Eat Spinach

An Analogy: Eat Right SPIRITUALLY!

2004

A lot of people have a doctrine that if a doctor says you’re a prime candidate for having a heart attack and dying, then you had better start eating right and start exercising. But there are also a whole lot of people who just never quite get around to doing it and then die at age 35, 40, 50, or whenever it shows up. Because in spite of the fact that the doctor told them, “You are a prime candidate to die. You’d better exercise. You’d better eat the right stuff,” they were just too sloppy or lazy to do it, never got around to it and died.

The human condition is basically one that is not only prone to failure, but also prone to stupidity. Failure is one thing, but stupidity is not doing anything about it even when you know you could have. Failure can sneak up on you when you’re not looking and that’s a shame. But the only thing worse than being a failure is being stupid and a failure. You’re too stupid so you just keep eating ice cream and candy all the time. When your doctor tells you that you’re about to have a heart attack, and you can’t quite get yourself to stop eating ice cream and candy bars…it’s just stupid! You’re cheating everyone around you, as well as yourself, because you don’t have enough self discipline to stop eating candy and ice cream. For the sake of everyone around you, as well as yourself -- for pity’s sake -- start eating some good food and quit eating all the garbage when you’ve already been told that you’re going to die if you keep going that direction! Well, the human condition is that a lot of people just continue to be stupid and just sit there. They cheat themselves and they kill themselves and they hurt other people mindlessly, because they don’t have enough self-discipline just to eat right and stop feeding their stupid face.

In the spiritual analogy, obviously, it’s the same. We make errors. I’ve made my share of errors. I’ve made massive errors. But the point is, what do you do next? I don’t want to be amongst the ones that are not only failures, but are also stupid! So eat right. Learn how to eat right, or die. You’re 15. Suppose I say to you that you would die at age 17 if you don’t eat spinach every day. You WILL die…there’s no question. You WILL die at age 17 if you don’t eat spinach every day. Would you eat spinach every day? If you knew you would die at age 17 if you didn’t? The doctor tells you that you will die at age 17 unless you begin today and eat spinach every day for the rest of your life. Or you will die. The day you stopped eating spinach is the day you’d have 2 years to live, and then you’d die.

Would you eat spinach every day? Would you make sure you didn’t forget? Would you make sure that you ate it first thing in the morning—morning, noon, and night if necessary—even if you didn’t particularly like spinach? Anybody in their right mind would eat spinach if they knew that.

So I’m telling you the same thing about your spiritual life. You either eat right, or you will die. It’s just that simple. There’s no way around it. It’s true for an adult. It’s true for you. It’s true for me. Either eat right, or you will die; you will not “get by.” And if you could make the time to eat spinach, you can make the time now to do what you need to do. You might actually find that you like spinach...

•  Calibrate Your Conscience With God's Word