“The real issue is there’s 1 billion people overeating, and 1 billion people that don’t have access to food.”
― Chef Alain Ducasse
When living in Disneyland, errr, I mean Dallas, or any major metropolitan city, we can’t help but think everyone has 17 options of olives and 57 versions of balsamic vinegar at their local grocer.We forget — or may not be aware — that things like food deserts exist, even in Big D (side note, check out the awesome work of Bonton Farms.)
I love me some documentaries, and one that grabbed me this weekend on Netflix is Theater of Life. It highlights a passionate chef who’s doing his version of Bill and Melinda Gates’ The Giving Pledge. Chef Massimo Bottura encourages his fellow world-renowned chef buddies to eliminate food waste by cooking gourmet meals for the less fortunate. They’ve made their personal marks as restaurant elites, and now he’s pushing them to make a difference for those who will rarely step foot in a Michelin-rated destination. It has plenty of piercing “feelz” and warm and fuzzies, while illuminating the reality that every country has a population of folks struggling to survive each day. Roughly three-quarters of the way through, the quote above from Chef Alain Ducasse leapt off the screen. What hits like a brick is the idea of a billion people overeating juxtaposed against those who don’t have access. Those kinds of numbers put me on my heels, but I hate resting in hopelessness or apathy.
The numbers remind me of a similar statistic directly in our backyard. The North Texas Food Bank provides incredible data points on their Hunger Facts page, like this one, “Almost 300,000 children in North Texas are food insecure.” That’s an interesting play on words, food insecure, and likely a more compelling way of communicating hunger pains. Austin Street Center has a similar statement that will stick with me until the grave, “Homeless people experience relational poverty.” When life turns upside-down, the two distresses go hand-in-hand, people don’t have food, and they don’t have people. Most of us rarely experience either, and if so, it’s only a trigger to go out with friends and enjoy dinner.
What comes to mind are two C.S. Lewis quotes. If not familiar, I mention him often. He’s one of those dead guys who says all the best things, sorta like a theological Mark Twain and Winston Churchill.
“If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.”
“Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.”
I’ll try to connect the dots between an Italian chef and a British theologian who’s been dead for 50-plus years. I have no idea whether Massimo Bottura is a Christ follower, but he’s very much exhibiting Christ-like qualities of feeding thousands. He’s looking outward and impacting people in need. In other words, he’s living out what us Jesus freaks refer to as Kingdom vision. He’s exhibiting attributes that are not the norm in this world. What Lewis is saying is the more we think about eternity — a place that lasts forever — the more we won’t focus on the less valuable items of this world that are temporary and irrelevant.
Yes, I hear your push-back, “I don’t need Jesus to be a giving person.” Yep, you’re right, you don’t. But please do run this little experiment: spend a year volunteering twice a month, and donating let’s say $500 a month to a charity. I purposely picked excessive sacrifices of time and money, because that isn’t what most of us do. Then spend a year, twice a month, excessively shopping, drinking, lounging on the beach, going to Vegas, doing lunches at the club, spending $500 a month on you alone, not doing anything sacrificial for others. Pay attention to the endorphin high you get when serving, in comparison with self-indulgence. See if you feel better when you get everything you want; or when you give little moments of joy to others while sacrificing self. Maybe a way to measure is to add up the Thank You’s you receive versus the receipts you accumulate, then tell me how you feel.
The point I’m making is that God has wired us to serve, therefore we feel better as people when we help others. And who gave more than any person in the history of mankind? Jesus Christ.
John 1:1-4 says,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”
Those verses are saying Christ was there in the beginning. When time began, when the universe started, when atoms, molecules and every scientific thingy big-banged, He snapped His fingers to make it so. Which means He is the originator of all stuff, including the desire to help, and the associated dopamine hit we feel. Yes, please do challenge the assertion, please wrestle deeply with the concept of Christ as the origin of service to others.
Hell, I was moved by simply WATCHING someone help others on Netflix, imagine if I got off the couch! At the end of the day, isn’t that we want, to have a life full of meaning? To feel satisfied with how we score each day? Wouldn’t we rather have tangible metrics of sacrifice beyond a saccharine IG or FB meme of “Live your best life?”
“Most of us find it very difficult to want ‘Heaven’ at all — except in so far as ‘Heaven’ means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.”
I love how Lewis mentions the struggle of betting on an ambiguous heaven. “Uh, what is it exactly? Can’t see it, touch it, hear it or smell it, so I’m gonna focus on what’s tangible.” A quick refresher on Lewis, he was an Oxford scholar and atheist, who set out to prove that God didn’t exist. In that journey, he discovered not only God, but God in the person of Jesus Christ. He’s pushing us to think of heaven because the logic is sound: eternity is forever, our time here is vapor. If that’s true, then separate the wheat from the chaff with what’s empty or iron in this world and the next.
After you begin serving, then spend $20 at The Amazon and buy an ESV Study Bible. Start asking questions about eternity, read the overviews and introductions to the various books within the Old Testament and New Testament, study for 10 minutes each morning while sipping a cup uh joe.
At the very least, you’ll begin to have a balanced life of work, play and service, and maybe the three get reversed. You may also be surprised to find that a new relationship opens up with that JC fella, and profoundly changes your heart, mind and soul.
See ya next time. ML