dessert

Imagine what it would have been like if the Old Testament law covered such things as eating of dessert:

For we judge between the plate that is unclean and the plate that is clean, saying first, if the plate is clean, then you shall have dessert. But of the unclean plate, the laws are these:

If you have eaten most of your meat, and two bites of your peas with each bite consisting of not less than three peas each, or in total six peas, eaten where I can see, and you have also eaten enough of your potatoes to fill two forks, both forkfuls eaten where I can see, then you shall have dessert.

But if you eat a lesser number of peas, and yet you eat the potatoes, still you shall not have dessert; and if you eat the peas, yet leave the potatoes uneaten, you shall not have dessert, no, not even a small portion thereof.

And if you try to deceive by moving the potatoes or peas around with a fork, that it may appear you have eaten what you have not, you will fall into iniquity. And I will know, and you shall have no dessert.

No, those verses are not to be found in Exodus, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy. But something similar is in the "lawbook" of almost every parent. As children, we thought the "rules" were terribly unfair, almost bordering on "cruel and unusual punishment". But, as we became parents ourselves, we began to understand the need for setting guidelines for the behavior of our children, both in matters as mundane as the eating of dessert and as crucial as having a faith in Jesus Christ.

"And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." (Ephesians 6:1).