| Eat Your Own Dog Food |
November 26, 2000
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Our problem?
Not wanting to take total responsibility for our
actions, even when we have to admit that things wouldn't have
gone wrong if we'd behaved as we should have.
"1997 -- Jeremy Dean and his parents, of Burney,
California, filed a lawsuit in January against Shasta County for at
least $700,000 for Jeremy's total disability that resulted from a car
crash. Dean and some friends had been out drinking. Dean was in the
back seat of a car and had stuck his head out the window to vomit just
as the driver veered off the road, ramming Dean's head into a tree.
The lawsuit claims that it was the county's fault that the tree was so
close to the road."
"Our relationship to God is our way of participating in
God's redemptive work. Relating to God is not only about
understanding the world; it is about mending the world."
| Yale Divinity School theologian Miroslav Volf |
John 18:33-37
comes straight from the climactic
center of John's passion narrative.
Typically, as John focuses on Jesus' appearance before
Pilate, he is less concerned with chronological exactness than
the presentation of a particular theological message.
In this instance John constructs the confrontation scene
between Jesus and
the symbol of Roman authority to
emphasize Jesus' kingship and his divine qualification for judging the
entire world.
Three days since Thanksgiving.
Tired of eating turkey?
Turkey sandwiches. Turkey casserole. Turkey 'a la
king. Turkey legs. Turkey pie. Turkey soup.
Try dog food.
Join Fido and open a bag of dry food, tumble a healthy
crunchy pile into his dish and another heaping helping into your own
cereal bowl.
Stir in some hot water to make a delicious brown gravy and then lap
it up!
Okay, so you're not going to eat your dog's food.
But there are people who say that we should.
What they mean is that we should
"practice what we preach," or
"put our money where our mouth is"
i.e, we should "eat our own dog food."
The media-centric phrase is everywhere, showing up in newspaper
headlines, computer-industry magazines and executive sound
bites.
At Microsoft and Cisco, staffers refer to it with religious
reference.
Where did this post-conventional wisdom come from?
Like dog food itself, its origins and precise composition are not
entirely clear.
But theories abound ...
Some give credit for "eating your own dog food"
to Gordon Bell, a senior researcher at Microsoft.
The expression, Bell explains, refers to a company's
using its software programs or products in their early stages -- even
if the process is somewhat disagreeable -- as a way of testing them to
improve quality.
"We have to eat our own dog food to see if we get
sick, find out how it tastes," he adds.
Others point to John Rock, the former manager of GM's Oldsmobile
division, who was quoted as saying,
"We knew we would hit rock bottom in '97, and we would find
out whether the dogs would eat the dog food in '98." Still others have used the phrase to suggest that
someone has an intimate knowledge of what they're selling -- like a
dog-food salesman who is so taken with his product's quality that he
has sampled it himself.
We live in a Darwinian dog-eat-dog world, where only the hungry
succeed.
It was no different in the canine culture in Jesus' day.
Political realities made people hungry for the truth -- or at
least their perception of it.
As in our time when truth often matters less than political
expediency, efficiency or perception of life...
people were barking and biting on the day Jesus stood before Pilate.
In today's text, it's not Jesus, but Pilate, who raises the
philosophical question:
What is truth?
He knows what the truth is; he's just loathe to acknowledge
it.
It isn't politically advisable to release Jesus -- what with a
raging, riot-sized mob at his gate demanding death.
Pilate clearly recognizes how to protect his own doghouse, how to
guard his own backyard.
He knows and believes his own truth.
The truth is, Jesus hasn't done anything against Roman law.
Pilate, who's no simpleton, knows this.
Yet he's in a bit of a political jam.
He smells what's in the wind and he's not about to eat his own dog
food.
He'll leave that meal to Jesus.
Eating his own dog food would mean setting Jesus free, resisting
the clamor of the horde,
maybe causing some sort of spontaneous
uprising, something to be avoided at any cost
which ironically, was one of the worries of the temple leaders about
Jesus himself,
leaders who now use the possibility of an uprising to their own
advantage.
Politics, politics ... everything is politics.
Even if an uprising didn't get unleashed, the temple
alpha wolf circles Pilate with a not-so-subtle threat to tattletale to
Rome.
The pack barks for him,
"If you release this man, you are no friend of the
emperor.
Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the
emperor"
(John 19:12).
Pilate is forced to chose between a king in Rome, or the king who
stood before him now.
Pilate knows the truth, but he also knows, politically at least,
that it's best to let big sleeping dogs lie --
especially when you're a midsized dog chained to the emperor's
doghouse.
Like Pilate we know the truth about Jesus.
Yet the truth we know about him isn't the truth Pilate knows.
Pilate knows Jesus is innocent of any crime.
Pilate also knows who fills his dinner dish,
who pours his gravy,
who holds his leash.
He chooses his master.
And we choose ours, since we know Jesus was, Jesus is -- The Christ.
So we choose Christ.
What does it mean, then, for a Christian to eat his own dog food?
In simplest terms, it means putting faith into action, avoiding
hypocrisy,
loving our enemies,
stressing integrity and quality,
being truthful and honest,
nourishing ourselves on foundational
beliefs,
and developing an intimate knowledge of what and who we're
"selling."
It means that the twin rails of faith and action run parallel,
ensuring that when the truth train leaves the station it won't
immediately tumble off the tracks.
To know God we must choose to live God, to practice the presence
of God.
And to know faith we must live faith.
To do that we have to understand what it is we do
believe, which is why it is so important to gather on Sunday
mornings to consume the Word,
to draw together as the body of
Christ,
to drink the water of life from the same bowl -- in short,
to eat our own dog food.
Like sly curs who can somehow differentiate a trustworthy
person from an untrustworthy one, the spiritual seekers
of the 21st century are not going to be attracted to a church
that doesn't eat its own dog food.
They'll sniff out the hypocrisy on the wind quicker than a Norwegian
Elkhound scents a black bear.
Dogs can't be fooled the way people can.
A dog senses fear.
A dog hears what we can't hear, smells what we can't smell.
A dog might eat anything and roll in dead fish believing it is
perfume,
but a dog will never trust a person, or a group of people, or a
church of people, who prove untrustworthy,
who prove hypocritical
and insincere.
Champion Christians adhere to the truth -- unflinchingly.
They eat their own dog food.
Forget turkey casserole.
Bon appétit!
Sources:
Bryant, Adam. "The New Power Breakfast:
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