If I were a Keebler elf, I’d be trembling in my little cookie-making boots right now, wondering if New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg might be coming after me next.
After he’s through ridding his kingdom of big, scary soft drinks, that is.
You’ve probably heard that the New York mayor has proposed a ban on the selling of supersized, sugary drinks.
Here’s what I want to respectfully say to Mayor Bloomberg: “Really?”
Terrorist cells may be lurking about and multiplying like bacteria on a dish sponge, homeless people are sleeping in alleys, and Mayor Bloomberg is in a tizzy over Big Gulps being sold down at the 7-Eleven?
Is the phrase “fiddling while Rome is burning” perhaps relevant here?
I know I’m wading into waters where I probably have no business going. There are, after all, sharks in here, which is why I generally try to steer clear of even remotely political issues and controversies.
But some news stories strike me as so uncommonly nuts that I feel compelled to comment on them. Sharks or no sharks, I’m coming in.
I am certainly aware that obesity and diabetes are on the rise in our country. My goodness, who doesn’t know about that alarming trend? On how many newscasts have we watched the same stock footage of pudgy derrieres waddling down city streets as reporters recite obesity statistics to us?
I’m not trying to deny the individual and collective price we pay for poor eating habits. Not at all. But I find it hard to comprehend that Mayor Bloomberg really thinks that outlawing large soft drinks will make a serious dent in the obesity problem, and frankly, I’m disturbed he believes that the government should regulate such things.
What’s he going to do next? Shut down every ice cream shop, bakery, hot dog stand and pizza place? Send out a SWAT team to cuff Ronald McDonald and haul him off to the pokey?
When one gets an itch to start drawing lines like that, it sure does get hard to know where to draw them.
One thing seems apparent to me: Without a change of heart and mind, outlawing every potential temptation isn’t really going to keep anyone from self-destructing.
Do we need some laws? Heavens yes, we do. There are plenty of folks around whose internal moral compasses seem to be missing a needle. Call me crazy, but drinking too much Pepsi doesn’t feel like a crime to me. Unwise, maybe, but not a crime.
Just as the Pharisees tried to keep folks in line by adding hundreds of nitpicky laws to God’s basic requirements back in Jesus’ day, some of our government officials seem to believe that simply adding more laws will surely cure what ails our society.
Jesus understood the fallacy of that kind of thinking.
He said of the Pharisees (in Matthew 23:4), “They tie up heavyburdensand lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.”
My, my. You’d think Jesus had been observing a few legislative sessions in our land, wouldn’t you?
Jesus exasperated the religious lawmongers of his day by boiling down the complex Jewish law into two commands: Love God and love others (Mark 12:28-31).
Lest anyone think that’s too simple, ponder the implications of those two commands. There’s a whole lot wrapped up in those few words.
I’m not naïve enough to believe that everyone, or even most people, are going to play by the rules of love. But neither am I naïve enough to believe that simply passing more laws will fix what’s wrong with us.
Laws don’t change hearts, God does.