Job said in Job 23:12 “Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.”

Here we see that Job likened God’s word to food.

Jesus Christ also likened God’s word to food in the temptation, quoting from the Old Testament that “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

… Because the Holy Bible is the food of the Christian.

Like your physical man needs physical food to grow and sustain, so the spiritual man needs spiritual food to grow and sustain. Without physical food, you will eventually die, and without spiritual food, you will be very spiritually weak.

There are many professing Christians today who are spiritually weak because they do not feed on God’s word.

… And when they do, it’s “processed food” that they are eating. And there’s an incredibly relevant analogy that can be drawn from processed food problems in our society to processed food problems in Christianity.

What is processed food? Processed food is “any food that’s altered during preparation to make it more convenient, shelf-stable or flavorful.”

Technically, all food is “processed” in the sense that food is picked, bagged, shipped, cooked etc… but processed food generally refers to food that has been chemically modified using artificial flavours, additives and ingredients.

Because of this, processed foods carry many serious health risks, such as increased cancer risk, too much sugar and fat, loss of nutritional value, calorie density and addiction, quicker to digest, full of artificial ingredients.

That’s why health and dietary experts recommend choosing foods that are mostly whole and as least processed as possible.

“Cool” you might say, but how does this all relate to God’s word? Well, quite a bit, because we have a real problem with processed food “white bread Christianity” in our times.

It begins with the processing of God’s word itself, new versions of the Bible which are “processed food”. Because we’re meant to believe and obey the Bible, not change it. In both the Old and New Testaments, the reader is seriously warned against adding and taking away from God’s word.

Processing God’s word, for whatever reason, whether for money or to make it more modern, easy or accurate, only results in the loss of nutritional value when it’s detail, substance and goodness is stripped in the process of making it more convenient and suitable to carnal tastebuds.

But not only the processing of the Bible itself, but many Christians are also highly reliant on other people processing God’s word for them, rather than reading it for themselves.

And this is highly problematic, because there are many false Christians of position and influence who process out the stuff that’s good, true and that people need to hear from God’s word, and so their followers end up getting “junk food” rather than real food from them.

As Christians, we are meant to take God’s word as it is and to draw from its value by reading and processing it for ourselves… kind of like the Israelites did with the manna in the wilderness, which they would gather daily to grind, beat, bake and cook with.

This principle is also found in the Old Testament Jewish dietary law. One of the two key criteria that had to be met for an animal to be considered “clean” and fit for human consumption was that it had to “chew the cud”.

When a cow chews the cud, it is processing what it has eaten again and again to truly draw value from it. In like manner, when you read God’s word, it often takes time processing it to draw value from it, but that process is necessary, good for you and worth it… as it is to that cow.

So read, pray, think and meditate upon the Bible, remembering the Bible is meant to change you not you change it, and the Holy Spirit will minister it abundantly to your heart and life, and much more than you may think possible.

Jesus Christ is the bread of life, but when he is presented in “white bread” form to this world, stripped of all nutritional value to hungry, lost souls… this false representation of Christ has become quite useless to this world, and even the Christians that tout him.

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