This article was posted in today’s Border Watch.
I tried to figure out how to use Bacon Week as a springboard for an article. When I remembered that it’s still Lent it started to come together.
I don’t usually supply a title with these, and I’m interested in what the editor comes up with. It means he has to read them and think about the content.
This appeared under: ‘Bacon Is Good All Year Around’, which does get close to the heart of the issue (as well as being completely true).
I want to draw your attention to a significant seasonal observance. It’s currently Australian Bacon Week 2012. As if anyone needed a reason to eat more delicious smoky cured pork (Australian, of course), Pork Australia has declared this to be Bacon Week.
Perhaps you thought the significant season I’d be referring to was Lent; which is currently being observed by some Christians in the lead up to Easter. Well, apparently it didn’t seem odd to the marketing boffins at Pork Australia to have a major pig-eating promotion during a Christian festival of restraint primarily marked by leaving meat off the menu. Doesn’t seem very kosher, does it?
While mentally planning my bacon themed menu, I also mused about how Lent and Bacon Week illustrate the way some people think about their lives. They separate what they consider to be spiritual and religious activity from the rest of their lives as if the two should never meet. What they do and say on Sunday looks nothing like how they were behaving on the sporting field or when they were out socialising Saturday, and also doesn’t carry into their ethics and attitudes at work on Monday.
But there is no reason to divide life into spiritual and, dare I say it, ‘normal’ spheres.
Christianity follows Jesus’ teaching that all of life in God’s family is spiritually normal. As we celebrate Easter, Christians rejoice in a death and resurrection which achieves a salvation that means not only can we eat bacon (to name one very minor benefits of his work), but we can eat it any time we want, free of any restrictions about time and season (although I remind you to prefer Australian).
For Christians, this means we are the same people on Saturday and Monday as we are on Sunday, we should talk the same, and be guided by the same principles in what we do, what we don’t do, what we say, and what we don’t say. Sounds a lot healthier than living a divided life, doesn’t it? Particularly if your Monday to Saturday life seems to be pushing you to be a person you don’t like being. Christianity isn’t about being sorry on Sunday for how we’ve blown it on the other six days, it’s about bringing our relationship with God, which is based on His forgiveness, into every single day.
I have to confess that Christians don’t always do a consistent job of this and many of you in the community may be a bit confused and think we’re purposely hypocritical. I can’t rule that out, but I can tell you, at its essence, the claim of Jesus to be the Saviour and Lord of humanity is an invitation to live a life where the spiritual and the everyday are seamlessly joined together. Many Christians are striving, albeit imperfectly, to bring that touch of heaven to everyday life here on earth.
Now, who’s got a good bacon recipe?
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