As I Was Saying is a forum for a variety of perspectives to foster faith-related conversations among our readers with the goal of mutual learning, even in disagreement. Apart from articles written by editorial staff, these perspectives do not necessarily reflect the views of The Banner.
You are what you eat.
Now that I’m a middle aged man—actually, I’m a few clicks away from being an old man according to the AARP postcard in my mailbox—I’m beginning to realize that I’m more or less a creamy tater tot hotdish with arms and legs.
That puts me in a coveted demographic that has both extra weight and disposable income, so my various algorithms get flooded with targeted promos geared to help me lose both. It’s hard to scroll through umpteen solicitations offering to whip me back into shape in six weeks or less while simultaneously eating yet another piece of pie, but I persevere.
Your Spiritual Physique
Certainly our physical physique is a priority, but as important as it is, it ought not occupy the top spot. Far more critical is our spiritual physique.
The prophet Isaiah wrote almost three millennia ago words that seem like they could have been written last week. In Isaiah 8:19-22, he describes the people of his day being “distressed and hungry.” Not so much physically starved, but spiritually emaciated.
As they “roam through the land” becoming more and more “famished,” their attitudes disintegrate. They become “enraged and, looking upward, curse their king and their God.” In other words, their lives kept getting darker, infecting their politics, relationships, and religion. Anger consumed them until all that they could see was “distress and darkness and fearful gloom.”
Maybe you know somebody like this—stuck in a spiral of bitterness about every realm of life and angry at the world. Indignation about one thing quickly bleeds over into ranting about another, creating a downward funnel that swiftly thrusts its victims into “utter darkness.”
Maybe you’re becoming someone like this.
Looking For Answers in All the Wrong Places
Isaiah makes clear how this happens, and his diagnosis fits today just as well as when he wrote it. Rather than “consulting God’s instruction (tô·rāh) and the testimony of warning,” people hunt for tastier tidbits that scratch their itching ears. Such a quest always has been, and still is, our primary problem, ever since the serpent slithered out of the Tree of Knowledge suggesting a superior source of wisdom than what God had supplied.
Your spiritual appetite is a good thing. You're created to have a continual desire to know more; to see beyond the pale and understand not just what is happening, but why. You have this innate curiosity because God “set eternity in your heart” (Ecc. 3:11). Because you’re an image bearer of God, you're designed to delve into and wrestle with tough topics.
So asking deep and difficult questions certainly isn't sinful, but looking for answers in all the wrong places—apart from God—is.
In Isaiah’s day, people were looking for answers from “mediums and spiritists.” That might seem bizarre to some, associating such shenanigans with the creepiest parts of town, housed in a ramshackle building featuring a large neon palm in the window. The reality, however, is interest in the occult is growing as it becomes more mainstream and acceptable (such apps dominate downloads in the app stores). There’s an appetite for diets of darkness.
“Mediums and spiritists” weren’t thought of as charlatans in Isaiah’s Israel. As Assyrian influences pressed in, such practices seemed quite sophisticated, with an air of learning and authority. Court magicians, enchanters, and astrologers maintained extensive collections of phenomena, carefully recording patterns and drawing conclusions about unseen forces. To them it was anything but silly superstition; it was a disciplined body of knowledge.
But it was far from the truth.
Biblical Truth &Spiritual Nutrition Have a 1:1 Correlation
Isaiah called his people out with what we need to hear today:
“If anyone does not speak according to this word (the LORD’s instruction and warnings), they have no light of dawn.”
There’s an exact correlation between biblical truth and spiritual nutrition. Words, thoughts, ideas, and mantras disconnected from Scripture cannot feed the soul. They bring darkness rather than light, starvation rather than life.
It only makes sense that the farther you follow your inquiries outside the light of Scripture, the farther into the dark you’ll be pulled and the more famished you'll become. Such hunger will only lead to “distress and darkness and fearful gloom.”
You become what you’re eating, physically and spiritually.
What’s on Your Plate?
How much of your weekly diet comes from sources that “have no light of dawn?”
How many dozens of hours do you consume music, entertainment, news, and influencers produced by people who are downright “hostile to God” (Rom. 8:7) compared with the time you’re fed from God’s Word by solid and faithful teachers?
Do the academic institutions you attend or support live out the psalmist’s teaching that it’s “in the LORD’s light that we see light” (Ps. 36:9), or do they reflect a vision of life and study detached from that light?
Are worship services and the teaching at your church saturated in Scripture, or are they just beautifully vapid forms of art and religion? This is why the Heidelberg Catechism reminds us we must not “worship God in any other way than He has commanded in His Word” (Q&A 96). And remember, not everybody with a Bible and microphone is, as Isaiah puts it, “speaking according to God's Word.” As you listen to preachers—from the pew and on your screens—remember Paul's advice to “test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil” (1 Thess. 5:18).
One of the Bible’s Coolest Words
Thankfully Isaiah didn’t drop his Spirit inspired truth bomb and bug out. His dark diagnosis paves the way for one of the scripture's most glorious proclamations of the gospel. His very familiar ninth chapter completes the passage, beginning with one of the Bible's coolest words: “Nevertheless…”
Even though we’ve replaced the light of truth with the dull dimness of deception, “Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress.” Those who’ve been "walking in the darkness have seen a great light,” for “on those living in the land of deep darkness” (that’s us, by the way) “a light has dawned!”
Why? Simply because “for unto us a child is born.” He came to crush the serpent’s lies, which continue to entice and entrap. No longer are we to be counseled by those “who do not speak according to God’s Word.” Instead, we inquire of the one called “Wonderful Counselor”—who is also the “Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace.”
Isaiah promises that “the government will be on his shoulders,” and that “the greatness of this government” will never end. All things ruled and illuminated by Christ. Darkness will flee upon his return!
Feast on Light and Life
Physically, you are what you eat. Spiritually, you are what you listen to and learn from, and what you watch and worship.
Peter reminds us we’ve been “called out of the darkness and into God’s wonderful light” (1 Pet. 2:9). So let’s turn from the dark, empty spiritual junk food the world peddles. Let’s feast on God’s glorious Word.
“They feast on the abundance of your house … for with you is a fountain of life; in your light do we see light” (Ps. 36:8-9).