Dear Church Family and Friends,
Recently as I was eating a bowl of ramen noodles, I recalled a friend of mine who once caught sight of one of my ramen meals and sneered, “That’s empty calories.” For those who are uninitiated in dietary terminology, empty calories are calories that lack nutritional value and are largely unaccompanied by things like vitamins and minerals. Processed foods like potato chips and twinkies are typically full of empty calories. For people who are not very active, cutting back on empty calories is usually important in losing weight. (Do I sound like the son of dietitian or what?)
As someone trying to get into shape for his wedding tuxedo, the idea of eating “empty calories” gave me a momentary pang of guilt. It was indeed momentary, because I was soon thinking about something altogether different: What if we monitored our spiritual lives in terms of whether we were consuming empty spiritual calories? In other words, what if we measured our every activity in terms of its spiritual value? This past weekend I am sure our visit to Lost Lake was full of healthy nutrients and few empty calories. By contrast, I probably consumed a fair number of empty calories Friday night as I “zoned out” in front of the TV for an hour re-watching part of Bourne Identity. It’s okay to have a spiritual chocolate bar every once in awhile, isn’t it?
I imagine my spiritual life might actually suffer if I were to obsessively track my spiritual calories hour by hour in a spiral notebook. It would be too much anxious self-consciousness for the kind of free and soulful spiritual life I desire. Still, I think there may be some value in occasionally monitoring our spiritual calories. Just as we live in a society where advertisements constantly push unhealthy foods upon us, we also live in a society that continually pushes unhealthy lifestyles upon us. An unhealthy lifestyle might be one driven by consumerism or individualism. It might be one that damages the environment or even our own bodies. It might be one that fills our lives with pursuits and distractions that do little to make the world a better, more humane place.
Nevertheless, one of the limits of focusing on individual lifestyle choices is that it fails to capture how the larger institutions and systems of our society dictate and circumscribe our choices. I would rather not have to drive a car every time I go to Portland, but unfortunately, our public transportation system does not allow me to travel there in a timely and convenient manner. Ultimately, I believe that if we really want to have healthy spiritual diets, we need to not only count our calories, but we also need to be involved in changing the world around us.
Your brother in Christ,
Pastor Brooks