The Flesh Series Part IV: Tricking for Treats

The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering,
but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.
So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
Then the Lord said to Cain,
“Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?
If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?
But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door;
it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

Genesis 4:4-7

I will unpack these verses in a minute, but first a story.

When I was a kid, I loved Halloween. In fact, it was my favourite “holiday”. I also loved Halloween candy. My mom would keep the leftover candy in plastic Jack O’lanterns stored out of reach on top of the kitchen cupboards. Starting at about age six it was my habit to climb out of bed, sneak downstairs, climb onto the kitchen counter and hastily swipe little chocolates and candies from my stash. I would then scurry back up stairs, snarf down the sweet morsels, and stuff the wrappers under my mattress. I think it’s hilarious that I thought I wouldn’t get caught.

For whatever reason sneaking food became a pattern. I became an “expert” at food espionage. I learned how to track my parents’ every movements; how to track their eyes. How to steal a treat without being noticed. Unfortunately, this pattern grew more entrenched and even eventually became an issue in my marriage. I truly became a Loki-esque manipulator and deceiver when it came to food and eating. I could talk my way into eating anything. And when I knew that I couldn’t convince my wife that something I wanted to eat was “on plan” I would just sneak it.

And I was masterful at it. If there was a chocolate cake in the fridge I could whittle that thing down over a couple of days so that nobody could tell it had been touched. Why, my wife would ask, would I need to sneak food from my own kitchen? I am a grown man!

On top of that, I would always be on my best eating behaviour around other people. I am sure that people were confused to see my size paired with a set of apparently pristine food behaviours. Yet, time after time I would find myself alone and bingeing on whatever delighted me. I felt so much shame, it had to be hidden.

So for me, food sneaking is a thing. It’s compulsive. But there is something even more sinister than lying to others when it comes to food: lying to one’s self. Maybe lying is too strong a word. Perhaps “convenient unawareness” is a better term.

Conversely, my wife was for the most part innocently unaware of her portions before she lost weight. She didn’t have the sneaky gene. How do I know this? When she finally did gain awareness through Weight Watchers a decade ago, she simply changed. Period. Remember, she is a “rule follower” with high personal integrity. For her, a straight line was drawn between the realization that her food choices were making her fat and her shift in food choices.

Me? Not so much. I was a food “guru”. I could tell you calories, fat grams, and on and on. Yet that wasn’t my problem; my problem was that I DIDN’T WANT to change my behaviours. I wasn’t ready to change. I was passive aggressive about it. Being passive aggressive means you say yes, but you really mean no! So the solution? Maintain outward dietary piety while secretly eating the sinful foods behind closed doors.

Here’s a little more about passive-aggression. This relational style typically develops in childhood when we face an unassailable foe, usually a parent. We learn to use back channels or trickery to get our way because we do not have the power to get what we want directly. I learned that I could not usually get a piece of Halloween candy by directly asking my mom for it, so I learned to be a thief in order to have my way.

Now back to our Genesis quote about Cain from the top of the post. I believe that Cain’s true battle wasn’t with God and it wasn’t with Abel; it was with himself. Cain was ruled by his flesh rather than by God. I am convinced that Cain’s “higher self” desired to honour God (after all, he did bring a sacrifice to God as well) but the will of his flesh was overpowering. God offered him divine counsel by saying, “sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it”.

I am convinced that this is true for all of us, and for me this looks like an irrational desire to eat, even though my higher self detests it and both my health and heart suffer the consequences. But my flesh is also passive-aggressive. It knows that it cannot directly ask my higher self for what it wants so it tricks me. The greatest lie is the one we tell ourselves.

This behaviour toward self is emotionally hard to stomach. We don’t like living as hypocrites. We begin to loathe ourselves for what we have done. Our self-regard erodes as we break promise after promise to ourselves.

Why does this matter? It matters because until we address food dishonesty and get radically aware about what we eat, we will not achieve our goal of living in the body that God designed for us to have. But more than that, we remain victims of the flesh. We become like animals who only live by impulse rather than beings created in the Lord’s divine image.

God desires for us to have agency and make righteous choices. When sin takes us captive, we become “brute beasts” and cannot do what is right. Thankfully for us, there are antidotes to turn to when we are overpowered by the flesh in this way. I will share some of these in the coming posts.

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