spiritual allergies

It's the holiday season!

Which means, for me, lots and lots of Benadryl on hand. I have an allergy, a bad one, and it most often comes out to play during the holidays. I'm allergic to tree nuts. Just contemplate for a moment how many holiday goodies contain tree nuts. Don't limit your imagination to just desserts--entrees and side dishes have been known to sneak them in, too. I am forced to have a selective palate and to be very annoying by asking, "Are there nuts in this?" about every single dish. This past Thanksgiving there were so many collective nuts in the kitchen (relatives included?), that I couldn't go in. Last week Robin baked with pecans. I neither touched nor ate them, yet I enjoyed an allergic reaction.

Tree nuts are perfectly good foods to most people. To me they are poison. On the other hand, peanuts are poison to many people, while being quite tasty to me.

I don't want to be a legalist or the kind of person who says, "Don't touch, don't taste," to everything around me. But there are times when we have to realize our spiritual allergies and say to ourselves, "don't touch, don't taste." There was a time a few months ago when I was watching a perfectly harmless show, until I realized that I was actually starting to behave like the main character: NOT a good thing! To other people, the show was harmless; to me, it was poison.

What are spiritual allergies? Maybe a television show, chocolate, a novel, a friend, a sports team, a coveted job, a car, a significant other, or anything that is poison to your walk with God. We're all wired differently and have unique temptations. Legalism says, "If it's bad for me, it's bad for everyone." I'm not going there. There are things I can do that you can't, and things you can do that I can't. It's not something to be collectively banned, and it's not something for us to judge each other over. But wisdom would recommend that we avoid "foods" that poison us.

Sometimes it stinks when everyone is enjoying a pecan pie that looks so good, and I'm banned to the living room. But on a scale of one to ten, I give breathing the important rank of ten, and pecan pie a pretty worthless rank of one. Shouldn't an unhindered relationship with God be so much more important than anything else?