I find it strange that as a society we want to pick apart every ingredient and demonize every chemical (remember guys, water is a chemical…) but we are turned off by examining our own confession of faith. It is easy to be distracted by so-called toxins in the name of health and miss the true evil that is killing us all. And in effect, we miss the true Good. It’s not us and our activism against toxins. It’s the One who really is running the world, Jesus Christ.

 
Evangelicals have taken note that our culture has systematically wiped out the word “evil” from our vocabulary. But don’t be mistaken, Christians and non-Christians alike are still very much aware of malevolence. But instead of recognizing the evil one, the evil of sin, and the evil in our own thoughts and actions when they are opposed to God, we have taken the personality out of evil. Yes, at first those concerned about such narrow-minded things such as orthodoxy lamented the spin that all language of evil had been changed to psychobabble.

But that song has been played so many times that less people are buying it. It seems that our problems are more profound than even a psychological diagnosis and we need a bigger playlist. It seems that no matter how hard we try to get better, something is still tirelessly working against us. And we found the perfect buzz-word to identify it. Now everyone is scratching the record to this explaination: toxic, t-t-to-to-to-toxic.

And now we have become a very suspicious group of people. Our fear is poison. It seems that everyone is out to get us.

Sure, there is a measure of truth in this trend, or else it would not be so popular. Proponents have issued a wake-up call to be more educated about what we are putting into our bodies. It’s good to raise awareness about our responsibility in health, as well as the responsibility for distributers to produce a good product.

But now everything is labeled “toxic” and I’m afraid we’ve lost the meaning of the word. While I have many personal reasons for wanting the world to boycott Starbucks (mainly because they make bad coffee), I’m not going to use the argument that their Pumpkin Pie Latte is toxic. Because it’s not. Sure, there’s way too much sugar in it, but it’s not even close to toxic levels, I’m sorry to say. While I agree that it is not a healthy drink, I’m pretty sure it’s going to take a lot more than 3 ½ teaspoons worth of sugar to poison me. One scientist* pointed out that in order to consume enough Pumpkin Spice Lattes to reach a toxic level of sugar, your body would already be poisoned by consuming a toxic level of water from the drinks. And to say that caramel coloring can cause cancer, well, you actually need the science to back that up—and we don’t.

What I see happening is that everything “out there” is evil, from Subway’s bread, to our pasteurized milk, to our shampoo.

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*Disclaimer: these links are not from Christian sources and one in particular has offensive language.