing yourself? My diet used to work like this: 1500 calories per day, except for Saturday, which I called “fat day.” On that day, I ate everything I could carry home. If addiction is caused by hostile spirits, isn’t fat day appeasement? Isn’t appeasement just a way of delaying further aggression without preventing it? Look how well it worked in Israel.

I’m completely thrilled that I am not overeating these days, but I continue to hate fasting. It’s not as painful as it used to be, but it’s no joy, either. On the days when I fast, I look forward to that next meal. I don’t celebrate with a hoglike feast, but the first bite of whatever I eat comes as a great relief.

Life continues to improve. I assume an occasional fast is necessary to the process. I’ll live.

I think this is what Jesus meant by “free, indeed.” You can have your stomach stapled and send money to Dr. Phil, but only one power in the universe truly destroys addiction.

I could really go for a pie right now.