An Unbalanced Diet

Courtesy darrfalls.blogspot.com

We miss out on a lot if our spiritual diet is unbalanced.

I recently had a conversation with my wife about social media and it got me thinking.  Depending on what friends one has on Facebook you can read a lot of different things.  For example, my friends list and the pages I like tend to be religious in nature and therefore my news feed tends to contain mainly religious items: Bible verses, quotations from religious authors, and of course, religious memes.  One could get a lot of religious/inspirational reading done by going through my feed.  Which is all well and good, but if all your religious/inspirational reading is done on places such as facebook and twitter, then we would miss out on a lot.  We could also end up suffering the consequences like Rehoboam.

Rehoboam's Folly

You may not know who Rehoboam was, but I'm pretty sure you've heard of his father, Solomon.  Rehoboam became king of Israel after his father's death.  Long story short, Rehoboam took the advice from only the people he chose, and he chose the wrong people.  As a result, he lost the allegiance of eleven of the twelve tribes, and divided the kingdom.  While we may not suffer such dramatic consequences as he did, we suffer just the same.  We suffer from spiritual malnutrition.

Spiritual Malnutrition

When we get our spiritual insight primarily from facebook posts, twitter feeds, etc., we snack instead of eating meals. When we snack, we seldom get full, or the nutrition we need.  Leaving us empty and poorly equipped for proper spiritual growth. What we need are full meals.

Keeping with the food analogy when we rely upon other people for our spiritual nutrition, it is similar to eating processed food.  Sure it may taste good, but processed food is nutritionally unbalanced; often containing excess of one ingredient or another.  What we read/eat may contain too much law or not enough love, or they may be tainted with artificial ingredients (human opinions).  The best way to manage our spiritual diet is the same as the best way  to manage our physical diet.  Prepare it ourselves with a variety of natural ingredients.

The Best Diet

The best spiritual diet comes straight from the Bible.  The more we study it, the more widely we read it, the better off we will be.  Take time to read the entire Bible.  I know that may sound intimidating because of the size of the book, but as the saying goes, the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.  Many Bible reading plans exist that enable the reader to read the entire Bible in one year, often with only reading about 15-20 minutes a day.  Why read the entire Bible?  By doing so, it allows us to make the connections between the parts of the Bible.  To read only one part of the Bible is like eating only one kind of food, making us malnourished.

Your Part

I've given you enough to chew on for now (pun intended).   Now go and try it for yourself.