"I am the bread of life."
-- Jesus, the Christ
"Then let them eat cake!"
-- Marie Antoinette, the Queen
Much of the church that Jesus established, especially here in the West, has taken his living gospel of good news and replaced it with a confectioner's delight. The chewy wholeness, the simple ingredients, the unrefined grains, and the natural elements were deemed too old-fashioned, unappealing, and just simply too plain for contemporary tastes.
Instead, we have concocted beautiful cakes using many of the same ingredients. Only now, we change them to meet our modern tastes. The new recipe calls for bleached wheat, refined sugars, artificial colorings, blended with lots of air to make it easy to chew. The "modern" church has taken away the chewy bread of life, and given us party cake.
Instead of being outraged, we happily consume all we are given, even as others die for lack of simple, life-nourishing, whole-grain bread. With fewer and fewer customers, we look in disgust at the "bread lines" forming on the streets where the homeless gather.
This world is not my home.
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