The Starving Church 8-9-09
According to the Bread for the World Institute (www.bread.org) over one billion people on this planet are hungry. This in a world that produces enough food to feed everyone on the planet with more calories per day than thirty years ago (www.worldhunger.org). So why are so many people hungry in a world with plenty of food? They are not eating enough.
No, this is not my attempt at dark humor; the reason people are hungry is that they are not getting food that is available in the world. For most of human history, the main cause of hunger was the scarcity of food – simply put, we did not produce enough food for everyone. But since the industrial revolution and the tremendous breakthroughs in agricultural technology we consistently produce more food than we need; I remember news stories in the 1980’s about shiploads of wheat sitting in the dock, rotting because the United States had no way to get food to the starving people in Africa without utterly collapsing their primitive agricultural economies. In other words, hunger today is not the result of the lack of food but rather the inability or unwillingness of people to consume existing food.
Hunger due to inability to eat is understandable. But are there really people who are unwilling to eat? Absolutely. From cultural dietary restrictions to traditional rejection of modern agricultural technology, some people simply refuse to do what it takes to eat.
Most of us would respond with incredulity, saying something like “that’s crazy!” and shaking our heads. But how many in the church starve themselves spiritually for far less credible reasons?
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:35-40 NIV)
If we believe that Jesus is the “bread of life,” then why do we not seek sustenance from him? There seem to be so many in the church today that want to “experience Jesus” and so go from church to church, seeking some spiritual fulfillment in the event taking place in the worship service. But that is not what feeds the spirit of man!
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deuteronomy 8:3 NIV)
It is by no mistake that Jesus quoted this in response to the Devil’s temptation! Jesus certainly was experiencing an event when he had fasted and then was confronted by Satan. But he drew on what he knew from the scriptures and was saved from giving in to a false hunger. Why would we think that we do not need the scriptures, when Jesus himself nourished himself with them? The early church fathers also believed in deriving spiritual sustenance from the scriptures. Many examples exist of their belief in the need for Bible reading, such as Clement of Rome (96 AD), Irenaeus (180 AD), and others. The following sums up their ideas well:
Thomas of Alexandria (300 AD) “Let no day pass by without reading some portion of the sacred Scriptures – at such convenient hour as offers. And give some time to meditation. Never cast off the habit of reading in the Holy Scriptures. For nothing feeds the soul and enriches the mind as much as those sacred studies do.” (A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, David Bercot, 1998 Hendrickson Publishers Inc.)
If the ancient Christians, who typically worked from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, could struggle to learn from scattered manuscripts and listen to words they possible could not themselves read, is it too much for God’s people today to pick up the Bible we have in our homes and read in the hours we have to ourselves each day? We all fill our days up; but I guarantee that every American Christian reading this took time last week to eat food. Did you take at least that much time to read God’s word? A person who does not eat food will die in time; a Christian who does not feed on God’s word will die in eternity. Are you choosing to starve or to thrive?
-Charles Peterson