Dressing on the Side

Ok, so the more I read my stories, the more I realize that I am really weird. I look at everything that happens in the world from the aspect of an allegory, and sometimes they are quite a stretch. I could probably come up with a metaphor relating God to pudding if I tried. Hmm…something about the proof being in the pudding….

Anyway, my latest attempt comes courtesy of the Jason’s Deli salad bar. As I was concocting my meal, I realized that sometimes when we don’t know or don’t want to accept the truth about God’s character, we try to make a personalized “God salad”. We take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a sprinkle of this, a spoonful of that - all according to our individual tastes.

But unlike a salad, we can’t pick and choose when it comes to God’s truth. As much as I’d like to have a certain delectable ingredient on my God salad, if it is not an option, I’m out of luck. And even if a few specific aspects of Christianity leave a bad taste in my mouth, I have to accept them anyway. Because when you choose God from the menu, there's a NO SUBSTITUTIONS rule. Hebrews 13:8 says that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He never changes. And we surely can’t change Him. So if we enjoy picking and choosing and having ourselves some options, I guess we should get it all out of our system in appropriate ways, like when foraging at the salad bar.

I am quite aware that Caesar salads are not what Jesus was referring to when he said in Matthew 22:21, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s”. But hey, it works.