The Taste Of Oysters & Honey

Sunday Ginny & I fed ducks in Riverside Park then lounged on a park bench for several hours watching guys dressed in medieval armor swordfight; they are members of the Society of Creative Anachronism, a reenactment group which gathers in the park practically every Sunday afternoon to practice.

The above photo came from Google because my own camera remains broken; Donald is working on it and I hope to have it again soon.

While we lounged in the park Ginny browsed through the Sunday newspaper and I thought about sex, oysters, honey, and God.

Over this long weekend a young man who said he was an agnostic crossed my path. His stance sparked my own thinking in the park.

As I understand it, an atheist believes that no God exists; a theist believes that some God does exist; an agnostic believes that it is impossible to know whether or not God exists. Although I am a theist, I can see that the others have a point.

While the atheist can not prove that there is no god, the theist can not prove that there is. Each can point to lines of reasoning, logic, evidence and experience which indicate his stance is correct.

The agnostic stands on the sidelines saying that neither stance can be proven conclusively so he prefers not to take a stance, or more simply saying, “I don’t know”.

I chose not to get into a sophomoric discussion with guy I met. I don’t think he was seeking an answer but merely wanted to kick up dust.

While I often need God to defend me, He’s a big boy and has no need for me to defend Him.

Nevertheless, the chance encounter set me to thinking.

And the first thing I thought about was oysters.

I love fried oysters. Florida’s Apalachicola Bay oysters rank as world class delicacies among gourmets everywhere.

Ginny, that poor yankee girl I married, refuses to so much as taste an oyster.

She once saw a raw oyster.

To her eyes an oyster looks like something a person with a bad cold might hawk up and spit out.

Well, she’s right.

That’s exactly what an oyster looks like. But lightly breaded and fried this offensive, disgusting thing becomes a succulent morsel for the discriminating palate.

No matter how much I tell Ginny about how great oysters taste, she refuses to try one. No matter how good they smell frying, no matter how artfully they are displayed on the platter, no matter how colorful the garnish, she absolutely will not taste one.

She will never experience the wonderful texture, nor savor the flavor.

As I watched the knights battle and the ducks feed in the park, I compared the Christian life to eating that first oyster. And to sex. And to tasting honey.

To experience the joy the skeptic must make a total commitment to Christ with no holding back. We hear about the joys of sex but until we go whole hog and experience it first hand, nothing anyone has told us about beforehand accurately conveys the joy.

And it takes total commitment, not dabbling, because no one can go back to being a virgin again.

I think of the Christian life in such terms.

Jesus is my Lord — or He is my nothing.

Regarding honey, the initiate can describe the experience as well as he’s able. But if I tell you that this yellow stuff is an excretion of buzzing, six-legged bugs, while my description may be more or less accurate, you will never know the sweetness of honey till you taste it yourself.

I think certain things do prepare us for that final plunge.

We see the honey’s golden color, we smell the oysters frying, we watch other people enjoying the feast, we kiss and hunger for whatever comes next.

There’s a spiritual parallel in those things too.

We encounter some godly person and think, “She has something I don’t have”. We feel a hunger that can not feed on this land’s bread. We detect a haunting aroma. We hear a strand of music or an encouraging word. We see a life lived right before our eyes and it makes us wonder

We feel an attraction to the loveliness of Christ and wish that it were true and real.

But what if it’s a bad oyster?

Those can make your sick.

Real ghastly sick.

A lot of people seem to have gotten hold of a bad oyster when it comes to religion. Made ‘em sick. Soured them on the whole deal — with good reason!

To them Christians stink!

St. Paul talked about this problem in one of his letters:

“Now thanks be to God, which… maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: to the one we are the savor of death unto death; and to the other the savor of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? “

Yes, to some people, we Christians stink like dead and rotting meat; other people catch a whiff of life.

Who is sufficient for this?

I think God Himself is the only one who can get us past the crap and give us His own beautiful vision of reality.

We’ll never know until we come directly to Christ Himself without reservation.

King Solomon advised his son, “My son, eat thou honey, because it is good and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste: so shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul: when thou hast found it, then there shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off”.

And King David sang, “O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in him”.

And that’s something we only can do for ourselves.

No one else can taste for us.