If you follow my blog, you will recall that in February of this year, Derek and I started on the carnivore diet as a new way of life for good health, avoidance of dementia, diabetes and other diseases, and for longevity (you can read about that here). Now, just over nine months later, we are still going, and the benefits have been enormous. There are many shadows and types of the Lord and His church that I have seen throughout this journey so far, and I hope to share these at a later date.

The shift toward a healthier lifestyle has meant extensive personal scrutiny of food products and subsequent research on what certain labels actually mean. Finding real food requires some effort, unlike the last 57 years, which have required little effort and little care.

Subsequently, I have been on the search for ‘wild-caught’ smoked salmon. Now that I exclusively eat animal products (except for salt), variety is helpful! Though I love my steak, beef mince, and bacon, sometimes it is just so good to have a little something extra. And smoked salmon is yummy! (Stay with me, I am leading to something…)

Interestingly, wild-caught salmon is very hard to come by; it can often be that way when it comes to looking for ‘good’ food. Although our local food chains advertise wild-caught smoked salmon,  they don’t seem to stock it or just run out of it so fast that I can never find it. Sadly, this leaves me with the second best: smoked salmon labelled ‘sustainably sourced’. I say second best because while they still contain Omega 3’s, they also contain much that is not good. I guess you could say they are a mix of good and bad. However, the good (Omega 3) is so hard to find that many will obviously settle for the second best.

At first, I thought ‘sustainably sourced’ might have meant the same thing as wild-caught, but it doesn’t. Sustainably sourced is more about caring for the treatment and environment of the farmed salmon. Yes, the salmon are farmed. That’s right, the same way that land animals are farmed, whether or not they are treated humanely, fish are farmed in the water. The reason I started looking for wild-caught salmon as a preference in the first place, was because I learned what farmed salmon are fed. According to the web, farmed salmon can be fed the following:

• Wheat
• Canola
• Corn
• Vegetables
• Land animals
• Antibiotics
• Pellets made out of fish oil and smaller fish
• Ground-up chicken feathers
• Poultry litter (yes, that’s poop)
• Genetically modified yeast
• Soybeans
• Chicken fat

As a result, these fish suffer from disease, are stunted in growth, and are sick and depressed. Although they may be in a large fish penn in the ocean, having the appearance of the real thing, they are almost static. They hustle and bustle over one another to the point, for some, of being unable to breathe the necessary oxygen for life. Many of them die there while the others are left clamouring over their carcasses. As hard as it might be, let’s not focus on the plight of the farmed salmon, but rather, now consider the body of Christ today as reflected in this picture.

In many respects, the church is treated just like farmed fish. She is being penned, controlled, and fed foreign and man-made food. She is struggling for the air of the Holy Spirit breath, into her lungs. She goes round and round in circles, and nothing changes, there is no transformation, no growth. Everything is the same and routine and there are few signs of real life. She is still the church, just as the farmed salmon are still fish. All of her nature and instincts remain in her, just as the farmed salmon retain their nature and instincts, but in the farm environment these are denied, damaged or lie dormant.

The consequence of fish farming, is that humans get sick fish to ingest, making us also sick. Likewise, when the body of Christ is being penned, restrained, and fed junk, she gets sick. And when others come along to receive what she has to offer, they also get sick. Below is a list of what many believers are feeding on these days:

• Prepared sermons (even AI generated ones)
• Sermons taken from books for sermon ideas
• Second-hand knowledge
• Information
• The singing of many songs
• Professional music teams
• Smoke machines
• Emotion invoking musically accompanied altar calls
• Light shows
• Sound systems
• Entertainment
• Theatrics
• Dependence on a leader’s spirituality
• Shallow relationships
• Keeping up appearances

I don’t think there is much to be said further about this list, it seems to speak for itself, though it might be worth focusing on for a moment before continuing with reading. I feel it is even more disturbing than what we just learned about the farmed salmon.

So, what about the wild-caught salmon? Firstly, these salmon are wild. They are in their natural environment, not dependent on man, and are free to follow their natural God-given instincts. They move from here to there according to the water’s temperature like the flow of the Spirit in the life of the believer, because that’s how God made them, and us. In fresh water and in the ocean, wild salmon feed on the following:

• Small insects
• Small amphibians
• Other fish
• Crustaceans
• Cephalopods (squid and octopus)
• Polychaete worms

It’s fairly obvious that wild-caught salmon are healthy fish. Their diet is very specific. They ingest the right stuff, what they were made to, and subsequently, whoever eats them also ingests the right stuff. They are free from the contamination of man’s interference and foreign elements that do not belong in their system. Being in the open ocean, they also have the room to grow. They can be all they are meant to be.

Like the wild salmon, the body of Christ needs her natural environment in which she can feed on what she is made to ingest to help her grow into a healthy organism. When the church was born, she was healthy. She was wild, untamed, and free. And she was incredible! Her diet was also very specific:

Christ: The revelation of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by My Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.… (Matthew 16:16-18)

For My flesh is real food, and My blood is real drink. (John 6:55)

Take pause.

It is interesting to note that the reason salmon go from rivers to oceans is to grow. The ocean is where it’s at because of the abundance of food there, which allows them to quickly grow into big fish. In her natural and authentic state, the church is driven towards seeing Christ in her, expanded and evidenced here on earth and in the heavenly realms. She is genetically geared to increase His presence as she continues to feed on Him. The natural environment of the early church where this took place, is described by Luke, who writes:

“They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need. Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:42–47, NASB95)

‌Some might encapsulate the above passage as a description of the church’s honeymoon phase. It certainly sounds glorious! And there was no smoke machine or sound system required! There were no holograms, drum rolls, or entertainment. There were no pre-prepared sermons selected from a list of topics. There was no processed food! As the church grew, so did her expression, which is the life of Christ in her.

The church thrives on the real food of the only foundation laid. We cannot survive well on the processed food. We won’t ever experience what we were made for, by not caring about what we eat, spiritually. The church can be just like I was, not taking her diet seriously, not caring, not making any effort to research what she’s ingesting, but blindly going along and being content with second-best. She can believe that so long as there’s some good stuff, or God stuff, it is good enough, and all the while she can be getting sick, depressed, and denying her natural instincts, dying even.

We were meant to feed upon Christ, and to dwell in Him together. Therefore, we are meant to grow in His likeness and see His presence manifested in us wherever we are. His life does not come to us in bottles or capsules. It is not mixed with foreign matter we were never meant to ingest. His life strengthens and emboldens us, not make us sick and diseased. His life carries life from one member of His body to the next.

Jesus is not into farming churches. He is not represented by sick, stunted and dying saints. He wants wild and life-filled representations of His nature. Though, His Spirit, like the Omega-3, is in each one of His saints, He needs a healthy body, because we are His body! If we keep eating spiritually processed food and remain content in our farmed churches, Jesus Himself suffers.

And we know, further to all the above, that salmon are famous for their unusual desperate behaviour when it comes to mating season. From wherever they are, they will return to the river where they were spawned, back to their beginnings. They will force themselves upstream, against the current, and leap up rock ledges in the river falls, risking their lives. They face danger of being caught by bears, smashing themselves on the rocks, or dying from utter exhaustion, but they won’t be stopped. They must get to the spawning ground.

What an incredible picture of the devoted and unswerving child of God. We need that same sense of desperation. Christ is our spawning ground as well as the wide open ocean. He is the source of life, the abundant food we are made to ingest, and the One through whom we were born again. Those who are desperately seeking after Him will do so at any cost, just like the salmon, and just like Jesus gave His all before any of us, for His Father’s sake and ours.

Coming back to my search, I finally found some wild-caught salmon at a supermarket in another suburb. Hence, sometimes we have to move location in order to find the real food. We have to search for it. If it’s not in the local area, don’t waste time, go and find it. (Speaking in shadows of finding the real life of Christ among saints, you might even need to move there).

What’s more, it is expensive, $5.90 for just a 50g pack for only a few small slices, though much thicker. The real deal will cost us more but its richness will have greater effect even in smaller portions than the excess of the fake food that comes cheap. This reminds me of the wide road and wide gate that many will enter because it costs them nothing or little, compared with the narrow path and narrow gate, through which few will enter in, and the pearl of great price that will cost us everything.

When I sat down to eat my wild-caught salmon I was very excited. I had my bacon cooked and was trying to keep that hot so I could eat it all together. I was in a hurry to eat my very first meal of this beautiful wild-caught salmon. I was about to shovel it all down until I caught myself in the act. I stopped and thought how long I’d looked for this special food and how hard it had been to find. And here I was about to shovel it in and not even pay attention to it, not even savour it, or allow myself to enjoy it. More specifically, not allow myself to take time to recognise its different taste.

Sometimes we are like that with Christ. Sometimes He gives us something so incredible of Himself but we are in such a hurry that we don’t even savour it, ruminate on it, and enjoy it. Sometimes we treat His life and sacrifice with ignorance and a lack of the respect of which it is more than worthy.

And so I stopped and ate a slice of the salmon by itself. It was delicious. I ate slowly and could taste that it was pure. I could taste there was a true difference.  This was plain salmon in its raw state and it was perfect and altogether different. It wasn’t even smoked because it didn’t need any enhancing.

I saw the correlations–taking the time to ruminate on the real food of Jesus Christ. Taking the time to notice the difference, to slow down and ingest. And the relevance, as we are tasting, to proclaim, detect, explore, discern the difference in the real food of His life, what is really from Him and how very contrasting it is to everything else that might even look like Him but isn’t.

I took a photo for you, to show the difference in colour between the wild-caught and the farmed. The wild-caught is rich in colour, completely different. The other is pale and sickly looking by comparison. I would have said salmon was pink until I saw the real one, and that it is actually bright orange. So, there is not only a difference in taste but also in appearance. That’s why the psalmist says to ‘taste and see’ that the Lord is good. EVERYTHING in HIM is GOOD.

Until I did my own research I was ignorant of what I was ingesting, believing it was healthy. Until I questioned, I misunderstood what ‘sustainably sourced’ meant. Until I’d seen the real thing, I thought the other was fine. Once I found out what I’d been eating for years was not as God had made it, I did something about it.

I know many of you are the same, and I thank God for you. Trusting God, to stop and question where you’ve been, what you’ve been feeding on in relation to Christ and church life experience, and taking the necessary risks to get back to the spiritual spawning ground; the inner life of Christ and the revelation of Him and His church.

Together, we now follow a defined and narrow elimination diet of Christ alone, and the benefits are too numerous to count. Who could ever go back?