Monthly Archives: February 2009

Divine Conspiracy 1

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Dallas Willard begins The Divine Conspiracy with a story about a jet fighter that crashed.  The pilot was flying upside-down without knowing it, and when she made an ascent maneuver the plane flew into the ground.

He uses this image throughout the first chapter:  a world where things are upside-down, but no one realizes it.  A lack of meaning and coherence aflicts us.

The mantle of intellectual meaninglessness shrouds every aspect of our common life.  Events, things, and ‘information’ flood over us, overwhelming us, disorienting us with threats and possibilities we for the most part have no idea what to do about.

He tells a story about a young woman who went to Harvard.  Because her family was limited in income, she cleaned student’s rooms at the college to support herself; frequently the other students derided her.  Eventually she left Harvard for another school.  Willard notes the students who treated this woman in such a shameful way were the same ones attending classes on ethics — they learned about different ethical systems, but they didn’t learn to be better human beings.

Rootless, disoriented human beings can turn right-side up by orienting themselves to Jesus, in whom they see God’s activity in the world.

Jesus’ enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak to, to heal and empower the individual human condition.  He matters because of what he brought and still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings.  He promises wholeness for their lives.  In sharing our weakness he gives us strength and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity… Suddenly [we] are flying right-side up, in a world that makes sense.

Willard will spend the rest of the book describing how to align ourselves to Jesus.  For an analogy, he says it’s like when people in rural areas first connected to an electical grid and found a power that gave them an new kind and quality of life.

Artificial Lent

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alpha-omega

Lent begins forty days, minus Sundays, before the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.  (Vernal in the northern hemisphere, that is.)  For the mathematically challenged, Lent begins the week after Wendy’s and Arby’s start advertising fish sandwiches.

I came late to Lent.  My family didn’t attend church till my teenage years, and the Presbyterian church we joined didn’t observe Lent.  So my earliest experience of Lent happened as a first-year student at Princeton Seminary.  We walked up the steps to Miller Chapel one Wednesday in February and inside received the mark of ashes on our foreheads.  Then we shuffled off to Stuart Hall for NT01 with Dr. Paul Meyer, a New Testament scholar.  He went to the podium and looked out over 150 students, all with dark smudges on their faces.  His had no such mark.  He sighed and said, “You are playing with a tradition that doesn’t belong to you.”

The observance of Lent has grown common in Protestant churches.  I’ve distributed ashes many times.  In our congregation, we receive the mark of ashes on the back of the hand to symbolize Jesus’ wounds.  Parishioners tell me how meaningful this ritual is to them and how grateful they are to see the confirmation students lead the Ash Wednesday service.  I understand the importance of these things in nurturing faith, and I am happy to facilitate them.  But Dr. Meyer’s words linger in my mind, and this time of year I feel as though I’m dabbling in something foreign to my native faith.

Many Protestants who grew up apart from a liturgical tradition hunger to experience as much of it as possible.  I am moving in an opposite direction, toward a daily life in the Spirit rather than a religion of the calendar.   Not that one precludes the other, but calendars tend to become ends instead of a means to an end.  In my spiritual life, I’m looking for a simple faith that doesn’t calculate Holy Days or consult tables of readings.  Nature’s seasons nurture me more than the church’s artificial ones.

It’s good to observe Lent, and it’s good not to observe Lent — to see all times as full of the presence of Christ and all seasons as opportunities for repentance and trust.

The Restless God

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Sermon themes in Lent will come from Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations by United Methodist Bishop Robert Schnase.  The first practice he advocates is radical hospitality:

Churches characterized by Radical Hospitality are not just friendly and courteous, passively receiving visitors warmly.  Instead, they exhibit a restlessness because they realize so many people do not have a relationship with a faith community.

And faith communities are not ends in themselves — their purpose is to introduce people to Jesus Christ and ground them as his disciples.

The key word in the quote above is restlessness.  Congregations over time often become insular and complacent, but vital churches are restless in developing ways to drew new people into their community and into a deep connection with God.  Restlessness pushed John Wesley out into the fields and marketplaces, preaching to coal miners and factory workers and sharing with them the grace of Christ.

Schnase doesn’t say we all need to be street preachers, but he urges believers one by one to step outside their circle of familiarity and work to draw people who need God into their faith community.

My sermon will focus on the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  A heartbroken father sits at his window every day until he sees his lost son coming toward home; and rather than wait for him to arrive, the father runs to meet the son and embraces him.  Jesus says this kind of restlessness characterizes God, who will not rest until all lost children are safely home.

We’re used to speaking about how human beings are restless until they find their rest in God.  Restlessness also marks the heart of God.  The vital congregation joins with the restless God in seeking out the lost son and the lost daughter.

When Faith Has the Flu

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A bad cold has come over me this week.  Ever since a bout with pneumonia two years ago, colds settle in my chest and lungs and lower my voice.  I am a bass today rather than a baritone.  When I talk to people on the phone, they pause on the other end of the line, wondering whether it’s really me.

What worries me in times like this is how well I’ll be able to preach on Sunday.  Preachers need good theology, biblical acumen and a sense of the joys and fears of ordinary life — weaving these strands together makes for good sermons.  But preachers also need lungs.  It’s hard to preach when lungs are full of fluids, mucus and whatever else gathers there when colds come.  This Sunday I’ll drink hot tea with honey to soothe my throat.  I also become a drug addict at times like this — Theraflu, Ibuprofen, and Zycam.  I hope it all works and wait until my body heals.

In an article I’ve carried around for 25 years, Doris Betts draws an analogy between bodily and spiritual ailments.  Our faith can come down with a bad cold or the flu.  Paraphrasing Madeleine L’Engle, she says, “I know I am going to come down with an attack of atheism again just as if it were the flu, and I just get ready to endure three or four days of spiritual aches and pains before I’m well again.”

Lately circumstances have infected me with spiritual aches and pains, a faith flu, making it hard to breathe in the breath of God.   I need to take the medicine of the gospel and wait for faith to heal again.  I know it will.  I can do all things in him who strengthens me.

To Ordain Or Not To Ordain

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On Tuesday in Bowling Green, Ohio, Maumee Valley Presbytery voted on an amendment to remove language barring gay ordination from the Presbyterian Church’s constitution and replace it with new language giving local sessions and presbyteries wider latitude in ordaining deacons, elders and ministers.

I sat in the balcony at First Presbyterian Church and listened to the debate on the floor.  Two microphones stood in the center aisle.  The moderator designated the front one for those in favor of the amendment, and the back one for those opposed.  (Interesting symbolism:  for was in front.)  An occasional hum filtered through the sound system and made it hard to hear.  Discussion on the motion lasted less than half an hour.  The moderator attempted to alternate views, not always with success, and on the whole the discussion was calm and civil.  Afterward we marked our yellow paper ballots and sent them forward to be counted.  The measure passed by seven votes.  Time will say how the amendment fares in all the presbyteries.

As I listened to arguments for and against, none of which were new, two competing themes emerged:  an understanding of authority versus a vision of justice.  What makes the dilemma so difficult is no compromise position — someone is either ordained or not.  The only solution where neither side loses is to do away with ordination altogether, and I have wondered if the greater part of our problem is that we cling with too much tenacity to the practice of ordination itself.

I voted in favor of the amendment.  I understand the convictions on the other side — I once shared them.  But now the Golden Rule directs me:  if I were gay I’d want others to offer me a place to be and be heard.

The Charm of Old Barns

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barn-close-up

This old weather-beaten barn sits on a farm south of Hudson, Michigan, where we take our dog Jazz when we leave town.  The owner, an elderly widow, operates a kennel that houses up to 48 dogs.  Jazz sleeps on a bed of fine wood chips, and she gains a few pounds from all the treats she gets.

I asked permission to take a picture of the barn.  I like the composition of this shot, the way the black opening frames the small windmill.  The woman apologized for the state of the barn — she said had her husband lived longer they would have torn it down and built a new one.

I guess old barns, like other old buildings, grow more impractical to use as they age.  But they have a certain allure.  Whenever an old barn appears on the highway I stare at it and study its features, taking care not to drive off into the ditch at the side of the road.

Events this week will collude to prevent much writing here, but there is always time to reflect on the charm of old barns.

ADDED:  The Charm of Old Barns 2 is here.

Paul Blart and the Dignity of Work

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The movie Paul Blart — Mall Cop recycles the plot from Die Hard, only with comic actor Kevin James playing the Bruce Willis role, and it offers stock characters in the Merciless Thug, the Damsel in Distress, and the Unexpected Hero.

Maybe the conventionality of it was a plus, though, because it was a delightful way to spend a Valentine’s Day afternoon.  We saw it at the theater in Wauseon, Ohio, down the highway from Archbold, where we stayed for the weekend at the Sauder Heritage Inn.

The movie also follows that oldest of story lines:  boy meets girl, boy makes fool of self, boy wins girl’s heart.  The movie ends with Paul and his love Amy riding around after their wedding on his and hers Segways.

But what struck me most was how the movie was also a commentary on the dignity of work, even jobs most people place low on the social scale.  Paul Blart is a security guard at a mall.  No one takes him seriously, but he takes himself and his work seriously, at times comically so, of course, but that’s all part of the story.  His own passion and dedication lends a dignity to his labor in keeping others safe.

At the end of the film he has a chance to apply (for the ninth time) to become a state trooper, but he decides he’ll stay in his current job at the mall.  A nice touch, I thought; he doesn’t need to ‘move up.’

He reminded me of the admonition the Apostle Paul gave to the working classes in the ancient Mediterranean world:  “Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters.” (Col. 3.23-24 NRSV)

We don’t emphasize this enough in the church.  Anyone’s work matters if it matters to them and helps others.  Faith in God and in ourselves can lend a special dignity to our work.

Wedding Ring

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wedding-ring

Valentine’s Day marks my tenth wedding anniversary.  This gold ring, and all it represents, has stayed on my finger for ten years.  My wife has a matching one, which she wears constantly; I take mine off each night before bed.  Sometimes I put the ring on my right finger to remember something.  At restaurants, I’ve been known to take the ring off and spin it on the table — tables at Applebees work well for this purpose. 

I lost my ring once for two days.  I was frantic till it turned up — in the washing machine of all places.  Not content with stealing our socks, apparently these machines are branching out into jewelry too. 

Two weeks after we married, I traveled to the Holy Land for an educational trip sponsored by my seminary.  The ring went with me, of course, and at that point it still felt odd on my finger.  I’d look at it during the day, surprised it was there.  Standing at the edge of an archeological dig in Jericho, I feared the ring would fall off my finger and drop into the cavernous hole, never to be seen again, so I stepped away from the rail.

Five years ago the ring traveled to Montreal for a wedding.  It’s also been to South Carolina, Florida, Wisconsin and Nevada.  It goes with me to Morning Fresh Bakeries to get a glazed donut.  This weekend the ring will accompany my wife and me on a trip to celebrate our anniversary.

So the wedding ring sits on my left hand, a tangible reminder that I am a man most blessed.  Happy Valentine’s Day to all.

Darwin On the Brain

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Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, born February 12, 1809.  It’s also the Lincoln bicentennial today, but I have Darwin on the brain. 

Religious people tend toward two sides on Darwin. The Religious Right demonizes him.  In worship one Sunday at Reno Christian Fellowship, a nondenominational church popular in my college city, the music minister rested his hands on his guitar and offered a little homily ridiculing the theory of evolution.  I remember how everyone laughed along with him — the laughter of the righteous. 

The Religious Left, which prides itself on being smarter than the Religious Right, has practically canonized Darwin as a saint.  Some hold ‘Evolution Sunday’ to celebrate evolution during worship.  I’m sorry, but this practice seems ridiculous to me, and it trivializes science and religion.  Next there will be Gravity Sunday with hymns of praise to Newton. 

I don’t praise Darwin or mock him.  I see him as a scientist whose writings fundamentally changed the way people understand nature and human life.  I’ve tried to read his works twice — once for Origin and once for Descent — but in both cases my stamina didn’t last long.  His dry prose is a tough read.  (His birthday twin Lincoln is more pleasant to read.)

I understand Darwin began as a Christian and ended his life as an agnostic.  If I endured as much hostility from the church as he did, my faith might change too. 

Most liberal Christians have found a place for evolution in their thinking, a kind of ‘divinely-guided’ version of the theory.  But I don’t know enough about evolution to assess whether this violates the spirit of evolution, since some versions see it wholly based on chance and randomness, in which case it’s not compatible with Christianity. 

On the other hand, there are biologists who believe in God, who have found a way to reconcile science and relgion in this area.  Of course, there are biologists and scientists who are atheists too.  My Dad was a scientist, a physicist, and he believed in God and accepted evolution. 

So it turns out Darwin and I have something in common.  He was agnostic about God, and I am agnostic about him.  I need to explore him for myself.  Only it will be better to try a biography of him this time.

Church Without Property

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Christians in Qatar have built the first church there since Islam swept over the region in the seventh century.  Our Lady of the Rosary Church seats 2700 and serves expatriate Roman Catholics from India and the Philippines.  An Anglican church is rising next door.  In addition to a benefit for Christians, observers see this as a step forward for moderate Islam and a set-back for radical Islam.

Last year an old friend asked me for an opinion on Pagan Christianity?  Exploring the Roots of Our Christian Practices, by Frank Viola and George Barna.  The book argues that church buildings, among other practices, have no warrant in the New Testament and harm the faith.  The authors advocate a house church model, a way of Christian life and worship followed by the earliest Christians and by Christians in Qatar until now. 

I can’t assess house churches, but living in organized religion for many years, I have grown ambivalent about church buildings.  Property creates problems even as it provides opportunities.  Buildings consume resources to maintain them.  A facility erected in one generation may be unsuitable in the next, or even abandoned.  And the property itself can become the focus rather than the ministry it was designed to serve. 

Faith in ancient Israel changed when they traded a portable tabernacle for a fixed temple.  Jews in Jerusalem today pray at the retaining wall of the mount where the last temple stood.  All religions prize sacred spaces, yet God is no more present in one place than another. 

It’s striking how little in the Bible takes place in a Designated Religious Building.  Most of the action happens outdoors — in a garden, on a mountain, by a lake.  Many people feel closer to God in nature than anywhere else. 

Church buildings have benefits, of course.  It’s hard to hold a worship service in the rain.  I’m glad our church’s praise band and other musicians have a set place to play.  It’s one thing to fantasize about a church without property, and another actually to keep one going.  I imagine house churches and congregations that rent facilities have their share of headaches too. 

Christians in Qatar are justly proud of their first church building.  I rejoice with them.  At the same time I’m aware that for 1400 years they have worshipped in a way Mary, Luke or Paul would have commended.

Dead Cars and Holy Saturday

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The coldest winter in years has afflicted us for the last six weeks.  Montana’s weather has migrated to southeastern Michigan, and we’re not accustomed to it.  I don’t know how people endure this kind of weather year after year.

One morning in January it was 14 below.  My white Geo sat in the driveway all night.  This most dependable car wouldn’t start — knocked out by the cold.  My wife’s Sentra was sitting in our one-car garage.  It started, but the dead Geo was blocking the way.  I had a funeral that morning, and the funeral director had to pick me up and bring me home.  I kept the graveside prayers as short as possible.

AAA Michigan gave priority to roadside emergencies for obvious reasons, but an hour after my call a heavily bundled man from Dick’s Amoco pulled his red truck into my driveway.  He spent twenty minutes coaxing my engine to life, and it finally started.  He said there were lots of dead cars in driveways that day, and he told me to let my engine run for an hour.  When I marveled at his skill, he smiled shyly and said, “It’s really more of an art than anything.”

Snow and ice have covered everything since Christmas.  In some climates this can last for months, but it’s not typical for us.  Not seeing the earth for so long makes me nervous.   An early February thaw has come at last, though, with temperatures to reach 50 by midweek.  As the snow melts, the soggy ground is starting to appear again, as on the third day of creation.

Nature delights me with its sights and smells, but the cold frightens me and tells me how vulnerable I am.  I don’t like cold — it reminds me of death.   Before conducting funerals, I walk to the casket and make the sign of the cross on the body’s forehead with my finger, and every time its coldness startles me.  Death and cold go together.

Having said these things, it is strange that my favorite day in the liturgical year is Holy Saturday, when Jesus’ body lay cold and dead in the tomb.  Since our vigil happens the night of Maundy Thursday, we schedule nothing for Holy Saturday.  I like the emptiness of it — the word of God is silent, and we can be silent too.

But I enjoy this silence because of the sequel:  on Sunday God coaxes Jesus’ cold body to life and starts him again in a new way.  How this happened and happens is a marvel, of course.  It’s really more of an art than anything.

How I Lost the Bible and Found God

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niv-bible

I once loved the Bible.  It guided my steps like a lantern in a dark tunnel.  In college I would take breaks from Thermodynamics, pull out my brown NIV hardcover and study whole books lectio continua using This Morning With God, a daily guide to Bible reading and reflection.

I worked bit by bit through Luke, Genesis, Acts, Exodus, Amos, Hosea, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Joshua, Galatians and Romans in the first year.  This practice, continued for several years, formed the bedrock of my spiritual life and solidified my core beliefs.  I knew the Bible by heart.

Then twenty years ago I went to seminary.  The professors, leading lights of my church, more or less told me I didn’t understand the Bible at all.  Their insights collided with my own in key ways, and afterward I never approached the Bible with the same serenity and confidence.  The professors were gentle souls, but the nature of theological education puts students in the more vulnerable place.

People with similar stories praise this experience as an advent in critical thinking, but I mourn the loss of simplicity and an uncluttered faith.  Critical thinking is overrated.  Jesus never said, “Your critical thought has saved you.  Go in peace.”  To this day I waver on whether seminary helps or limits our spiritual development as ministers.  I still have the Bible, of course, but it’s not the same.  The bowl is broken.  Maybe the loss of simplicity was necessary and inevitable.  Writing about it, though, has stirred up feelings even twenty years later, and hearing people argue about the Bible or use it to advance an agenda makes me cringe.

But certain gains have arisen to compensate for the loss.  My sense of nature as revelation has grown a hundredfold. For me, looking at an oak tree is a form of adoration and prayer.  And when I warm my body in the sunlight, my thoughts turn toward the eternal one who is Light Itself.  “Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” (Psalm 34.5 NIV)

Even though my faith is more complicated now than in those uncluttered college days — which didn’t seem simple at the time — it’s a richer faith, not a lesser one.  Faith intensifies in testing, as Abraham found in the land of Moriah.

Religious believers, I’ve found, tend to worship God Plus Something:  God plus the Bible, God plus a building, God plus the family, God plus justice and nonviolence.  These are worthy things, but they are not God, and perhaps in the end they elude us because God will allow no rivals in our affections.

Why Men Hate Church

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This morning on WBCL, a local Christian radio station, they interviewed David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church.   He said men hunger for God and for spiritual purpose in their lives, but the programming, message and physical environment of most churches appeal far more to women.  So traditional religion alienates men.

When a man attends church, for example, and sees fresh flowers on the altar and quilted hangings on the walls, common things in churches, he picks up on the visual cues and realizes this place is not for him.  It’s no wonder, Murrow notes, that men gravitate to churches with a neutral setting where they can watch the action on a big screen TV.

Murrow offers a website called Church For Men where he talks more about these matters.  There is also a companion site, Speaking of Men, where women can ask questions about the men in their lives.  In today’s interview, Murrow talked also about his newer book, How Women Help Men Find God.  A podcast of the interview is here.

Many of his insights resonated with my own thinking on how men feel out of place in church.  The most sobering thing Murrow said, though, was that a church that fails to attract and keep men will be a church in decline.  He also reminded listeners that Jesus began his movement by attracting men.

The Hungry Gap

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This week I finished reading The Year 1000, by Richard Lacey and Danny Danziger, two journalists in the UK who interviewed dozens of historians and did extensive research themselves to see what life in Engla-lond was like at the turn of the first milennium.

It was similar and dissimilar to life today, it turns out.  The book divides into twelve chapters corresponding to months of the year, each covering a facet of life in Anglo-Saxon England.

They called July ‘The Hungry Gap’ because it was the time when food from the previous harvest ran out and reapers had not yet gathered in the new crop.  People went hungry, especially the poor who couldn’t afford higher prices for basic commodities.  They didn’t use the language of ‘recession’ as we do now, but they understood abundance and scarcity.

In 2009 our congregation struggles with its own scarcities.  The church council authorized borrowing from the endowment to help balance the budget this year, as well as not paying full apportionments (dues) to the denomination for the first time in decades.  It will be a lean year, and we staff have wondered how secure our jobs and insurance benefits are in a time of scarcity.

These anxieties touch everyone today.  This article in the Christian Science Monitor outlines ways preachers are handling these matters in their pulpits.

Recently I shared dinner with a retired economics professor from the University of Toledo.  When we asked him what he thought about the economic crisis he waved his hand and said, “These things run in cycles.”   In the last fifty years there have been at least ten recessions, some more and some less severe.  This knowledge doesn’t bring much comfort, though.

Today I remembered words from the Apostle Paul on struggling with scarcity:

I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me.  (Philippians 4:12-13 NRSV)

Paul knew the hungry gap himself, and he knew were to look for sustenance.  This time invites us to deeper levels of trust.

Emotional Churches

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During Lent our church will explore Bishop Robert Schnase’s Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, one of the popular books on congregational life these days.  The book’s cover lists the five practices:

  • Radical Hospitality
  • Passionate Worship
  • Intentional Faith Development
  • Risk-Taking Mission & Service
  • Extravagant Generosity

There’s a website devoted to the book that offers more information.  Our congregation’s Lenten use will include small group book studies and a five week sermon series.

Not having read the book I can’t offer an opinion on its contents, but I’ve learned you can judge a book by its cover, or at least form an initial impression.  Editors pay careful attention to what appears there.  There are images of leaves and growing plants on the cover and a few particular words that caught my eye:  extravagant, passionate, radical, risk.  These are words charged with emotion and feeling.  Not plain worship, but passionate worship.

Writing in the 1930s, Quaker Thomas Kelly said Protestantism had become ’rationalistic, humanistic and service-minded.’  It lacked the interiority Quakers prize, and apart from Pentecostal and black churches it lacked a depth of emotion in its religious life.  This remains an apt description today.

I’m curious to see how Bishop Schnase will counsel us to cultivate an  extravagant emotional life that worships with passion and takes risks.  I’m still a geeky engineer, more rationalist than romantic, but I’ll keep an open mind and heart.

Garden Variety Glutton

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I registered for a local ‘biggest loser’ competition, hoping to drop a few pounds.  The Herbalife program included lectures on nutrition and directed participants to limit daily calorie intake to 1200 for women and 1500 for men. 

My resolve lasted two sessions and evaporated.  Sweeping changes in diet never work for me.  The promise of an extreme food makeover is tempting, but the habits of years don’t change so easily.  Small consistent changes in diet might accomplish the goal.  I could start with less sweets and more fruit, for example.  I always lose the frontal assault on the Temple of Health — I need to sneak up on it gradually.

Or maybe abandon worship at that temple altogether.  If I’d given the attention to God that’s gone to diet all these years, I’d be a saint by now.

We marvel at the dietary laws in Leviticus, but we’ve devised our own new categories for clean and unclean foods.  Clean foods promote health or help the environment or aid the poor.  There’s nothing wrong with health, of course, or caring for creation or helping the needy, but linking these things with particular foods sets up new forms of dietary legalism.  It creates two classes of people:  the virtuous who follow these food laws and the sinners who don’t. 

Jesus stunned his contemporaries when he declared all foods clean (Mk 7.19), overturning centuries of Judaism.  In the midst of diet controversies in the early church, the Apostle Paul said bluntly, “The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Rom 14.17 NIV)  This was a stunning statement for a first century Jew to make, given the place dietary laws had in his religion, but the rest of Romans shows how ambivalent Paul was about religion itself, its rules and rites – the heart of the matter for him lay in an experience of the Spirit of Christ that remakes us from the inside out. 

For the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the sin of gluttony was more than eating too much.  It was being scrupulous about food itself, paying too much attention to what we eat and drink.  By their criterion, health zealots, fair trade fans and whole foods buyers, for all the good they may do, are caught up in a web of gluttony, along with a more garden variety glutton like me.

None of this is to pass judgment on anyone.  It is simply to say that the better attitude toward food is not to think about food much one way or another and to eat what is at hand with moderation and a grateful heart.