Pork Chops, Jolly Ranchers, & Slim Jims

Last night my bible study and I went out to the lake to hang out and chat about God and life, but mostly to play in the campfire. But while we were out there, we had an interesting discussion about following God. It started with a passage the book of John, John 10:3-5, which says,

To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.

This led to a discussion about whether a particular situation is truly the call of the Good Shepherd, or the voice of a stranger. The line between the two got pretty fuzzy at times, and from that discussion, I have derived a metaphor for such situations.

A pork chop is a very good thing. When cooked correctly, a sliver of pork loin is one of the most delicious meals one can find. It is wholesome (meaning it contains stuff your body needs), it’s natural and un-tampered-with (with the exception of seasoning and cooking), and it is satisfying. After you have eaten a pork chop, you can sit back and say to yourself, “self, I’m glad I ate that pork chop because now I am no longer hungry and my body can use most of what I just ate to grow and move and live. Eating that pork chop was a good decision.” Unless you’ve over-indulged, you can feel good about ingesting a cooked piece of pig.

On the other hand, a Jolly Rancher is not as good in the sense that the pork chop is good. It does taste good, but that’s about it. When you eat a Jolly Rancher, you taste the sugar and other various things that are contained within, but after you’ve finished it, that’s it, your experience with that little piece of candy is finished. It’s not wholesome, it doesn’t contain much if any nutrients or other resources that your body can use, it doesn’t satisfy, it’s most definitely not a naturally occurring object. You’ll never find a Jolly Rancher farm, or a Jolly Rancher orchard. The only thing that the Jolly Rancher has going for it is the fact that it is good while you’re eating it. But after that, it has nothing.

If you haven’t picked up on the analogy yet, I’ll lay it out. If you have, good deal, but I’m going to lay it out anyway. The call of God, or the Good Shepherd, is like the pork chop. It is good, it is good for you, it is what we were meant to follow, and it is satisfying. The call of the stranger is like the Jolly Rancher; it may be good while you’re experiencing it, but it’s not good for you, it’s not what we were made for, and it doesn’t satisfy.

This is all pretty straight forward. But if life were always this straight forward, no one would ever have any trouble at all deciphering what is and isn’t the call of the Good Shepherd, but the fact is, it’s not that simple. People have trouble in some areas determining if what they are ‘hearing’ is the Good Shepherd’s voice or the stranger’s voice because there are more things out there than just pork chops and Jolly Ranchers.

Take for instance Slim Jims. If you don’t know what a Slim Jim is, it’s a ‘stick’ of processed meat product (or byproduct, I'm not sure which), that is meant to taste like barbeque or some other kind of seasoned meat. A Slim Jim is derived from natural products (meat), and it has some nutritional value. But it also was made through artificial means; it has a cocktail of preservatives and other unnatural agents in it. It tastes good, and has the potential to fill a person up (if you ate a large plate full of Slim Jims, you would be filled by those), so it can be satisfying, although not the healthiest thing in the world. But that’s not what it’s meant for, it’s meant for short term pleasure, not lasting. We see here that it has characteristics of both the pork chop and the Jolly Rancher. This is where things get a little fuzzy.

Given these three options (pork chops, Jolly Ranchers, and Slim Jims), if you are hungry, the best choice is obviously the pork chop. But sometimes we don’t have a pork chop where we are at. But Slim Jims are pretty much available everywhere. At almost every store you go into, you would be able to find a Slim Jim. The same could be said about a Jolly Rancher (or some facsimile there of). But the Slim Jim is a better choice for nourishment than the Jolly Rancher. But just because the Slim Jim is better then the Jolly Rancher doesn’t mean that it’s what is best for us. It may be better (and is definately better for us) to wait to satisfy our hunger when we can gain access to a pork chop. Instead of searching out a short term fix to our need, a better solution would be to practice patience and wait until the opportunity to eat a pork chop arises.

If you haven’t followed me this far, I’ll lay it out again; if you have, good deal, but I’m still going to lay it out. We’ve already established that the pork chop is the Good Shepherd, and the Jolly Rancher is the stranger, but what about the Slim Jim? The Slim Jim has redeeming qualities, it is possibly derived from a pork chop, but is not a pork chop. We might taste some of the pork chop in the Slim Jim, but it doesn’t taste or satisfy like a pork chop. So, what is it? The Slim Jim is still the stranger. Shocked? Don’t be. Anything that isn’t the Good Shepherd is a stranger. Even if they have some aspects of the Good Shepherd, they are not the Good Shepherd. Only the pork chop is the Good Shepherd. Some good may come from the Slim Jim stranger, but not nearly as much as the pork chop Good Shepherd.

I think many people get led astray by the Slim Jim. They’ve never tasted the pork chop, just read or heard about it (if that), and when they taste the Slim Jim, they recognize a part of the pork chop in it and say to themselves, “I think I can taste pork chop in this, this is what I need.” But in reality, it’s only the Jolly Rancher masquerading as a pork chop to deceive those who don’t know what it is to truly be satisfied by the pork chop. And it leads many down the wrong path.

If you’ve never tasted the pork chop, or aren’t sure if you have or haven’t, ask God for a taste. Pray, “God, I need to taste the pork chop, I’m tired of Jolly Ranchers and Slim Jims. I need the real deal.” God wants nothing more than for you to be satisfied by the pork chop.