ICE CREAM
I have always loved ice cream. However, where I grew up in rural northeastern Pennsylvania, we did not live near a store that sold it. Consequently, we made our own— at church or community functions in large wooden buckets, which we churned into vanilla, chocolate, and peach flavors.
In college, we would occasionally go to a nearby town and order a pint of hand packed butter pecan ice cream. I remember that better than my ancient history or psychology classes.
Eventually we went to Papua New Guinea and, alas, there was no more ice cream for a while. However, we taught linguistics at courses in several cities in Australia and New Zealand, and our favorite item was back on the menu.
We are not alone in taste. The average American eats about 4 gallons of ice cream each year, about one scoop per day over a few months. We even have a “national ice cream month and day,” first proclaimed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Vanilla and chocolate are the top flavors in the U.S. with cookies and cream, strawberry and butter pecan as the top runners-up. In Great Britain, vanilla is also the top choice, with 84% of consumers liking it. Mint chocolate chip is the second most popular, while in Russia the favorite is plombir, which has a high milk-fat content. In Indonesia and Vietnam, the per capita consumption of ice cream is very low, people preferring instead dishes mixed with fruits, jellies or condensed coconut milk.
I am disappointed to think that there may be no ice cream in heaven, Instead, we may be treated to manna, a flakey, honey-tasting wafer that, at one point, God rained down from heaven (Psalm 78.24-25: And [God] had rained down manna upon them to eat, and [they] did eat angels' food).
The Israelites had people who craved food other than manna and they “started wailing and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat!’” Not ice cream, just some meat!
Ice cream has a lot of calories. A large scoop (the kind I always preferred) has between 250 to 400 calories in it. But it helps sell Lovastatin and other cholesterol lowering drugs!
I admit that I must have a “sweet tooth,” a craving for sweet and sugary foods that are not good for my diet. I read that sometime way-back humans preferred sweet things because it signaled that the food was safe and would provide quick energy. Sugar releases dopamine, which is a pathway to habits and comfort.
When we first lived with the Kewa people in Papua New Guinea, the only “sweet” things were sugar cane and salt. That’s right—the people called the taste of sugar and salt by the same word--rende. The refined sugar is now readily available, but so are cavities in their teeth.
Physical things that we crave so much often cause us the most harm, which is an indicator of why we should crave spiritual things instead. They won’t add calories or cavities.
And what spiritual things we should crave? “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” (1 Peter 2.2) The metaphor reminds us that just as surely as newborn babies crave their mother’s milk, Christians should crave God’s truth.
There are, of course, substitutes for ice cream. Sorbet and gelato flavors are the most common. They are said to be “a dessert without guilt” because they are dairy-free and contain fewer calories than ice cream. In a sense, “you can have your cake and eat it too.”
We should also be aware that there are unfortunate and undesirable substitutes for God’s truth, as well as cultural politics. Such distortions can cause us to crave the wrong things.
When Eve saw some fruit in the garden, she saw that it “was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
Ice cream won’t give us wisdom, and it probably will not lead us into sin, but, like most food, drink, and may things in life, they should be consumed in moderation.
Karl Franklin
