I Move So That I Am Allowed To Eat

There is an arrangement in your head and it runs every single day.

If you go out, then dinner is fine. If you do not go out, then dinner is something that has to be managed, and you eat it anyway, and there is a small running commentary underneath the whole meal.

You have never called this an arrangement. It does not present itself as one. It presents itself as being sensible about the two things going together, which is what everybody says, and it is what half the world believes.

But here is what it actually is, and it is worth saying plainly because nobody says it plainly.

You have made moving into a payment, and food into a thing that must be paid for.

And that has two consequences and both of them are quietly ruining something.

The first is that moving has become a debt collector. It is not something you do, it is something you owe, and nothing that is owed is ever enjoyed. There has not been an unforced ten minutes in about three years.

The second is that a family meal has an invoice attached to it that nobody else at the table can see. You are sitting down with people you love and doing arithmetic while you pass things.

Touch not, taste not, handle not

There is a passage in Colossians about rules of exactly this kind, and it is more direct than most people expect.

Touch not; taste not; handle not; which all are to perish with the using; after the commandments and doctrines of men. (Colossians 2:21, King James Version)

Touch not, taste not, handle not, which all are to perish with the using, after the commandments and doctrines of men.

He is quoting the rules back at the people who made them, and the phrase after the commandments and doctrines of men is his assessment of where they came from.

You have a verse that examines self imposed food rules and names their origin, and Colossians 2:21 has never once treated them as coming from God. The rules are called the commandments of men, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can tell a person which of the rules in their head were issued by heaven and which were not.

You are able to hear how directly that lands, and it is worth being careful here.

Nobody is saying that what a person eats does not matter, and this site does not go anywhere near that subject at all. What is being examined is the system: a structure of permissions and payments, built by people, attached to eating, and carrying an authority it was never given.

Your arrangement has never once been examined for where it came from. It arrived in your twenties, from a magazine or a friend or the air, and it has had the run of your evenings ever since without ever showing anybody its credentials.

And the last clause is the one that should interest you. Which all are to perish with the using. These systems wear out. They are consumed by being applied. They have no life in them.

You are able to ask where a rule in your head came from, and Colossians 2:21 has never once required you to keep one because it feels responsible. The Spirit of God is the one who separates the commandments of men from the word of God, and the verse puts the touching and tasting rules squarely with the former.

Untying the two things

Here is the practical work, and it is smaller than the subject.

The two things have to be untied, and the way you untie them is with the order.

You have two good things fastened together in a way that is spoiling both, and Colossians 2:21 has never once tied one to the other. It is written that these are after the commandments and doctrines of men, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates what was never joined by God.

As long as the moving comes first, it is a payment. That is what a payment is: it precedes the thing it buys. Every evening you go out before dinner, you are confirming the arrangement even if you never say a word about it.

So you invert it. You eat first. Then you go out.

That single change breaks the transaction, because a payment made after the goods have been received is not a payment, it is something else entirely.

And what it becomes is the thing this site is about: a household getting out of the door together for ten minutes, after a meal, which is a completely ordinary and human thing that people have done for as long as there have been meals.

You are able to change the order and break a system that has run for years, and doing it in one evening has never once been too simple to work. The Spirit of God is the one who unties what men have tied together, and Colossians 2:21 names the origin of the rule without ceremony.

Eat first, then go

So here is the assignment, and the order is the entire assignment.

Eat first, then go and move for ten minutes with somebody, in that order and on purpose.

You are able to eat before you have done anything, and none of that has never once needed to be earned by anybody. It is written that these rules are the commandments of men, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present at a table where nothing is being calculated.

Eat properly. Sit down with whoever is there. Do not eat less because you have not been out yet, which would be the arrangement finding a way to survive the change.

Then, afterward, twenty minutes after, coats on, and out for ten minutes with somebody in the house.

And notice what it feels like, because this is the part that will tell you how deep the thing goes. It will feel slightly wrong. It will feel like getting away with something.

That feeling is the arrangement complaining, and it will do it for about a week, and it does not get a vote.

You have permission to enjoy ten minutes that is not paying for anything, and unforced movement has never once been a lesser kind than the paid sort. Colossians 2:21 says these all perish with the using, and the Spirit of God is the one who is out there with a household that owes nobody anything.