Cheese Puffs and the Deceitfulness of Sin

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9 ESV)

A couple days ago, I walked into the kitchen to come upon the scene of one of my housemates devouring a bag of Wal-Mart brand Cheese Puffs. Lately, he has had a peculiar fixation with those little orange things. At any given time, there are 2-3 bags of unopened crunchy cheese puffs, just to make certain that he never runs out.

However, this time, he was commiserating with a slightly heftier bag of the puffy Cheese Puffs. I took the opportunity to ask a provocative question, especially provocative for the kinds of people here at the college and seminary. I asked, "Hey [insert name], are you addicted to cheese puffs?" As I have lately been dialed into my powers of perception, I discerned that he was mildly taken aback. Stunned that I would ask such a personal question, he did not have very much to say to me, other than offer me the rest of his bag, which I (of course) helped him devour.

I was curious as to why these cheese puffs tasted so exceptionally good. They were "Great Value" cheese puffs. How does Wal-Mart consistently put out such amazingly good products? I was about to find out.

My housemate said that this particular bag contained monosodium glutamate, otherwise known as "MSG." He informed me that ingesting regular amounts of MSG kills you. Huh. I knew my mom always asked to not get MSG from Chinese restaurants, but now I can see why. She wanted to ruin my life. MSG is one of the best flavors of anything that I have ever tasted.

With that being said, I continued to help my friend with his Cheese Puffs. Bite after bite, grease mark on my fingers after grease mark on my fingers, I almost ate the rest of that bag. Then it happened. 

The Grease Ball.

When Wal-Mart manufactures Cheese Puffs, or anything else for that matter, I highly doubt that they care very much about their ratio of grease:puff. This one particular cheese finger disintegrated in my mouth almost immediately, leaving me with the unsavory experience of being forced to cope with a sickening concentration of Puff oil lazily making its home in my mouth. Immediately, my love and infatuation with the Great Value Cheese Puffs came to a grinding halt, and I gave the rest of the bag to my housemate, despairingly and disgustedly spewing out the remains into the garbage.

What does this have to do with the deceitfulness of sin? Here was my connection:

So often, we get caught up in doing something that seems so right. In this parable, MSG is the deceitfulness of sin, eating the Cheese Puff as whatever sin you are partial to, and the frying oil as being the pain, hurt, and destruction that is left when sin has its way. We become so content eating, enjoying, and ignoring the serious danger of sin [x], that we lose our ability to become the objective onlookers who see the consequences and implications of the reality of that sin. Because our hearts our hard and we are so often closed to wise counsel, sin's MSG factor creates the open door for sinful and painful attitudes and practices to live, move, and breathe. Our lives can transmogrify into demolition trucks of death because of our insensitivity to the real, hardened craters of our hearts that go either undetected or the warnings to those things go unheeded. 

I ate those Cheese Puffs knowing that they weren't probably the best for me, but I couldn't see what could possibly go wrong with something that was so good. Needless to say, I was wrong. 

Here is my exhortation: If some person or some people approach you with reasons why your life is not heading in the right direction, don't be fooled by the tastiness of MSG. You know that we are sinners. You know that we are prone to mistakes. You know that our hearts are deceitfully wicked and desperately sick, so don't continue being fooled by sin's seemingly Great Value! Be thankful for those who are willing to say the hard thing and put strain on their relationship with you because they love you. 

We will make God look best when we demonstrate the fact that we value Him more than the things in our lives that look, feel, and taste good. If there is a better, wiser path to be taken, we must look to our Heavenly Father for that path, even if we miss out on the MSG. 

We get Him.

He is our hope.

.DSN.