According to Wikipedia:

Converts to Christianity followed a strict catechumenate or period of instruction and discipline. In Jerusalem near the close of the fourth century, classes were held throughout Lent for three hours each day. With the legalization of Christianity (by the Edict of Milan) and its later imposition as the state religion of the Roman Empire, its character was endangered by the great influx of new members. In response, the Lenten fast and practices of self-renunciation were required annually of all Christians. The less zealous of the converts were thus brought more securely into the Christian fold.

This seems to have been a very wise thing to do – especially in an evangelical church in which there is a constant influx of new members. In fact, it seems like a great idea even today. One role of tradition is to bring stability. Another is to pass wisdom from one generation to the next. The practice of Lent if followed as described would serve to do those things.

Traditionally Lent is a period when you give up something. One of the vices I most enjoy is a glass of wine or a beer in the evening. I’m giving this up for Lent. I’ll also try to make a point of doing some study and prayer every day.

I also observed fat Tuesday by eating a couple Paczki. (sheepish grin…)

One day we decided to get on the scales. That caused a great deal of weeping and wailing and a sudden drive to lose weight. We leaped on the low-fat bandwagon with a vengeance. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have very much affect at all.

At some point along in here we ran across low-carb diets. My first exposure to low-carb (or moderate carb) was through Barry Sears’ Zone Diet. At the same time I was reading that, my wife was reading The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet (CAD). Atkins came along later on after Shari had built up a resistance to the CAD, but the CAD worked miraculously for quite some time. Eventually Shari switched to Atkins and I found that a moderate-carb approach worked well for me.

What the discovery of an alternative diet theory did for me was to confound my faith in science, or rather scientists. While some scientists had come up with a theory that seemed to work quite well for us, others insisted quite vehemently that such a theory was wrong. Scientists had “religious” quarrels just like Christians did and who was right was anybody’s guess.

Additionally, it drove another nail in the coffin of the Seventh-day Adventist prophetess Ellen White, who claimed you shouldn’t eat animal products. There is no way you can eat low-carb without ingesting some type of animal product.

I had already had my Christian faith confounded and now my faith in science (or at least scientists) had been confounded. What this did was to leave me hanging out in space with no real firm belief in anything. I hung on for a bit like that, but this was the inevitable turning point that made me decide that I needed to do some serious thinking and figure out the truth.

To be continued…

Some of you have been quite disturbed about where you think I’m heading with this. Realize that what I’m describing is not necessarily how I currently believe, but the thought process I went through.

At this point I wanted to get married to a nice Christian girl (to whom I am still married) and so decided I would at least give the whole Christianity thing a go again for a while since it seemed a prerequisite to get the girl. I once again took up vegetarianism with a vengeance. I could not yet see how grains and legumes fit into the picture, but I figured that I must simply have missed something and happily snarfed them down.

Now what’s confusing about my previous conclusions is that man cannot live simply on large convenient natural foods like fruits and vegetables. There simply isn’t enough energy available to sustain a man in most climates. In tropical regions coconuts and avacados may help to provide the energy requirements, but in northern climates we’re out of luck.

Most traditional religions have some sort of a flood story. In the Bible, the flood is said to have wiped out all living things that were not taken into the ark. After the flood, God officially gives Noah permission to kill and eat all things that move. Now we have enough energy our food to sustain life in northern climates. It seemed plausible to me that prior to such a natural disaster there were foods available that are no longer available. Who knows, soil makeup, atmosphere, and other factors could have made significant changes at that time as well. Thus it was necessary for man to eat meat after the flood. Note also that the Bible never mentions God ever revoking his statement that we should eat meat.

This is the piece I was missing. While I knew about the flood and God telling Noah to eat meat, I had been taught by the writings of the Seventh-day Adventist “prophetess” that he had only done that for temporary purposes after the flood and that we should no longer eat meat.

Continue reading in part 4…

Having been raised in a church that put a strong emphasis on health, I have retained my interest in a healthy lifestyle to this day. But my opinion on what is healthy has changed dramatically.

Toward my late teens early twenties, I rejected most of what I had been taught up until that point. I called myself an agnostic. I was introduced to chicken and beef by my future wife (an Adventist) and found that I really liked meat.

I realized that what one believes about the origins of man can have a tremendous affect on what you believe is healthy. An intelligent designer would have known exactly what He designed us to eat, so the original plan would have been ideal. On the other hand, an evolved being would have adapted to whatever was available in the environment. I began reasoning out what made sense in each scenario.

My original conclusions were that a designer would have designed foods in sizes and conveniences appropriate to the amounts we should eat. Fruits would have been extremely important since they are both highly convenient and relatively large. Grains, on the other hand, would have been unimportant since they are very small and difficult to harvest in large quantities.

I realized that such logic actually seemed to fit in with the evolutionary angle as well. Early man would have had difficulty harvesting grains and so would have been more likely to eat apples than large quantities of spelt.

The main difference here is that a creator (as far as I could tell) would not have made man to eat meat (i.e. to kill and eat other creatures of his design), while an evolved man would have been very likely to eat meat.

Continue reading in part 3…

I started life in the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church. One thing SDAs are famous for is their vegetarian diet. I grew up eating a lot of “vege-meat” and other strange concoctions created to fill a person’s need for meat. All Adventists have experienced “Special-K Loaf” (also known as Cottage Cheese Loaf).

Adventists teach that God’s original plan was that we were to be vegetarians. We were only “allowed” meat after Noah’s flood because there wasn’t anything else to eat. Adventists insist that now that we have other things to eat, we shouldn’t eat meat anymore. There is no text to support such a notion, only the words of the Adventist prophetess Ellen White.

Suffice it to say that I was pretty much a vegetarian up until my late teens.

Continued in part 2…

In a similar way, I believe there is a God. I don’t believe there is a God simply because that’s how I was brought up. I believe it because the evidence is there to support such a belief.

If you don’t believe in God, I’m not going to convince you in one blog post. But from one reasoning person to another, I have seen the evidence and I am convinced. Investigate with an open mind and I believe you will conclude the same.

While physical nourishment is important, it is only temporary. 100% of all life ends in death. Don’t neglect the nourishment of your spirit.

Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” John 6:49-51

Today is the National Day of Prayer. Don’t miss this opportunity to partake of the bread of life.

Certainly, you can have an ethical individual atheist, an instinctively caring, generous person who happens to disbelieve in God. But an atheist society could not survive. It would first live on the fumes of ancient moral traditions. In the end, racked by despair at life’s apparent meaninglessness, its members would return to more nourishing faiths.