I’m afraid that we really are getting out of hand with the whole healthy food thing. Don’t get me wrong. I am a proponent of good health and I do my share of recipe tweaking, garden growing, fresh food hunting, and preservative eliminating. And every true healthy foodie knows that Capri Sun is never going to win them any nutritional self-righteous awards. But I do think we are using our food to make us feel righteous lately. And so everything “out there” is what is impure and contaminating our holy bodies.

I was watching TV the other night, and there was a commercial for Capri Sun. Two moms were chaperoning their children’s field trip and they were sitting together on the bus ride, arguing over who was the cool mom. The argument begins after one mom whips out Capri Sun drinks for her son, showing how the packaging is clear on the bottom to prove that there’s no artificial coloring or preservatives. And so they go back and for with “you’re not the cool mom, because…”

…you chaperone every class trip.

…you ran for PTA treasurer, uncontested!

…you take same-outfit family pictures.

…you don’t let your 12-year-old-watch PG13 movies.

The argument and the commercial ends with the original mom’s son handing out Capri Suns to his friends while she sits there with a self-righteous grin.

I was left shaking my head that Capri Sun is now campaigning to make moms everywhere feel both self-righteous and cool.

You can clearly tell by looking at these moms that neither of them is actually cool. It’s the drink that’s cool. And if there’s something that we all want to be even more than cool, it is self-righteous. But there is a difference between feeling righteous and being righteous.

The genius of this commercial is that they have picked up on our culture’s new way to feed our need to feel self-righteous: through our diet. Who would ever have thought that we would live in an age with brownies made out of beans? Or “nacho cheese” made from boiled potatoes, carrots, and nutritional yeast flakes? The cool mom who hands out Rice Krispie treats better check her gluten-self at the door. Anyway, everyone knows that it’s not cool to buy packaged marshmallows anymore. Hello, get a Pinterest account and start pinning away on your “healthy eats” board before you be coming to our backyard get-together! What a sinner…

Okay, so I’m going overboard and using my mean girl talk here, but I’m afraid that we really are getting out of hand with the whole healthy food thing. Don’t get me wrong. I am a proponent of good health and I do my share of recipe tweaking, garden growing, fresh food hunting, and preservative eliminating. And every true healthy foodie knows that Capri Sun is never going to win them any nutritional self-righteous awards. But I do think we are using our food to make us feel righteous lately. And so everything “out there” is what is impure and contaminating our holy bodies. It makes me think of the warning Jesus gives in Matt. 23:25-26:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

We are laboring away to scrub all the pesticides off of our fruits and vegetables. Or better yet, we buy non-GMO to feel like they were plucked right out of the garden of Eden. But we tend to forget about the curse that even affects nature. Creation itself is groaning for the return of Christ and complete renewal, a new heavens and a new earth. Sin affects us deeper than we can go by ourselves. We need a righteousness that is not our own.

And sure, because we can have the righteousness of Christ by faith, we are to then live holy lives as we are called. I want to eat healthy and even take care of the environment because being a good steward of what God has given me now looks forward to the new, resurrected body and a new creation to care for with thanksgiving. But I don’t have to be anxious over food. The food itself doesn’t make me pure, Christ does. I can eat and be thankful.

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matt. 6:25-34)

I wonder if in all the anxiety over healthy eating, we have lost sight of thankfulness for the provision God has given us. And God has provided abundantly. Not only in his creation, and even in man’s ingenuity to preserve foods and develop ways to reach the poor and the ever-so-busy with nutritious food, but God has lavished his own with the righteousness of Christ. He has provided abundantly for our salvation. Through faith I see that sin is much worse than prepackaged food. It is in my own heart and it offends my holy Savior. I am thankful that I really am growing in holiness, because there truly is a difference between feeling righteous and being righteous.

Aimee Byrd is a housewife and mother who attends Pilgrim Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Martinsburg, WV. She and her husband, Matt, have 3 children. She blogs at Housewife Theologian where this article  first appeared; it is used with her permission.