The US Congress are set to declare pizza a vegetable for the purpose of funding school lunches.
From an Associated Press report:
The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year. These include limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line, putting new restrictions on sodium and boosting the use of whole grains. The legislation would block or delay all of those efforts.
The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to only count a half-cup of tomato paste or more as a vegetable, and a serving of pizza has less than that.
There is a theological lesson which can be observed here.
The best strategy for introducing error is not to create new terms or words to describe your departure from orthodoxy.
Instead you should strive to attach your idea to an existing word or phrase, in the first instance claiming that both the new understanding and the existing understanding can exist in charity and harmony with one another, and then, after a time, moving to expunge the older understanding from the lexicon.
It defies credulity to think anyone could look a slice of pizza and think ‘vegetable’.
But it used to defy credulity that Christians could look at the Bible and think ‘inspired, yet not factual.’
It defies credulity to think that ‘substitutionary atonement is just one aspect of what the Bible teaches about atonement’ can actually mean ‘I don’t believe in substitutionary atonement’.
It defies credulity that evangelical Christians could accept as orthodox a teacher who will not affirm the historic understanding of the Trinity, but prefers to speak of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as manifestations of God.
The list goes on…
It seems like the US Congress could still learn a few lessons from contemporary evangelical Christians.
mgpcpastor's blog 