The Burger Conspiracy

Rational Thinking

February 21, 2006

Joel Akin

Genesis 2:9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;

Genesis 9:3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

Lets begin with a favorite saying of mine I learned quickly in 1975. Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, tomato on a sesame seed bun.

 Welcome to the free Big Mac at McDonalds in Menominee Michigan where I grew up and was a hungry 17 year old. I loved the burgers and they were tasty and delicious and had that tartness that made it the best double burger I'd ever had. My first McDonalds experience, according to my mothers journal, was in 1958 at less than one year of age in Lansing, Capital of Michigan. In college my fan of friends had one place we loved to visit after church on Sunday nights. McDonalds. It was a place of fellowship, a place of memories, a place that provided meat for nourishment. There was nothing wrong with it. It had the best taste and still does even though some perhaps don't see the wisdom in their service.

I've looked at the questions that bother me and then I pray for answers. Sometimes I find answers in the most unexpected places. One of the questions I've asked is why is it that our world is suddenly filled with those who call food bad? Why is it that we seem to be returning to the laws that state "Some food is good, some food is bad, some food is really bad for you..."

Now I look at the ingredients of a Big Mac and I think to myself "Which of these ingredients is evil?" Is it the special sauce? The lettuce? The bun? Whatever it is I hear voices around rising in protest that burgers are bad for you, food is bad for you and just about everything these days are bad for you.

So has God lost the ability to protect His creation or is something else happening in the spiritual world where there is a war over the food God has made? If food is growing evil then we need to stop eating food. If food is still good then we need to stop judging others for the types of food they eat. Now this sounds like a difficult dilemma. Are we on the right path with food?

If we look at what men are doing they are adding genetic modifiers to food which bring about what we might call a death cycle. These types of foods can almost be considered man-made. Some of them even mix prototypical splicing of 'meat' (animal DNA)to the nonmoving plant giving it an extra kick against viruses or herbicides. Others add a dead end to the seed so its life cycle is only limited to a few years or less. This dead end cycle is notorious to spreading to other similar crops bringing about the possibility of a termination to that species and even cross spreading to other genomes. This making a plant that ends and becomes exterminated from mankind. Can it happen? Possibly.

But we also are dealing with questions of wisdom and not just the lie. There are those who want to eat right. Daniel spoke of eating simple foods in scripture and not the rich foods provided to the other kings men. Today we have a huge selection of food beyond comprehension to earlier civilizations which bring us products from all over the globe. We have opportunities of food that we've never had before. It is packaged, sterilized, processed often without human intervention just human supervision. This mass packaging means mass growing of animals and plants under controlled conditions. If we look around the world we can see the deadly affects it is having on birds as the avian flu spreads and threatens to destroy entire industries that affect billions of us.

There is a cry for organic and a search for the need for organic. And yet I am left wondering what happened. I say this because of several factors. One is we have so much we are left with what I might call choices. Choices have always been there for us and from these choices we make decisions and then follow those decisions to their conclusion. I find that the world is a smorgasbord of food brought to us as a blessing by a merciful God. Providing us with choices that our forefathers never had. I never knew food was bad or evil or poor quality or choice until people started speaking up and saying "This food is good and this is bad." For example soy beans. I love the taste of Soy Milk but some articles speak highly while others condemn it. The list of those who promote foods and condemn foods continues to grow.

So what do I do as an individual in a world where perhaps some unwise farming practices are leading to problems with our produce? Do I cast aside the food and question its origins? If I have time and freedom I can do this. But if I don't and am hungry then I eat what is given to me without question.

But we are still left with last day questions which should be answered. One reason is because we have taken that which God made for food and turned them into either garbage or bad. We have taken foods, plants, animals and each is given a label. "This leads to life and this food leads to death." So who made the law? Who made the law that tells me if I eat certain types of foods it will kill me? What I see at work is a battle in the spiritual realm between life and death. Death is real and so is Satan and so is is power source. He wants death to reign upon the earth. He wants creation to groan so that death spreads. What we have a spiritual warfare that is taking place over our food.

But why? Why does this battle need to be worried about? One reason is because God made food for us to enjoy and not to condemn. We live in a world that is stripping plants down to a place where they are losing their uniqueness. This uniqueness is what gives plants their quality. Now its not wrong to want to have one particular flavor. But when we push the original seed and clone it and then end its life cycle with a termination code created by us, as man, then we are stripping life from the seed and bringing forth a culture of death. And this culture of death is one that states "This food is bad..."

So how can we fight this? If some food is genetically modified to have a terminator 'virus' and we microwave and process and strip foods down does this make them nothing more then plasticized mush that fills our body but neutralizes our nutrients? And if so what is the answer?

Perhaps those who seek a return to simplicity have a point. But then I am reminded of what God said that everything that moves is meant for food and all the green herbs as well. This speaks of a culture of life where our prejudice is stripped away and we are allowed to eat anything by 'faith' because God helped produce it from the dirt from which it grew. And if we eat by faith then we must trust by faith as well that God will take that food, even in its civilized form, and bring forth nourishment from it. If we look at food as a dead end then we as a civilization are headed towards a spiritual breakdown. We can't survive on nothing. We can't live on food scraps from the table meant for the brute beneath it.

Food is food and it is meant to be a product which will heal us and our land and our people of their thinking. If we throw away the curse of time and death we are left with one word "Trust" and believe because God, like Daniel, saw nature as the source of all simple food. Simple food, unlike the rotten food stored in vats and bins simply meant that Daniel ate his food fresh and free of the contaminants that we as a nation have learned to do away with as well. Daniel loved food and it was a gift from God and not the gods who told men to store food for centuries and keep it in vats where it rotted away to mush and mold and poison. Poison is the source of contamination of food from food that is wrongfully made, as in from infected sources. If avian flu covers the earth the Lord will still provide his children with fowls and fishes and food from the heavens. There is nothing that cannot be made from earth and God knows how to do this with the utmost simplicity. Food is the breadth of the land and from it we who are His children must comply with one simple rule Trust and don't be afraid for the issues of the world and their lies. We are in the last days and food will be a issue for all men to see but God is raising up an army of weapons called nutrition of life and this is the story of it how we are the source of that army by praying for what we eat. And if we pray God will take away the dark stores of men who hold food in warehouses for years where it rots away waiting for us to eat it. We are never meant to hold on to food for ten years or five or three or two but even one is long enough for this age. Trust in the Lord for supplies and wait upon Him and He will provide to you all the nutrition of life. There is nothing more you can do but trust for the supplies of food and water for the last days. Don't stock up more than a year for this is the will of God in these last days. So be it. Amen.