Praise Cheeses

July 4, 2008. The sun was shining overtop of the sky scrapers casting rays of light and shadow in downtown Brooklyn. The sun was hot and the crowd that gathered watched with sunglasses waving fans to cool themselves as they watched the competition. The competitors that gathered were from all over the world, but two of these athletes stood out from the rest. It was Japan vs. the US. These two men stared at each other knowing that only one could walk away as the winner and be hailed by their respective countries. The smells, the taste, and the feeling were all focused on one attribute, victory. The athletes took their mark and awaited the sound of the gun to begin. Ten minutes. Ten minutes and their fate would be decided. A year's worth of training boiled down to ten minutes of competition. The sound of the gun and both competitors sprung into action. They opened up their mouths and threw a hotdog in. Quickly they both were consuming as many hotdogs as possible. The crowds cheered and when the ten minutes were up, the two "athletes" walked away tied with 59 hotdogs in ten minutes.

Out consume.

There is no doubt that this country is composed of consumers. I watched a credit card commercial the other day which stated that, "There is nothing wrong with being a consumer." I wonder if that is true. Innately, we all have to consume at least the bare essentials. Food, water, medicine, air etc; all must be consumed into our bodies in order to survive. But I don't think this is what is meant when a person is defined by the action of consuming. The story of the hotdog eating competition struck me this morning on my way to work. I was thinking that it is interesting that people praise others for consuming more than anyone thought possible. It seems backwards to me. Is it any wonder that we have a nation who is fatter than the entire world and who are so far in dept that it will take several live times for people to pay it off?

And yet we still ask God to bless us. I am seeing that we are like the servant who squanders the master's money. God placed in our hands as Americans freedom and resources. These things have caused us to enjoy their pleasures and have caused our nation to be very wealthy. But God never asks in the Scriptures for anyone with a blessing to keep it and consume it for all its worth. He asks instead for the blessing to be spread to all the nations and to the entire world.

Webster's defines consume in several ways. The first is to enjoy thoroughly and the second is to spend wastefully. I believe that we as Americans are participants of the later. This is so easy to do when you have things like buffets, supersizing, and credit cards. I have said before that we are dehumanizing our enemies, but I think we also are very good at dehumanizing ourselves. We are forgetting the basic three responsibilities that we have as humans which are mandated by God; to be fruitful, multiply, and be good stewards. It seems we are living with the direct opposite; be fruitless, subtract, and rape the earth.

We fail to realize that this attitude has/is destroying us in our humanity.