Brains gorged on junk food

Junk food copy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Forget all that diet talk for a moment. There are basically three food groups:

• Food that’s good for you. Let’s call that good food.
• Food that’s bad for you. Let’s call that poison.
• Food that isn’t necessarily bad for you on its own, but it doesn’t actually help you out other than to fill you up – basically, just calories. Junk food.

We’re pretty happy with these categories. Good food is fine any time. No-one will judge you for munching on a stick of celery (unless you’re in a job interview. That would be pretty weird). Poison should be avoided at all costs. Junk food is generally not the best idea, but having it as a treat every so often isn’t a bad thing.

Now, how about if we apply these principles not to what goes into our stomach, but what goes into our minds? What do you and I fill our eyes and ears with?

• Maybe it’s good food, like documentaries, non-fiction books, stuff that actually expands our mind.
• Maybe it’s poison, like snuff films, pornography (images, videos, stories), stuff that actively turns our minds bad.
• Maybe it’s just junk food, stuff that isn’t actively harmful but isn’t helping anyway. Like Angry Birds, Facebook, pointless blogs, celebrity gossip magazines…

I’m not sure that I/we actually take as much care for our minds as we do for our stomachs. There’s definitely way too much junk food in there for it to be benefiting us.

And, just to throw something a bit controversial into the mix, what do we make of the border-line media like chick flicks (which are ultimately fantasies of perfect relationships that our partners can never give us), violent sports like boxing, romance fiction, Grand Theft Auto and so on?

11:11:11 11/11/11

Image via Wikipedia

Today is Remembrance Day in the UK and Veterans Day in the US, and people in and connected to both nations will be dedicating some time today, if only a couple of minutes, to remembering those who have served our countries by fighting, and dying, for our values.

For me, thinking about all that time and life that has been lost as the cost for Western civilisation, I can’t help but be reminded of the TV series Band of Brothers, and in particular the little interviews that you get to see with the veterans whose bravery is portrayed during each episode.

There’s no doubting that what the armed forces achieved in the two world wars was significant – if Hitler had taken over Europe as he planned to who could even imagine the number of people who would have suffered and died as a result – but the veterans themselves seemed to approach things from a different angle when on the battlefield, and that’s something that’s presented well in another, unlikely TV series: Blackadder Goes Forth.

Blackadder shows us a surreal version of real life in the trenches, and one attitude of the soldiers, which was basically something along the lines of ‘I’m following orders and just hoping to be alive when the sun goes down.’ And that attitude is common to soldiers for every side in every battle – apparently war is necessary, but its effects are not intimately felt by those for whom it is necessary.

The Bible tells us of another battle, one which goes on every single day but is not a physical battle, it’s a spiritual one. And while the battle continues aggressively, for one side it is a losing battle, the day has already been won. The enemy is sending out his forces but will never be successful, because the work is complete. As we pause today to honour those who have served us, let’s not allow our eyes to drift to human power and dignity, but let’s lift our eyes to the one whose dignity and power were seen in full glory when he was most humiliated and shamed as he died a sinner’s death on the cross and rose again to new life.