I grew up in the home of a dieter. The fridge seems to be the battlefield. So many textures, so many experiments to try to find food that tasted as good as the food we were not supposed to love. We gave up on milk and started drinking slightly grayish water called skim milk. We had tiny pieces of bread sliced super thin. We lived under the confines of eating rules, counting points, counting calories, fighting away taste.
The fridge was purged of cold drinks and replaced with Tab, Fresca and off brand carbonated liquids pumped with the biting artificial sweeteners of the day. A trip to the kitchen was almost always a disappointment. Occasionally, the fridge held wondrous surprises. Birthday treats, holiday specials, occasional splurges.
I read once that if you give a lever to a rat, and if, when that lever is pulled it delivers food then the rat will stuff himself eating away at the food. Then, if the lever stops working, the rat will eventually stop pulling the lever, but if just once the lever works, then the rat will not decrease pulling on the lever but will increase pulling the lever until it nearly drives itself crazy. They call this an extinction burst. Your system fights back hoping beyond hope to produce the old result. This is why temper tantrums work. This is why bedtime is such a fight with young children. This is why changing eating patterns is hard. This is why we fall into the same sin traps over and over again.
The fridge is just one of the manifestations of the dark forces in life. This box promises to hold the treasure. It promises to fill up the emotional pain in life with joy and goodness. It’s like a drug pusher lives in your kitchen. Every time you walk past it it beckons to you inviting you to search within for the thing you are missing. This last year, lots of people have been alone at home with too much time on their hands and too much stress in the world.
I told a story about cookie dough in my sermon this week. I had to buy some for the sermon. Then I had to deal with it. I’m glad I left it at the church, because if I would have brought it home I would have eaten it all already. I wish I was stronger.
Maybe the fridge is not the voice you fear, not the voice you struggle with, but my hunch is that you have a pressure point that the enemy uses to discourage you. The besetting sins are all ones that promise happiness but end in tragedy. “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies” (Gal 5:19-21). I feel like the world specializes in pushing these buttons and so many of us are falling into one of these traps. We listen to the voice that promises that pornogrophy will fill us with love, we think wild living will give us relationships of love, we hear that anger and bitterness will give us a more biblical society, but it all ends in abusive relationships, conditional friendships and broken communities. We have to decide whose voice we are going to listen to.
Until the voice we hear is God’s until we trust him completely that we are loved, treasured and accepted, then we will constantly be on the hunt to find something that will fill the void within.