Fast Food = America

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America is fat- really fat. Like, we’re the fattest nation on the globe. Like, that’s fat. Like, maybe we should go on a diet.

Not me. No sir-ee.

I refuse.

I like food too much. So do my friends. So does everybody.

(maybe that’s the problem)

Oh, well, those healthy bastards aren’t going to take my fast food.

It’s sooooo good, really. I like it. Eating fast food is the American way to eat.

And no one does fast food quite like we do.

I am America and so are you.

We like to eat. We like it fast and in super-sized bunches too. We like it crispy, dipped in a vat of grease, topped with “low fat” ranch dressing intermingled with pepper-jack cheese and smokehouse bacon.

And we eat– alot.

It’s compulsive consumption, when you take a second to think about it. Our unswerving loyalty to a capitalistic paradigm has become the parasite that drives the obesity rate in America.

We must consume. We must be consumers. We must eat.

We probably don’t even taste the food, though, cause we’re too busy washing it down with value-sized diet sodas and gobs of french fries (ie [for you nationalists] freedom fries). But that’s okay, because when you consider the nature of eating on the go, it precludes the art of savoring something (ie appreciating a morsel of food gratefully and sincerely, without haste and in full humility).

Fast food is fairly arrogant, when you think about.

We’re good at that though. We have that one on lock-down.

Savoring is a lost art, really. When was the last time you savored something- something that wasn’t steak or lobster or sushi or some ridiculous sounding dessert? When was the last time you savored something ordinary and everyday, something that you encounter all the time without even thinking about it?

Not often, huh?

Me neither.

But that’s okay, cause fast food is fairly inexpensive and thus not deserving of appreciation. It’s okay to disregard the ordinary, right? It’s okay to be unappreciative of fast food, right?

Sadly, it seems to me that we’re really good at fast food relationships.

Fast food works on the premise that convenience is of more significance than quality– even just acceptable quality.

Our relationships seem to work in the same manner.

Convenience is the most important function of my relationship with you, because, really, I am the focus of my relationship with you. It is about me, my preferences, and my comfort. We are about me.

But, in all honesty, it’s because we don’t value the persons that we see everyday, those faces that we can’t put names to and vice versa.

But, in our thinking, it’s okay to not really have quality relationships as long as we have an overabundance of “friendships”.

Quantity is more important than quality.

Time is more important than effort.

I am more important than you.

When was the last time you made something in the kitchen from scratch? I honestly can’t remember the last time I whipped open a cook-book for a special recipe, went to the grocer, and prepared a first-class, time invested meal.

It takes time to cook well.

It takes time to be a good friend. Too be a good person, really.

It takes exiting the “you” and becoming about the “them”.

It takes effort.

Relationships take investment of time, thought, and affection. They take the precedence over personal desires and goals, of ambitions and preferences.

Relationships draw the poison of individualism out of our system, showing us the health of being about someone else.

And this is a mirror, when you think about it, of the Kingdom of God.

We are drawn out from ourselves and our sinful natures, and thrust towards a higher calling– one of sacrifice, death, and resurrection into renewed life.

When we die to ourselves and are raised up in Christ, our natures are renewed at that spiritual resurrection.

So should our relationships.

Our relationships with other individuals need to be different than they were before. Our encounter with Christ- our revival or renewal of our spirit person in God- should affect the manner in which we relate to all of humankind.

We can no longer order a plethora of superficial, narcissistic relationships and expect to be healthy. We can no longer simply remain on the surface of relational nutrition and expect to be healthy emotionally or spiritually.

With too much consumption, our person will either have the runs or will uncontrollably regurgitate. We were not designed to consume deficient foods nor were we destined to have fast food friendships.

Placing value on the ordinary, forgotten people is what the Kingdom of God is about.

We are all forgotten in some way.

The question is, then, who are we forgetting?

What person, in our haste to get what we can while we can in terms of our relationships, have we overlooked or undervalued?

We are all of equal value.

So let’s stop stuffing our faces with meaningless friendships. Let’s stop ordering too much of one thing. Let’s stop making relationships about convenience.

Let’s start savoring the relationships that are unique. Let’s start developing real, humble relationships with people. Let’s take the time to notice the unnoticeable. Let’s be inconvenienced for the sake of another.

Let’s be like Christ.

(this isn’t corrected for grammar or punctuation or anything that would matter to an English nerd, so don’t bust my behind on it;)

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Filed under Crowd Participation, Life, Musings, Rant

Tags: capitalism, Christ, fast food, relationships, renewal, super size