The Baptist Diet
Dear old and new friends,
Americans are always hungry for a new diet guaranteed to radically reduce weight and is also healthy. I have just the right one—the Baptist Diet! It’s named not after the Southern Baptists, but rather John the Baptist.
Summertime is bug time. We can swat, spray them to death or sauté them to be eaten. This Baptist Diet, reported in the Gospel attributed to Mark, tells us that John the Baptizer wore a garment of camel hair and fed on locusts and wild honey! Among God’s dietary laws the Book of Leviticus lists: “You may eat the various kinds of locusts, grasshoppers, various kinds of katydids and crickets.” The success of this Baptist diet clearly is visible in icons and pictures depicting John as a thin, gaunt desert acetic.
Arab desert nomads are fond of eating locusts after pulling off their heads, wings and legs. The worldwide consumption of grasshoppers, ants and bugs (as well as 1,900 other insect species) makes sense since they are highly nutritious and a healthy food source of fat, protein, vitamins, fiber and mineral content. Regardless how nutritious they are we westerners can’t stomach the thought of eating bugs…even honeybees that are said to be especially delicious.
This summer America’s east coast will experience its 17-year cycle of cicadas when billions of them will appear, amounting to an estimated ratio of 600 cicadas per person. If you have a Baptist appetite, these cicadas roasted or sautéed should be exceptionally tasty since they have fed on underground tree sap while hidden those seventeen years!
Bugs perform an inestimable service in nature and a valuable spiritual service as challengers of prejudice and bias. When next you come upon a big grasshopper or fat cockroach, stop and vigorously strive to overcome your discrimination against bugs. After overcoming your bug bias, consider moving on to other more subtle, less evident ones disguised by the subterfuge of your “dislikes.”
To be prejudiced is to be narrow-minded. Instead be broad, Godly-minded by letting every bug “bug” you…and pester your conscience to own and uproot any other culturally “acceptable” prejudices.
Americans are always hungry for a new diet guaranteed to radically reduce weight and is also healthy. I have just the right one—the Baptist Diet! It’s named not after the Southern Baptists, but rather John the Baptist.
Summertime is bug time. We can swat, spray them to death or sauté them to be eaten. This Baptist Diet, reported in the Gospel attributed to Mark, tells us that John the Baptizer wore a garment of camel hair and fed on locusts and wild honey! Among God’s dietary laws the Book of Leviticus lists: “You may eat the various kinds of locusts, grasshoppers, various kinds of katydids and crickets.” The success of this Baptist diet clearly is visible in icons and pictures depicting John as a thin, gaunt desert acetic.
Arab desert nomads are fond of eating locusts after pulling off their heads, wings and legs. The worldwide consumption of grasshoppers, ants and bugs (as well as 1,900 other insect species) makes sense since they are highly nutritious and a healthy food source of fat, protein, vitamins, fiber and mineral content. Regardless how nutritious they are we westerners can’t stomach the thought of eating bugs…even honeybees that are said to be especially delicious.
This summer America’s east coast will experience its 17-year cycle of cicadas when billions of them will appear, amounting to an estimated ratio of 600 cicadas per person. If you have a Baptist appetite, these cicadas roasted or sautéed should be exceptionally tasty since they have fed on underground tree sap while hidden those seventeen years!
Bugs perform an inestimable service in nature and a valuable spiritual service as challengers of prejudice and bias. When next you come upon a big grasshopper or fat cockroach, stop and vigorously strive to overcome your discrimination against bugs. After overcoming your bug bias, consider moving on to other more subtle, less evident ones disguised by the subterfuge of your “dislikes.”
To be prejudiced is to be narrow-minded. Instead be broad, Godly-minded by letting every bug “bug” you…and pester your conscience to own and uproot any other culturally “acceptable” prejudices.
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