When we come to food information in today’s informationally overloaded world, there are so many different voices. Take vitamins to boost your system from poorly processed foods, but eat natural and organic, and then vitamins don’t matter because your food will have what you need. Eat natural, eat organic, eat vegan, eat grass fed, eat heritage grains, eat dairy free, eat gluten free, unprocessed is healthier, processed is safer.

When we start asking questions about food everyone has an opinion and a study to back it up. In today’s American culture there is a group of people who loudly advocate for an extreme organic, natural diet. They are suspicious of anything new, don’t readily accept whatever the medical and pharmaceutical industries declare, and who are advocating for alternative health options. Then there is a group of people who advocate for a hyper processed, safely manufactured and medicated diet. When they get sick, their first move is head for the doctor or the pharmacy. They pretty much trust whatever the medical proponents tell them with little questioning and have the mindset that “they are the professionals.” And finally, there are people whose life experiences have left them outside of the conversation, who don’t know or care, but they have $12.75, and can grab a burger and fries for the kids on their way to their other job. The majority actually know there is something wrong with how we do food, they know there are issues with their health and diets, but the opposing voices and failed diet and exercise plans have left them confused and discouraged.

We live in a time when there is more information available to every person than ever before. With the internet, we have access to amazing knowledge sources that provide information on virtually any topic you can imagine. It is an always open, constantly updating, worldwide library. At one level this availability is a gift that can help us repair our cars, our appliances, self-diagnose illnesses, find recipes, get date ideas, or shop for almost anything. Yesterday I was multiplying a huge recipe for some Christmas gifts we were making, and I wanted to know how many cups 37 teaspoons would be. I pushed a button on my phone, asked the virtual assistant, and got an answer in moments. Pretty cool!

But that is only one side of the equation. The other side is the questions few are asking. What is our pre-occupation with the sharing of information actually producing for us? Are we getting smarter? Do we actually know more? Is all that available information actually creating better lives for us? When we actually start looking at the lives of those who are putting forth the information, there are often discrepancies between the theory and the life. Why do some of the “healthiest” people seem to be sick most often? And why do the so-called experts seem to be in the business of managing symptoms with products they sell you which often have worse side effects than the original issue?

The internet has created an open source information posting system in which anyone and everyone can put information on the internet for anyone and everyone to access. But is it good information? Is it accurate and true? Is it complete? Do we even need this information? Is it helpful? A recent study on associative dissonance made the interesting observation that people don’t make decisions based on the best, newest, or most accurate information. They make choices based on relational ties. They tend to embrace, believe, interpret, and decide things based on the beliefs, choices, and experiences of the people they are most connected with. But if that is true, then the number one contributor to our life and health may be the relationships we invest in.

Some 2,000 years ago there was a scholar named Paul who was one of the premier thinkers of his time. He’d gone through the best schools, won the most challenging debates, claimed the best posts, and gathered influence. In today’s slang, he was a rock star. Then he had an experience in which he encountered his creator, and that experience defied the framework he was living his life on. It caused him to look at everything differently, and he discovered he’d been interpreting everything through a faulty prism. After that experience he wrote that, “whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” He discovered the only way to accurately interpret all the information he had accumulated in his life was through the experience of knowing His creator. The relationship interprets the information. Later on when counseling a young friend he takes that same principle and expands it to our relationships with other people when he says, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise.” At that time no one knew the scriptures better than Paul, yet they had led him down a completely wrong path and he had developed a completely wrong perspective of life and values that was based on scriptures and yet was wrong. So he comes back and says that breaking free from these wrong frameworks doesn’t mean abandoning the knowledge and learning, but it does mean a new interpretation of that information, based on evaluating the lives of those from whom you’ve learned it. In other words, you can find information to support virtually any position. Paul says to look beyond the information and ask what your relationship is with the provider of that information, what is that relationship based on, is that information provider living their own life with consistent conviction based on the information they are giving you, and what are those convictions, life patterns, and choices actually producing in their lives.

There is a better and healthier way to live that is rooted in relationship, creates a healthy balance, is confirmed by life.

{To be continued …}

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