Junk Food

Spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison - C.S. Lewis

This quote stuck with me and it came up in my responses to yesterday's blog entry. I think that this is a very real danger - we will fill ourselves up with empty and even poisonous spiritual "calories" - growing fat while our soul starves nutritionally.

I think the food analogies are apt - we are an obese nation who is starving ourselves nutritionally eating food that crosses the line to being harmful. Many foods are addictive and poison us slowly - just as surely as alcohol, nicotine, and other drugs can harm us and cause us to crave them out of all reason.

This begs the question of how this relates to us on a spiritual level and I'd like to begin with another quote:

Nothing but God can satisfy that hunger in the human heart, that aching for meaning and purpose. No- thing can fill that hole – but only Someone.  Pascal wrote of this hole in the soul as a “God shaped vacuum”. St. Augustine of Hippo expressed this universally experienced sentiment, “Our hearts are restless God until they rest in Thee.” We were created for purpose. We were created for meaning. We were created for Love. We were created for relationship. We were created for God (http://blog.beliefnet.com/catholicbychoice/2011/04/walking-the-easter-way-by-living-our-lives-in-the-risen-lord-now.html#ixzz1psZ7VX9O ).

I look for one quote by St. Augustine of Hippo and find three. I thought that Deacon Keith Fournier expressed the whole idea beautifully.

We have a spiritual hunger and there are nutritious ways to satisfy that hunger and there are ways that are not at all beneficial. I don't think the sole nutritious path lies in one denomination or creed; however, I do think that this challenges us to do some soul searching and find out how we are satisfying our spiritual hunger.