My son, like me, is lactose intolerant.
As a family we decided to darken the doors of one of our favorite ice cream places, Graeter’s. I love that place. Unbelievably awesome ice cream! As we drove down the road towards Graeter’s the anticipation in the car finally exploded into chanting.
From the back seat my children were chanting, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE-CREAM! AHHHHH!” My ears still ringing from the ice cream chant, we walked in and the kids began to assemble their gluttonous mass of milk and sugar. It didn’t take long and each of them, while under the rush of the aforementioned sugar, turned into Tigger from Winnie The Pooh.
My son, who can’t tolerate milk well at all, did more than taste forbidden fruit – he indulged in it. Bedtime was a mixed bag of regret and blame. It was OUR fault he felt sick. Why didn’t we stop him from eating the food? The funny thing is, we DID warn him! If we wouldn’t have allowed him to have any ice cream we would have been mean parents who kept him from something good! There was no way out for mom and dad. We were the bad guys no matter what.
What my kids really want is unrestricted fulfillment of their desires with zero consequences. I don’t think we ever grow out of this.
Think about how much of our economy is built around trying to remove consequences so we can indulge in unrestricted fulfillment of our desires. From sex and food to clothing, we are at war with boundaries and relentlessly looking for ways to remove consequences.
God is a loving parent and the Bible is a map showing us the way to the best life. We, like spoiled impatient children, are mad at God when he says “no” to what we want, and mad at him when we go the wrong way and end up hurt. What humanity wants is for God to create situations where we can indulge in whatever we desire and it to be deemed good and healthy.
Can you imagine a world with billions of little gods getting whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it? From radical religious people to gamblers and sex addicts, the world would be in utter chaos without boundaries.
The objective boundaries and guidelines God has given us may just be a gift. Check out 1 Corinthians 1:18-25