Moving My Cheese

It's probably a common thought, but let me assure you that it's a myth: in seminary, they don't actually offer a class on how to make normal things sound spiritual.  I think it's just a character flaw common to seminary nerds to over-spiritualize things, usually so that people will say, "wow - he's really deep."  So now that I've admitted it up front you can't call me on it, right?  Sort of like Eminem at the end of the movie "8 Mile." 

For those of you who know me, you know I love me some food.  I learned young to eat a wide variety of foods, and like most growing boys, I prided myself on the amount I could put away.    

In college, my roommate Josh and I shared this love of vast quantities of food.  Josh could usually out-do me, but I'd hold my own.  We'd go to the Somerville Steak House and order their "medium sirloin," which I think is basically two relatively-low-quality-but-inexpensive 14 oz sirloins stacked on top of each other (you can see the appeal for college guys).  We'd polish that off and then order dessert and never gain an ounce. 

Fast forward about ten years.  Now I'm 31, I have a beautiful daughter, and a wife who makes the best chicken fried steak in the world, complete with home-made cream gravy, mashed potatoes from scratch, and sweet potatoes slow-cooked in a lot of cinnamon, brown sugar and butter until they pretty much fall apart.  Clearly, I still love me some food.  But tragically, my metabolism has slowed somewhat. 

So my brother-in-law Eric and I are on a diet.  We started independently of each other, but a little competition sure helps my motivation.  Unfortunately, he's much more hard-core than I am.  He's eating nothing but fruits and veggies this week.  When I was all proud of limiting my lunch yesterday to that thimble-full of food known as a Lean Cuisine, I got an email casually pointing out that he had a negative net calorie intake for the day from walking up and down 10 flights of stairs at work and only eating like 7 blueberries.

So here's where I make what is primarily a selfish thing into a spiritual lesson. 

Fasting is a pretty traditional spiritual discipline in most major religions.  You go without food for various reasons, but - at least in the Christian tradition - it's primarily to remind yourself of your dependency on God and to subjugate your bodily needs for a time in order to focus on your spiritual needs. 

For the reasons above, it's one I've obviously had trouble with.

So the humbling fact I'm now faced with is this: I'm super motivated to get in shape for two reasons right now: 1) so that when Allison looks back at her baby pictures, she doesn't see a guy resembling an apple with four toothpicks stuck in it, and 2) so I can keep up with Eric.  Notice there is nothing spiritual about those motivations. 

It's a tough lesson to learn when I realize polishing my own pride is so undeniably more of a motivator than beating back my selfishness in an effort to get closer to God.  My guess is that even if I succeeded in fasting for all the right reasons, I'd look around and proudly think about how much more spiritual fortitude I had than other less motivated Christians, once again proving that my motivation is pretty much all about the Big Numero Uno.

My problem is not that I'm too into food.  Well, at least not the big problem. 

My big problem is that I'm too into me.

Labels: Sin