A graduate student sits at a booth with friends, his second drink near empty. “Can I refill you?” the waiter asks.

A mother sees the chocolate as she reaches for her youngest’s sippy cup. She tries not to eat sugar in the afternoons, but she’s tired and stressed, and the children aren’t looking.

A father comes back to the kitchen after putting the kids down. Dinner is done, but the leftover pizza is still sitting out. The day has drained him, and another few pieces seem harmless.

Compared to the battles many fight — against addiction, against pornography, against anger, against pride — scenarios such as these may seem too trivial for discussion. Don’t we have bigger sins to worry about than the gluttony of secret snacks and third helpings?

And yet, food is a bigger battleground than many recognize. Do you remember Moses’s terse description of the world’s first sin?

She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6)

Murder did not bar Adam and Eve from paradise — nor did adultery, theft, lying, or blasphemy. Eating did. Our first parents ate their way out of Eden. And in our own way, so do we.

Garden of Eating

Food problems, whether large (buffet binging) or small (hidden, uncontrolled snacking), go back to the beginning. Our own moments before the refrigerator or the cupboard can, in some small measure, reenact that moment by the tree. And apart from well-timed grace from God, we often respond in one of two ungodly ways.

“Our first parents ate their way out of Eden. And in our own way, so do we.”

Some, like Adam and Eve, choose to indulge. They sense, on some level, that to eat is to quiet the voice of conscience and weaken the walls of self-control (Proverbs 25:28). They would recognize, if they stopped to ponder and pray, that this “eating is not from faith” (Romans 14:23). But they neither stop, nor ponder, nor pray. Instead, they tip their glass for another drink, snatch and swallow the chocolate, grab a few more slices. Wisdom’s protest avails little against the suggestion of “just one more.”

“Since Eden,” Derek Kidner writes, “man has wanted the last ounce out of life, as though beyond God’s ‘enough’ lay ecstasy, not nausea” (Proverbs, 152). And so, the indulgent drink and grab and sip and snack, forgetting that their grasping leads them, not deeper into Eden’s heart, but farther outside Eden’s walls, where, nauseous and bloated, they bow to the god called “belly” (Philippians 3:19; see also Romans 16:18).

Meanwhile, others choose to deny. Their motto is not “Eat, drink, be merry” (Luke 12:19), but “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch” (Colossians 2:21). They frantically count calories, buy scales, and build their lives on the first floor of the food pyramid. Though they may not impose their diets on others, at least for themselves they “require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:3) — as if one should see Eden’s lawful fruit and say, “I’m good with grass.”

If our God-given appetites are a stallion, some let the horse run unbridled, while others prefer to shut him up in a stable. Still others, of course, alternate (sometimes wildly) between the two. In Christ, however, God teaches us to ride.

Appetite Redeemed

Paul’s familiar command to “be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1) comes, surprisingly enough, in the context of food (see 1 Corinthians 8–10, especially 8:7–13 and 10:14–33). And the Gospels tell us why: in Jesus, we find appetite redeemed.

“The Son of Man came eating and drinking,” Jesus says of himself (Matthew 11:19) — and he wasn’t exaggerating. Have you ever noticed just how often the Gospels mention food? Jesus’s first miracle multiplied wine (John 2:1–11); two of his most famous multiplied bread (Matthew 14:13–21; 15:32–39). He regularly dined as a guest at others’ homes, whether with tax collectors or Pharisees (Mark 2:13–17; Luke 14:1). He told parables about seeds and leaven, feasts and fattened calves (Matthew 13:1–9, 33; Luke 14:7–11; 15:11–32). When he met his disciples after his resurrection, he asked, “Have you anything here to eat?” (Luke 24:41) — another time, he took the initiative and cooked them breakfast himself (John 21:12). No wonder he thought it good for us to remember him over a meal (Matthew 26:26–29).

And yet, for all of his freedom with food, he was no glutton or drunkard. Jesus could feast, but he could also fast — even for forty days and forty nights when necessary (Matthew 4:2). At meals, you never get the sense that he was preoccupied with his plate; rather, God and neighbor were his constant concern (Mark 2:13–17; Luke 7:36–50). And so, when the tempter found him in his weakness, and suggested he make bread to break his fast, our second Adam gave a resolute no (Matthew 4:3–4).

Here is a man who knows how to ride a stallion. While some indulged, and others denied, our Lord Jesus directed his appetite.

Meeting Eden’s Maker

If we are going to imitate Jesus in his eating, we will need more than the right food rules. Adam and Eve did not fall, you’ll remember, for lack of a diet.

No, we imitate Jesus’s eating only as we enjoy the kind of communion he had with the Father. This touches the root of the failure at the tree, doesn’t it? Before Eve reached for the fruit, she let the serpent cast a shadow over her Father’s face. She let him convince her that the God of paradise, as Sinclair Ferguson writes, “was possessed of a narrow and restrictive spirit bordering on the malign” (The Whole Christ, 80). The god of the serpent’s beguiling was a misanthrope deity, one who kept his best fruit on forbidden trees. And so, Eve reached.

But through Jesus Christ, we meet God again: the real Maker of Eden, and the only one who can break and tame our appetites. Here is the God who made all the earth’s food; who planted trees on a hundred hills and said, “Eat!” (Genesis 2:16); who feeds his people from “the abundance of [his] house,” and gives “them drink of the river of [his] delights” (Psalm 36:8); who does not withhold anything good from his own (Psalm 84:11); and who, in the fullness of time, withheld not even the greatest of all goods: his beloved Son (Romans 8:32).

“We eat, drink, and abstain to the glory of God only when we, like Jesus, taste God himself as our choicest food.”

Unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus ate (and abstained) in the presence of this unfathomably good God. And so, when he ate, he gave thanks to the Giver (Matthew 14:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24). When he ran up against his Father’s “You shall not eat,” he did not silence conscience or discard self-control, but feasted on something better than bread alone (Matthew 4:4). “My food,” he told his disciples, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34). He knew there was a time to eat and a time to abstain, and that both times were governed by the goodness of God.

We eat, drink, and abstain to the glory of God only when we, like Jesus, taste God himself as our choicest food (1 Corinthians 10:31; Psalm 34:8).

Direct Your Appetite

Admittedly, the line between just enough and too much is a blurry one, and even the most mature can fail to notice that border until they’ve eaten beyond it. Even still, between the overflowing plate of indulgence and the empty plate of denial is a third plate, one we increasingly discern and choose as the Spirit refines our heart’s palate. Here, we neither indulge nor deny our appetites, but like our Lord Jesus, we direct them.

So then, there you are, ready to grab another portion, take another drink, down another handful, though your best spiritual wisdom dictates otherwise. You are ready, in other words, to reach past God’s “enough” once again. What restores your sanity in that moment? Not repeating the rules with greater fervor, but following the rules back to the mouth of an infinitely good God. When you sense that you have reached God’s “enough” — perhaps through briefly stopping, pondering, praying — you have reached the wall keeping you from leaving the Eden of communion with Christ, that Food better than all food (John 4:34).

And so, you walk away, perhaps humming a hymn to the God who is good:

Thou art giving and forgiving,Ever blessing, ever blest,Wellspring of the joy of living,Ocean depth of happy rest!

This is the Maker of Eden, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And if the real God is this good, then we need not grasp for what he has not given.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15249525/how-is-the-armor-of-god-ordered

Few of us would willingly repeat our middle and high school years. For many, the span from age twelve to seventeen held insecurities, fears, disappointments, and maybe even intense suffering that we would not want to relive.

Part of our trouble came from the adolescent tendency to filter everything, even our deepest joys and triumphs, through peers. If you’re like me, you can instantly recall moments when people you thought were friends turned on you or when nothing you did seemed enough for those whose affection and friendship you desired most. In those years, the pressure of vying for the approval of others could burden even our happiest moments.

Several years ago, I read a pundit who pointed out that social media is a lot like high school. I think he’s right. As much as we might reassure ourselves that we aren’t the same clique-ambitious, relationally anxious people we were in our teens, isn’t it often true that we feel similar emotions and make decisions for similar reasons online?

C.S. Lewis famously observed that “the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things” (The Weight of Glory, 154). Lewis had a more traditional idea of an “inner ring” in mind: groups of embodied persons, enticing and excluding others in schools and offices and communities. But what if the inner rings that sway our loyalties are digital?

I submit that one of the biggest challenges to Christian faithfulness today is the way our technology has empowered us to create a near infinite network of inner rings.

Rings of Belief

Human beings are not autonomous thought-machines. We are social creatures who (at least partly) decide what we think and how we will live in response to those around us. This is not an effect of the fall; it’s simply part of what it means to be a creature. In fact, the social element of belief can be a tremendous blessing, because the true faith of those around us can inspire and fortify our own. Paul instructs Timothy to “continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it” (2 Timothy 3:14). Paul appeals to Timothy’s trust in the people who brought him the gospel as an encouragement to keep believing in it.

“Faith does not grow in isolation from others. But neither does it grow for the sake of being seen by others.”

So, in our own battle to keep believing God’s promises, it’s good to consider the faith of those we know and trust. But this godly imitation is different from what often happens on social media. Online, our constant exposure to the beliefs of a particular inner ring, and seeing this ring accrue benefits for their beliefs and values through “Likes” and shares, can push our beliefs to change. In this case, what we really want is glory. We want the attention and the affirmation that we see coming to certain people, so we are tempted to mimic their beliefs in hopes we will obtain some of the glory they’re enjoying.

This tendency isn’t new. Jesus took it head-on. “How can you believe,” he asks the Pharisees, “when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44). Social glory is quicksand in the search for truth. And if this held true two thousand years ago, how much more relevant is it today, when the books we read, the opinions we have, even the people we love are “content” that we can publish for approval?

Faith does not grow in isolation from others. But neither does it grow for the sake of being seen by others. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray in secret, he was not forbidding public prayer; he was forbidding prayer for the sake of publicity (Matthew 6:1, 5–6). The challenge we face in the digital age is that social media has become integrated with so many aspects of life. It’s not easy to discern where “practicing righteousness” ends and “practicing righteousness in order to be seen by others” begins.

Inner and Outer Rings

Life’s migration to the Internet intensifies this temptation in particular ways. The more online we become, the more prone we are not just to develop a private inner ring — those accounts whose attention and approval we most long for — but also an outer ring. An outer ring represents the kind of people we dislike and distrust. Perhaps this is a group with a certain theological view we regard as so wrong that it makes everything else they believe suspect. Or, perhaps more likely, it’s a group with a certain political view that, in our eyes, disqualifies them from ever speaking wisely about anything.

Truth has boundaries. There is such a thing as damnable error (Galatians 1:8). And there are times and occasions for not even associating with those who teach or live by lies (2 John 10; 1 Corinthians 5:11). In these biblical situations, however, there is always an important element involved: the local church. The local church stands as an embodied community of Christians who hold the message of the gospel in good faith and enforce Jesus’s boundaries around it.

Our digital outer rings, however, are usually not shaped by the sober judgments of real churches but by our own opinions and preferences. What’s more, on the computer, we can easily mute or block anyone we don’t want to see. This practice trains our conscience to instinctively dismiss the people in real life who say or do things we disagree with. The more immersed we are in this digital liturgy, the more likely we are to draw our real-world outer rings in strange places, influenced more by second- and third-order issues (or maybe even plain old dislike) than by first-order ones. This is not what Jesus intends for his people.

The One Who Sees

In our hyper-transparent world, which invites us to publish everything we are and do, Jesus’s invitation to commune with him in secret serves as both a nonnegotiable command and a life-giving respite.

Constant performance is exhausting. Our digital inner rings cheer us on for a moment, but their praise is short-lived. After a while, we begin to get anxious until the next moment they reaffirm their approval. We grow weary of having to maintain our outer rings, hoping we’re never forced to look into the eyes of the people we’ve digitally shunned. Of all industries, buying and selling glory has the worst burnout rate.

Jesus has the antidote. Whether we’re helping to meet the physical needs of others or the spiritual needs of our own heart, Jesus draws our attention not to the cool kids watching but to the Father who “sees in secret” (Matthew 6:4). The digital inner ring draws us the most when we feel the eyes of God on our lives the least. For some of us, the digital inner ring feels like a way to make our own small and obscure lives seem bigger. Social media success can feel like the life we never got to live. But this is only because we’ve forgotten the One in whose presence we’ve lived every single day.

“The digital inner ring draws us the most when we feel the eyes of God on our lives the least.”

The paradox of our digital inner rings is that if they could see who we truly are, the parts of us that we refuse to publish online, they probably would put us in the outer ring. But God does see all of us. He has seen every evil thought, every cruel word, every impatient moment, every embarrassing act of selfishness. He sees in secret. And yet he still invites us to come into a small room, with just him, and to pour our glory-hungry hearts out to him. Instead of muting us, he offers himself as reward.

Friends, Not Followers

Lewis concluded his lecture on the inner ring by promising his young audience that if they resisted the temptation to use people to seek glory and instead enjoyed fellowship for its own sake, they would find something even better:

If in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside, that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product. . . . This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ringer can ever have it. (The Weight of Glory, 157)

In a world of digital inner rings, make real friends, not online followers. Allow yourself to be challenged and sharpened by the Christians in your church not like you, rather than curating your own private list of approved voices. And most of all, pursue friendship with the friend of sinners, who never casts out any who come to him.