I was looking through my devotions, sending dragons out on quests in EverWing, listening to some music and generally trying to clear my mind enough to start thinking about what to share in today's Moment when up along the right side of my computer screen Windows notified me that an email had come in from a restaurant with the subject line National Bacon Lover's Day. Like I said, I fell for it. I clicked the notification to open the email, hoping for a decent coupon off a meal with some bacon. I may not celebrate a special day for bacon, but if you give it to me at a good price I'll be more than happy to eat it. Nope. No coupon. Just advertisements about what they offer, which I am already aware of or I wouldn't have signed up to get special offers from them. Anyway, I scrolled on through the image laden email hoping to see if they mentioned exactly which day was BLD. No, they didn't even share that information. I had to Google it, because by that point I was curious if it was a real thing, and, if so, what day it was. Then I saw it. Toward the bottom.
A photo of a slice of strawberry cake. Six pink pieces of cake joined by five even more pink spreads of frosting and topped with one more. I have to admit it looked a little tasty, even though I am not big on strawberry cake. That was until I got distracted from the temptation. To the left of the photo above the dessert's description were the words Homemade 12-Layer Cakes. The first sentence of the description promised 12 layers made from scratch in their very own bakery.
Oh my. Do you see the problem Dear Reader? I thought to myself I'll never get a desert from that place on principle. Because this is the way that my crazy brain works. Two issues jumped out and slapped me to attention. First, and the most glaringly obvious issue, to paraphrase another crazy person, that's not a cock-a-doodle 12-layer cake! What they pictured and I described is a 6-layer cake. Frosting does not count as a layer.
Now that you see and understand my insanity, can you guess issue two? That's right, the cake may be made from scratch, but it is not, I repeat, not, homemade. By definition made in a business' bakery is not made in a home and therefore is not homemade. The question is are they stupid enough to think they are being truthful and not sending out misleading manipulation or do they feel that I, their valued customer, am stupid enough to believe their obvious lies. Seriously, my first instinct is to never ever buy dessert there because the people paid to come up with the ad should know better, and I don't want to encourage either stupidity or lying as there is far more than enough of both in our society.
That's when the Spirit sighed and said, seriously? First, you nit picking pharisee, you know exactly what they meant. They even showed a photo so there could be no confusion. They are counting both cake and frosting as layers, and when they say homemade, they mean from scratch. Stop saying but it's wrong and listen. You celebrate grace, preach grace, claim to live in and by grace, but you are not being gracious to the people who came up with, approved and sent out that advertisement. You are judging them by the letter of the law. This is the definition of a multi-layer cake, and this is what homemade means, and what you did is not that so you are rejected forever. Seriously? Where is the love of Jesus in that? Aren't you glad that God doesn't look at your life like that since you have been way more wrong and told far more serious and malicious lies? Of course it's more than an ad and it really is the same. People are involved in every aspect of what you are judging, from the creation of the advertisement to the cooking and serving of the cake. You'd punish everyone associated with the restaurant and condemn them all for the actions of a few, controlled by harsh legalistic standards in your heart even as grace pours out of your mouth. Can't you see that's far worse than calling a from scratch cake made in a business kitchen homemade?
Ouch. Then it occurred to me that this kind of silliness is why there is so much division in the church. Instead of looking for the similarities we focus on the differences and demand that we are right, whichever side of whatever argument we fall on. Instead of saying wow, we both like cake! We're all over here arguing over semantics and definitions and how many layers it has and if it is homemade or not. It's the same piece of cake, but one person looks at it and counts 12-layers while another sees only six. Who cares? It's cake. It's about eating it. But no, we'd rather argue and demand the rules be followed, and if someone is either choosing to ignore the definitions and characteristics of truth or they are too stupid to see that it is clearly not homemade and only a 6-layer cake, then they should be ignored, cast aside and treated as less than.
Now the world doesn't see the cake or cake lovers. They see foolishness and fighting and self-righteous pride. Jesus is far more important than cake. And no, we don't agree on everything, and we may not be able to look at the same image of God wrapped in flesh and describe it the same. But it doesn't always matter who's right. If you are hungry for strawberry cake, do you really care if it is called 12- or 6-layer cake? No, you only care if it is good. And if you have a God-shaped hole in your heart, have come to realize that you can't be enough, do enough to manage and control your life, set yourself free and bring purpose and contentment to your existence, you don't care about what kind of frosting is on the cake of Christianity or the divisions that divide us, do you? No. It is only a matter of if Jesus loves us and is He good. The answer by the way is yes.
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