Journal Entries

Monday night I was hanging out with Kevin, my 5-year-old nephew and our current houseguest, when I said, “Hey, let’s eat dinner before we go to church for rehearsal; how about some delicious meatloaf with fresh sliced pineapple?”

“No, I don’t like meatloaf.”

“See, I don’t think that’s correct. Your mom made this meatloaf and she told me you like it.”

“I don’t like meatloaf. How about a McDonald’s Happy Meal?”

“Everybody likes meatloaf.”

“I don’t want meatloaf.”

“Meatloaf is the same thing as a hamburger, and I know you love hamburgers.”

“I don’t like meatloaf.”

“Well, Kevin, here’s the deal. If you choose not to like meatloaf, you have nothing but a long and boring life ahead of you. Assuming you live to be 80, you have 75 sad years to look forward to, because a life without meatloaf is a tedious existence. You can trust me on that, because I’m a smart guy. And besides, I’m having meatloaf and pineapple for dinner.”

“I don’t like meatloaf. Maybe when Aunt Cyndi comes home she will take me to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal instead.”

“No, Aunt Cyndi is going to meet us at rehearsal. She isn’t coming home first.”

“Maybe Aunt Cyndi will bring me a McDonald’s when she comes to rehearsal.”

“Don’t count on it. Aunt Cyndi may smile a lot, but she isn’t a pushover. She is tough. If I were you, I wouldn’t gamble on the chance for a McDonald’s. I would play the odds and sit here with me and have some of this excellent meatloaf your loving mother made before she got on the airplane.”

“I don’t like meatloaf.”

“Well, suit yourself. How do you feel about going hungry?”

The next morning after my conversation with Kevin (who, by the way, did NOT get McDonald’s; Aunt Cyndi called his bluff), I was reading from my Daily Bible about some of the rules God gave Moses about what was OK for the people to eat and wasn’t acceptable. Lucky for the Hebrews, meatloaf wasn’t on the “do not eat” list.

But some of the things on the list were surprising. For example, God told them not to eat vultures (understandable), screech owls (too scary), the hoopoe (whatever that is), and the bat. God told them not to eat bats.

During a previous reading of these pages I had scribbled these words in the margin of my Bible: “Did God have to mention bats? Was eating bats a temptation?”

I guess if someone was hungry enough a bat might look like food. They aren’t much uglier than oysters, but there can’t be much meat on a bat.

Of course, there is an important scene in that fine classic movie, Three Amigos, when our heroes were sitting around the campfire and Lucky Day asked, “Dusty, how do you like your bat?” and Dusty Bottoms replied, “Well done.”

Apparently they hadn’t read Leviticus.

I read further in my Daily Bible about acceptable and unacceptable creatures and I came across another surprising list. God told Moses not to eat weasels, rats, lizards, geckos, skinks, or chameleons. The notes in the margin of my Bible said simply, “Whew.”

My wife, Cyndi (or Aunt Cyndi, to Kevin), won’t even go inside the reptile house at the zoo, much less think about eating a lizard. However, in the summer of 2006 when Cyndi and I took a trip to China, there was a possibility that we ate some of those unacceptables listed in Leviticus. We ate sea cucumbers (an ocean slug) and goose-foot soup and some sort of sea worms, and those were just the things we recognized. There may have been some screech owl or gecko in a few other dishes that we didn’t recognize.

To tell the truth, I don’t really care whether my nephew, Kevin, likes meatloaf. I will gladly eat all that is leftover. I just want the young man to learn to make good decisions. I just want to love on him, and I want him to know and appreciate the things I value in life. As long as Kevin is living in my house and within my sphere of influence, I want to share my heart with him. I just disguise that desire by talking about meatloaf.

And so it is with the rules God gave us in Leviticus, even the ones about eating bats. I doubt that God cares so much about what I eat as he cares about whether I value the things he holds important and whether I’ll throw my life away by making hasty decisions. God just wants me to be like him. He wants my heart to be like his heart.

However, I’m certain he wants me to eat more meatloaf and fewer bats. That’s a big “whew.”