Delicacy – something delightful or pleasing, esp. a choice food considered with regard to its rarity, costliness, or the like.

Sometimes visuals are great aids to help us put things in their proper perspective. Here is a little story that might help you change your view of sin and I apologize in advance to anyone with weak stomachs. A picture is worth a thousand words and when it comes to seeing the full ugliness and repulsiveness of sin, we need all the help we can get to break it’s captivating spell over our hearts.

I once had the most adorable little puppy.  It was a tiny tea cup Chihuahua about 10-12 weeks old. He barely weighed a pound. He looked like a squirrel but acted like the Tasmanian devil so I called him “Taz”. Despite his absolute adorableness, he had the nastiest habit you can imagine.

I would be relaxing reading a book on the couch when the nastiest smell would begin to disturb all my senses.  I would look down beside me or on the floor at my feet and see my adorable, angelic, little puppy had gotten into the kitty litter box again and was happily chewing on a piece of feces. It was absolutely disgusting. We would try to discipline him, but we could not break him of this disgusting habit.

When we took him to our veterinarian for his next set of puppy shots, I mentioned this offensive habit. Besides being absolutely repulsive, I was sure it could not be healthy.  Our veterinarians answer really surprised me. He explained that although it was disgusting to us,  to a dog this was a delicacy.

That sent disgusting shivers down my spine. Yuck. A delicacy…seriously? Apparently I needed to introduce this puppy to some choice meat, some steak so he understood the meaning of the idea of a delicacy.

It wasn’t but a couple of weeks later, when I was indulging in a “harmless”, “pleasurable” activity myself in an area of my life that I had made a commitment to discipline myself in and avoid since I had harbored a tendency to allow my time to get out of control whenever I engaged in this activity. Spending too much time surfing the internet.

While surfing the internet may not seem like a bad habit or activity in and of itself, I had allowed it to displace other activities, other obligations, responsibilities and higher priorities that I was entrusted to do.   I had allowed it to have too much control and to gain and dwell in too large of an area in my life. When I could no longer say no to it, I had an unhealthy and unsafe relationship with this activity.

It was then,  when I told myself just 5 more minutes and I’ll go back to what I am suppose to be doing right now,  that I could hear God’s voice whispering to my heart:  “To you this activity is a delicacy, but to me it is repulsive.”

What a disgustingly vivid picture, God forever burned in my mind to help me understand his repulsion vs. my delight in my sinful activity.  To me my sin was a treat, a delicacy. I have a tendency to savor it and go back for more. My heart is not repulsed as it should be but instead delights in it. Only afterwards, when the bill is placed on my table and consequences from neglected responsibilities begin to add up do I feel guilt and shame. And it’s not because I sinned against God, it’s because I don’t want to pay the large bill for my delicacy.  Delicacies can be  expensive.

Not all delicacies are bad, but there are just some things you just should not eat – no matter what culture you live, no matter how it’s seasoned and dressed up, no matter who cooks it. It’s disgusting. Some things are not meant to be edible. That’s not what God designed them for.

I was just enjoying a hobby. I was just surfing the internet which shows anything good can become bad for us  when we relate to it wrong.  I lifted my relationship up with this activity as ultimate, pushing all other relationships aside, sacrificing my time, attention and resources to it so I co uld enjoy it more. It was my treat, my delicacy. A delight to me but repulsive to God. My  husband was going to bed alone. My chores were being pushed aside.  My daughter was growing distant. My work was piling up. My prayers were growing repulsive before God. That’s the ugliness of it. It was not beneficial. The pleasure was temporary. It left a deeper emptiness each time I sacrificed to it and a greater need for fulfillment because those things that God designed to give me pleasure and fulfillment: himself, my husband, my family, my friends, my work…were being neglected. I was growing emptier and emptier trying to squeeze water from a stone idol when God’s life giving cisterns were sitting 2 feet away. My soul was growing thin and malnourished as it dined on a single “delicacy.”

God designed us to connect and relate to him, to others, to hobbies and other good and healthy extracurricular activities in specific ways to bring us the deepest amount of fulfillment and pleasure. When we allow our hearts to connect to someone or something in a way that God did not design for our hearts to connect, it is sin.  It is not sin because it is necessarily a “bad” action, person or item. It is sin, because the way we are relating or our hearts are connecting to it is sinful. Every time we relate to something as ultimate, we push other things and persons down and out of the way to lift it up higher in our lives, give it more room and more control over us. Our priorities and relationships get out of whack as it takes the place of God and it takes the place of family and friendships in consuming our time, resources and devotion. The investment is high and the profit is empty.

In summary, what is the moral of the story? Do not relate to any kind of waste as a food and consider it a delicacy. It is waste. God did not design for us to relate to it that way.  May God open our eyes to see what we are labeling as delicacies in our life.