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Dripping Springs Weekly Bulletins
Great News About Calories!
Recent news articles center on the current problem of obesity. Many of us have little books that tell us the exact number of calories in a doughnut or a bowl of Rocky Road. Weight control is big business in America, and “diet” food is in abundant supply. You can buy Blue Bell Lite, “fat-free cinnamon rolls”, and a new “diet” comes out every seven days.
New developments are being made daily, and a flash news item just crossed my desk. It’s the newest news that all of us will want to know. Read it carefully:
“A recent study of caloric intake and its relation to individual obesity has just been made public. Shocking information is now available that will take away the fears and stress usually associated with maintenance of proper body weight and proportion.”
These excerpts from the study should be memorized and utilized. Consider these new, startling facts:
- Food consumed while in a standing position has no calories. This is due to gravity and the density of the caloric mass.
- Broken cookies and pieces of bruised candy are not fattening because the calories all leak out on the table or into the container.
- Food eaten when no one is watching has no caloric content.
- Food consumed while on vacation or at someone else’s house contain no calories.
- Drinking a Diet Coke with a Snickers bar cancels out the calories.
- When company is invited over, calories are not counted if you eat no more than your company eats.
- Licking the spoon or cleaning out the bowl is not fattening.
Well, you get the idea. If this were true you would want this book in your pantry. But you and I know that this is all just fooling around – calories always count, in all circumstances.
Similar “rules” are popular in other areas of life. We all have heard some of these:
“It matters Little What You Believe If You Sincerely
Believe It.”
What a pleasant thought! You can believe anything and it’s right! Why, we could believe the earth is flat and that would make it so. We could even believe that water will fuel our vehicles and that would make it so.
We could believe – sincerely – that God is going to save everyone in the end, regardless of how we lived, and that makes it so. I think I’m going to try that on the interest rates and the next election. We can do it like they do at Burger King – “have it your way!”
Who needs the Bible, anyway, if I can make something right merely by believing it to be so? Of what church should you be a member? Have it your way! What moral and ethical codes should we respect? Have it your way.
I believe we are on to something here. This will eliminate all our wars, our problems and disagreements.
But wait; what if having it your way keeps me from having it my way? What if having it your way means you can take my wife, and my children? Maybe this idea is not so hot after all, but it is the standard so many embrace and defend today.
“One Church Is As Good As Another”
This is where this mind-set has the most followers -- in religion. The world is so divided on this subject that some have decided that we must rid ourselves of the guilt and the consequences of believing different things in religious matters. This way I can believe what I want and it has to be right. God exists – or He does not exist. It does no good to debate the subject. God has a law – or He does not have a law. Either way, you’re OK. Each person writes his/her own doctrines, and God (if He exists) must accept them as correct.
Absurd, you say? Not if you buy into this mind-set. The church is important, or the church is not important. Have it your way! Sing and pray and give, or do not sing and pray and give. Have it your way. Worship as the Bible says, or worship your own way. God has to like it, because you are in charge.
Yes, it makes about as much sense as saying there are no calories in a jelly doughnut while you are on vacation. We joke about the doughnut and we know we are joking. But the subjective “have it your way” in religion is the way a lot of people want it, and pity you if you don’t go along with them. Strangely enough, this is the only absolute that exists in human thought – that there are no absolutes. None! Everything is up to you and me.
Rational people know there are some things that are true and some things that are false. Our believing something does not make it right. God is in charge, not man. When that time of judgment comes about, we will be judged by what He has said, not what man says.
“He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him – the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day,” John 12:48.
Eat that jelly doughnut if you like, but the calories will catch up with you. The same is true about your attitude toward what God says in the Bible.
Carl B. Garner
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“No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time saddled with a responsibility.”
“If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.”
“God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.”
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Psalm 46
“To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, A Song upon Alamoth. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”
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