Love without Bread

BREAD IS A WEAPON FOR POWER

The leaders and wise of this world keep warning us of the weapons that can destroy the world.  We all fail to identify the reason for creating such weapons. It started way back when Cain did not let Abel graze his flock on his land. He could not bring himself to share his bread with his brother (Genesis 4). I was born in Poland, a land that changed hands between a several power hungry nations. Six years ago, two of our sons lost their homes to greedy money institutions that overextended their bread supply. We too ran almost out of bread when we reached beyond our bankbook. Jesus had this advice that could help us today. “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give you” (John 6:27).

Jesus had reference to our spiritual wellbeing, but I am convinced that He did not disregard the bread his body needed to keep his spirit up and running. To me, Jesus meant that I must not make bread the only reason why I am in this world. People in his day as well as in ours do worry over what they shall eat and drink. Going to bed hungry is agonizing and far too many in the world do not know where their next meal shall come from. To rule out bread as a priority must have shocked Jesus’ listeners. An empty stomach does no promote thinking or living.  When Jesus stopped feeding the people, they stopped following Him (John 6). “The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard” illuminates the fact that there are more workers in the world than there are employers. The employers have the power to do as they please and it behooves the employees to adhere to their generosity. The owner had the right to choose the workers and pay them what he felt they deserved (Matthew 20:1-16). When an employer is stripped of that power, then bread is in serious jeopardy.

Bread, in the past, has been the force that decided the destiny of many conflicts and revolutions. The laborer deserves his pay (Matthew 10:10), but does he deserve more than his wages (Matthew 20:13-15)? Where is the extra bread going to come from? God’s people in the desert were not allowed to gather manna every day and not more than they could eat; yet, without manna and quails they would not have survived (Exodus 16). While they were in Egypt, they had too work more than twice as hard for their bread. The need for bread helped Joseph in Egypt to save his people and the Egyptians from starvation by managing and storing food when it was plentiful. It also turned Pharaoh into the richest man at the time and subjected all his subjects to his will. Bread helped Joseph elevate him in power next to Pharaoh and it made his brothers bow to him as if they were slaves. Bread led David and his men to intimidate people. While they fled from King Saul, they took illegally holy bread from the priests and ate it. Then Saul had these priests killed for feeding David and his men (I Samuel 21:4; 22). When Nabal refused to pay David for services rendered for bread, Abigail wife of Nabal appeased David with herself and the required supplies (I Samuel 25).

Second Kings 6:29 records this gruesome act. A woman appealed to the King of Israel to have him force another woman to give up her son as she had done so they could survive. That took place in Samaria when Ben–Hadad king of Aram (modern Syria) had surrounded the city, but he had to abandon it when he ran out of supplies. These heroic conquerors lived off the bread they took from the people whom they subdued them. Without bread they could not plunder or carry with them their booty. In my own lifetime, I lived in Germany, Poland, and Russia where the need for bread had a similar impact. And how is it going to play out in mighty America when more than half of the population is being fed by the minority and on borrowed money by the government? Who will supply the bread to a defunct and mismanaged people without collateral? How will we manage without bread? I am more than concerned because I have experienced the lack of bread during World War II and what we are facing shall be far more global and severe. Here is the reason why. We no longer can knock at the door of a small farmer or a small grocery store and beg for help because we have transferred our rights to raise our own bread to huge farmers, conglomerates and grocery supermarkets. During chaos we can raid these places but after that what shall we eat? Such prospects should make us sweat in our sleep.

Starving people pay little attention to rules or regulations, to ideologies or even to religion. In the movie “Noah” the grandfather is set on killing his grandchild for fear that there would not be enough food to survive with one more person. My father-in-law, along with thousands, ended up in mass-graves under communist Russia, because of the lack of jobs and food. Party members only survived and to stay alive everyone professed to support a Stalin or a Hitler in public. Very few, like my mother that did not march for a leader, kept her reasons to herself. I was taken to Germany at the age of nine and at the age of ten I was convinced that Hitler was the answer and so were all the other lads my age and older. My father brought home a Jewish boy just a little older than I was, to save him from being taken away by the Nazis. It did not take long for our neighbors to realize what father was doing and they panicked in fear for their lives. The boy felt unwelcome and left quietly on his own, hopefully, he made it out of German occupied territory. Our people were obligated to serve the Nazis because of bread. Those that remained in Russia starved or were killed at the hands of the communists. For four years we worked Polish farms to raise bread for the Germans and we were allowed to eat for ourselves. At that time, our people served the Nazis willingly as a far lesser evil they had faced during the Russian revolution. Bread was a powerful reason to serve those that let us eat and live. People did not mind to raise their hands to Hitler. If one did not, he had second thoughts and hoped that no one had noticed.

In my native language there is a saying, “Der Wolf laesst von die Haare aber nicht von die Nicken.” In the English it means that a wolf sheds his hair, but not his manners. Like the wolf, one can identify the nature of a system by its fruit or its finished product. It is not difficult to see the similarities of what the socialists are doing in the free world of America and Europe to what the Nazis did to Germany and the Bolsheviks did to Russia and elsewhere. It is the shift of power from mighty individuals to the government. It no longer requires a revolution for the government to take over the food industry, but a vote from the people that depend on the government for their bread. In America, the Democratic Party has provided the vehicle for the socialists to implement their programs to feed their supporters. They are fully aware that private enterprise cannot endure the cost and will collapse and become incorporated into the socialistic system. The reason that the transformation has not been drastic is due to the different kind of leaders. The Nazi and the Russian communist leaders came from the ranks of the poor; the American leaders come from the rich that became richer while in government. They used public money and borrowed money and not their own to support socialism just to stay in power. These leaders know very well that socialism by itself cannot survive and they are prepared to depart before the ship sinks. 

The ship will not sink as it did in Germany and Russia, but it will be taken over by a political system run by a religious absolutism. It will not march in with an army of anarchists but like a tiny inconspicuous plant that grows into a huge tree that covers the earth, it will sprout and grow too strong to compete with. It has already, with the help of this nation’s leaders, rooted itself in the free world and is already offering itself as an alternative to a failing political and religious system that has separated secularism from Christianity, or real life from morality. The lack of justice and morality alone will induce people to welcome a change that no longer forces man to live in two worlds of politics and religion. The overemphasis on secularism will even mislead Christians to accept this religion as worth following. In due time and after this religious absolutism has settled in, it will disclose its true nature of human bondage to one person, thrice as fierce as the German SS. This individual will be a triple SSS and every one that wants to stay alive must burn the letters into their foreheads or on their arms or hands. Without the sign no one shall buy or sell bread. All men will be stripped of their freedom and forced to comply with the rules set forth by this one man. Those that shall collect the scalps of the unconverted shall be allowed to enter paradise where the SSS man and his god are enthroned. Imagine what an incentive heaven has become to a hunter of Jews and Christians. The Nazis or Bolsheviks were shadows of what the members of this system must do to be allowed into their heaven.

I do not enjoy writing this warning and it is not mine to begin with. It is Jesus prediction in his Book of Revelation to warn his people to prepare themselves not to be afraid to give up their bodies instead of their souls (Matthew 10:28). These mortal saviors and gods have no power over the immortal and eternal soul of the Spirit Creator of all things. Christ has conquered death and his followers no longer have anything to fear beyond the grave (Romans 8; I Corinthians 15:26). Even bread loses its power at the grave. There will be a time when people shall prefer to die than serve a system that exists by mayhem.