Are We Scarfing Down or Slowing Down?
Psalm 34:8a says, “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!”
The word for “taste” implies several things:
1) It is in the plural meaning “y’all taste”. This would mean that there needs to be a community of tasting. A community of “tasting” enhances our joy in what is being tasted. Just think about how enjoying good food is enjoyed more when you’re in a group of people tasting the same thing.
2) “Taste” is an imperative. David is commanding us to do something. This is not merely an invitation but a dutiful delight.
3) “Taste” means to savor. Tasting is distinct from just eating. We sometimes scarf down food rather than slow down to taste the food. Tasting implies a community of people slowing down their lives to spend time savoring something. How difficult this is in our high-speed, immediacy, “microwave” culture. This is not telling us to constantly look inward and say, “Am I tasting enough?” Or, “Am I tasting rightly?” The focus is on tasting the object rather than than subject who is doing the tasting. The focus is on slowing down to focus on tasting God rather than being absorbed with us.
4) “Taste” means not just once but continually to do something. In other words, this verse is inviting us (commanding us) to enter into the covenant of grace with Yahweh.
5) We need to be a community who builds a lifestyle that slows down to taste. But, what (or who) are we to “taste”? Yahweh! Notice that it is the LORD and not just Lord. We are to taste the covenant-keeper. The God who appeared in the burning bush (Ex. 3) and declared to Moses that He is the “I Am” had now come to graciously deliver His people from bondage. That physical deliverance was a sign of a spiritual reality that would look forward to and climax in Christ (the entire book of Mark is showing how Isaiah’s prophecy of a “Second Exodus” was fulfilled in Christ). To summarize, we are to slow down to build a lifestyle of tasting the God who graciously delivers us from our bondage to sin by sending His Son to be our Deliverance.
6) When we slow down to “taste” Yahweh, we “see” that He is good. This is the same word used in Genesis 1 when God spoke something into being and “saw” that it was “good” (also the same Hebrew word as the one used in Gen. 1). To slow down and taste Yahweh will help us see that He is to be desired. This will make us want to slow down even more to “taste” Him again.
Conclusion: If we live a pace of life where we are just scarfing down rather than slowing down then we might fail to see how good Yahweh is. We can fail to see how amazing His grace really is. What can happen is that we default back to our sinful propensity to relate to God by our works rather than Him being our gracious deliverer (which is also the context of Psalm 34). This does not mean we have nothing to do with having a productive life, use of technology or social media, or that we should never have busy seasons. But, it does mean we need to be image-bearers and rule over these things so that we can adopt a community lifestyle of slowing down rather than scarfing down. The Christian life is far more like eating Gumbo than Easy Mac. You scarf down Easy Mac after it is microwaved for a couple of minutes. You slow down to taste the riches of gumbo after it’s taken all day to make. The more you slow down to taste gumbo, the more you will say “wow”. So with God! Maybe one of the influences to our sinful fears and anxieties is that we have failed to slow down. We are obeying the “Law” that is telling us to go, go, go. Slowing down is a grace-paced lifestyle (as David Murray puts it). And it is God’s grace that enables us to slow down. Slowing down means we are embracing the freedom of the gospel rather than succumbing to all the demands of the world (Law). It means we can stop our efforts of trying to be God and slow down to taste that Yahweh is God. Slowing down helps us be reminded that God deals with those who are in Christ with grace. Gospel, rather than Law. And when we slow down to behold our God, we will not only be set free from the world’s demands but we will also see how much grace our God gives us in Christ. This community of slowing down and tasting will be contagious in a “scarfing down” world. This will be a community who will look at Yahweh and say “wow” a lot!