The Next Food Network Star

Yes, I watch the show. It's clean...and there's food. Last night something really stuck out with me and has been stuck in my mind all day.

One of the contestants commented that he loved the French people and how they live their lives and therefore had begun to define himself as a French chef. The judge asked, "Have you ever been to France?" His response was what you might expect..."No, but I've read...and studied..."

He's basing his life on something he's only read about! He's defining himself by something he's never actually seen or experienced! The judges were not impressed, and I'm pretty sure that's why last night was his...well...last night.

Honestly, this guy is barely more than a teenager, so I give him a break. He hasn't been alive long enough to have had very many defining moments, so he substitutes the best he has...something he's read and studied. That's fine for a kid, but eventually you have to get your teeth into something real, right?

All day today I keep having this thought: how much of my faith is like that? How much of what I talk about have I really seen and experienced? Thankfully, I've seen a lot more in the last few years than I ever thought I would, but I want to see and do much more.

I want my words to be thick with reality and infused with life, born out of relationship and experience. May God deliver me from my dependence on the stale suppositions of my own intellect, the sick sweetness of human cleverness and the well-disguised distraction that is religious knowledge! (alliteration is fun!)

May we all deliver ourselves from a faith without works, from a story without stories. We need to get our teeth into something real, don't you think? That now-former food-network-star-hopeful needs to go to Paris. Where do you need to go?