Eat Your Spinach!

“The cartoon character Popeye is famous for eating spinach. Whenever he breaks open a can of spinach and eats it, he gains enormous strength. Popeye was employed by the US Government during World War 2 to promote the idea of eating spinach. Meat was a rarity during war, but spinach appeared to be a great substitute. In the 1890’s German scientists had shown that spinach contains the same amount of iron as meat. And iron, of course, is one of the essential vitamins in building strength. But the facts are wrong. The German researchers did prove that spinach contains iron, but when they wrote down their results they put the decimal point in the wrong place. They overestimated the amount of iron in spinach by a factor of 10! Unfortunately, the correction didn’t get across the ocean until after WW2.”*

Wouldn’t it have been great to have this information back when Mom was “encouraging” us to eat our spinach!  Since the dawn of time, humanity has been getting their facts mixed up or misrepresented -- sometimes unintentionally and sometimes intentionally.  The problem has only worsened in our era.  The information explosion, via the Internet and such, has made it even more difficult to discern truth from untruth.

The stakes are even higher in the spiritual realm because we are dealing with eternal matters.  In case you haven’t been told yet, let me break the news: you can’t necessarily believe everything a religious teacher tells you.  That is why John teaches to “...test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).  That is why Paul praised the Bereans for comparing his teaching to what the Scriptures said (Acts 17:11).  Spiritual truth doesn’t always just fall into your lap.  Often it takes effort to separate fact from fiction.  I would encourage you to make the effort.  Remember, it is the truth, not lies, that will make you free (John 8:32).  Accept nothing less than the truth!

God loves you!

Mike

*http://storiesforpreaching.com/category/sermonillustrations/truth/