Junk Food

If you're hungry, the airport in Fayetteville,
Arkansas, is not a good place to be.  The
selection of "snacks" in the vending machine is
impressive, but there is nothing at all that one
could call food.  You can insert your quarters,
nickels and dimes (no pennies) and get chocolate
chip cookies, potato chips (plain), potato chips
with "bar-B-Q" flavor, potato chips with sour
cream and onion (artificial) flavor, potato
"Stix," pork rinds, corn chips, "Cornies," "Pub
Fries," "Cheddar Fries," "Cheetos," "Cheese
Smackers," and things called "Doritos," "Bugles,"
"yammers" and "Dunkums."

Alongside that machine is another one offering
brightly colored aluminum cans of sweet fizzy
stuff with which to wash down all those snacks
or, I suppose, to Dunkum.  I don't like to
contemplate what state your blood sugar or your
nerves or your sanctification would be in if your
supper comprised a Tab and a package of Jammers,
but on second thought, a look around the boarding
lounge of almost any airport--at the facial
expressions, the behavior of the pre-school-age
tots, and the remarks overheard--give a clue.  We
are a nation "overfed but undernourished," to
borrow the title of Curtis Wood's book.

Junk food is not nourishment.  It's easily
available (if you have the right coins).  It is
packaged up in eye-catching wrappings, presumably
untouched by human hands.  It can be transported
to plane, to beach, to movie theatre, to school,
to bed.  It can be grabbed in a moment, wolfed
down on the run; and there are no preparations to
make, nothing to clean up except greasy fingers.
It does away altogether with the ritual of
eating--the laid table, the attractive
presentation of a dish, the fellowship with
others, the leisure to enjoy.  In a world that
has lost or discarded nearly all other rituals,
what will become of us if we do away with even
this one?

But worst of all, junk food feeds (feeding will
make you fat) but does not nourish.  Nourishment
makes you strong.  I sat on the molded fiberglass
seat in Fayetteville, waiting for the small plane
which would take me to Tulsa, and wished for a
few crunchy fat Bing cherries or a slice of the
wheat-honey bread that I make regularly at
home--real food.

Don't misunderstand.  I like potato chips.  I
like Cheetos.  I haven't tried the commercially
packaged pork rinds, but I certainly enjoyed the
kind the Indians gave me in South America--fished
out of a cauldron of hot fat bubbling over an
open fire in some jungle clearing, eaten with a
chunk of steamed manioc or a plantain roasted in
the ashes.

We are people of our times and culture.  Because
of the "schedule" I seem to be obliged to keep, I
am always looking for ways to use my time more
efficiently, and one of them is to listen to
tapes while I do my hair and face.  I switched
the recorder off the other day, disgusted with
what I told my husband was spiritual junk food.
A man was rambling on about his own feelings, his
"meaningful" experiences, and how he got in touch
with himself, with other people, and with God.
No doubt he was telling the truth, but there
wasn't a single reference to Scripture, and not
much there that would nourish me.

Christian bookstores usually carry some real
"meat," if you can find it.  It is not likely to
be up front where the paperbacks, the tapes and
the records are, which display on their jackets
color photographs of the author, the speaker or
the singer, often taken in an open meadow, in a
soft, misty light, and with a few wildflowers.
(Are there any analogies here artificial color,
perhaps, or flavor?  What about preservatives? I
understand preservatives are used in foods to
give a longer "shelf life."  The booksellers
have thought of some tricks, I'm sure, to keep
their wares in the public eye for a few weeks
longer, but no trick takes the place of quality
for preserving a book's shelf life.)

Tastes are developed.  Solzhenitsyn, in his
speech at Harvard a few months ago, deplored the
"TV stupor" in which Americans live.  He spoke of
the decadence of art, of intolerable music, of
mass prejudice, spiritual exhaustion, material
luxury, and a morally inferior happiness.  He is
right. Alas, his own experience of
totalitarianism and concentration camp gives him
the perspective and the authority to judge our
society.  We must hear him.

Doctors have been learning of the physical
exhaustion that can result from artificial or
refined or highly sugared foods.  Might not one
cause of the spiritual exhaustion which
Solzhenitsyn observes be the spiritual junk food
we consume?  What shall be done for the child fed
on the snack-pack, the soft drink and the TV
dinner?  Will he never choose, let alone enjoy,
vegetables?  Will the Christian whose spiritual
sustenance has been limited to the mass-produced,
who is accustomed only to "snacking," whose
tastes have been conditioned by the majority,
ever choose what is truly nourishing?

What it comes down to, with regard to spiritual
things, is that we ought to learn to do some of
our own cooking.  Granted, it is much easier to
grab a package.  But sometimes we ought to start
from scratch.

Let us start with silence.  That may be the
hardest thing to achieve in our world. But it is
not impossible.  For one thing, it takes the will
to be quiet.  It is possible to be quiet on a
crowded subway or in the kitchen when the bacon
is frying, the washing machine is running and the
baby wants more milk.  It is easier by far to be
quiet when things around us are quiet, and for
most of us this means getting up early.

I was in my study this morning before the traffic
had started up on Route 1A.  No sound came from
the road or the house. Only the sweet susurrus
of the crickets in the grass and the cawing of a
crow in a beech tree broke the silence, yet it
took also an act of the will to be still and know
that He is God.  My mind races quite naturally
over things done yesterday (burying a beloved
friend's beloved little dog, getting my sister
from the hospital, swimming in the ocean, writing
a page or two) or things to be done today
(writing more than a page or two, having a friend
to tea, getting my mother from the airport).  Be
still. It is a command.  The Hebrew word used in
Psalm 46 can mean "Shut up."

The great books that have been spiritual meat and
drink for me have been produced, I feel sure, out
of great silence.  Men and women of God have
learned of him by being quiet and allowing him to
speak to them in their solitude.  They have been
willing to be alone, to shut up, to listen, and
to think and pray over what they have heard.  In
our modern world most people choose noise.  Go to
the beach or a forest camp and find portable
radios, television sets, record players.  Sit
down in a waiting room and listen to what Malcolm
Muggeridge calls that "drooling melange" of
Muzak. People want noise.  They would far rather
discuss than think, talk over their problems than
pray about them, read a paperback about what
somebody else thinks about the Bible than read
the Bible.

We cannot stand stillness.  Yet we need it.  I
wonder if the popularity of transcendental
meditation is due to this felt need.  Whatever
may be said about TM's being a religion or not,
the measure of success it seems to enjoy could be
attributed in part to the simple fact that its
devotees spend a certain amount of time daily in
motionless silence.  That can't hurt anybody.

As one of those who write the stuff that is for
sale in the bookstores I referred to, I know that
responsibility is laid upon me to provide real
food.  So I speak to myself-- I must do my own
"cooking."  It is not fast food that I ought
to provide for my reader.  I must feed him, but
in order to do that I must myself be fed.  What I
speak or write must come out of silence where
only a still small voice can be heard.

I speak also to my reader.  Seek what is good for
the soul, even if it doesn't come in paperback.
Read an old book once in a while.  (Try P. T.
Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, or Luther's
Letters of Spiritual Counsel.) And once in a
while lay aside the books and the tapes.  For a
set period of time be alone, be still. "The man
who lives on me will live because of me," Jesus
said.  "This is the bread which came down from
heaven."



Copyright 1979, by Elisabeth Elliot
all rights reserved.