The God of milk and honey versus the god of money

This is a follow-up to What’s the importance of a “land flowing with milk and honey”?  It will look at and compare what we learned there with the current state of things in the U.S. (and probably other countries) as far as what the “god of money” is doing to milk and honey – by looking at what the almighty dollar (in U.S.) is doing to cows and bees.

In the image to the right, we can barely see the milk, and the honey is beginning to be overtaken by the money.  That’s giving you one huge clue as to what’s happening.  In What’s the importance of a “land flowing with milk and honey”? we saw how there was a trust in God required to actually reach that land flowing with milk and honey – not to mention all the other things “flowing with milk and honey” actually stood for.  In this follow-up, well – let’s see what happens.

If you haven’t read the first article yet, I highly recommend doing that, and then return here.

As with part 1, let’s look at milk first.  In both Biblical times and today, milk is recognized as something that’s important for people of all ages (except for the caveats for those whose bodies can’t process milk).  We saw examples from Exodus, where in spite of the promises made by God about delivering the Israelites to a land flowing with milk and honey – a severe lack of trust in God caused problems for them.

Today, here in the U.S., we live in a land flowing with milk and honey.  However – an ever-growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots is turning more and more things into luxuries that more and more people can’t afford.  

Milk

We’re also producing more and more milk substitutes, although they aren’t recommended for babies and toddlers under three years old, as we see in the table below from the non-profit British Columbia, Canada dairy industry website bcdairy.ca.

Suitable for 1-2 year old toddlerNot suitable for 1-2 year old toddler
Whole pasteurized cow’s milk Almond beverage
Whole, pasteurized goat’s milk fortified with vitamin D and folic acid Soy beverage
Coconut beverage
Rice beverage
Hemp beverage
Other plant-based beverages

It seems that we don’t value milk the way the people did in Biblical times.  That may or may not be a good thing.  Either way, it’s not the point I’m trying to address.  That would bring up arguments that take away from what I’m trying to say.  For instance, if many people preferred a hemp beverage to milk, then we’d probably get into an emphasis on the pluses and minuses of all things hemp.  I’m not endorsing it, but in this case, I don’t want to go there.  My point in bringing this up is that our changing attitudes towards milk affect the way we look at it when we read that God promised a land flowing with milk and honey.  Maybe today, we’d prefer a land flowing with hemp and honey – so when we hear about milk and honey, it’s like, “who cares”?  That wasn’t the attitude back in the days of the exodus.

Footnotes

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    if you’d like to see why day is in quotes, why a day isn’t really a day, see this.  Scroll down to “What is a “day”?” if you don’t want to read the whole thing.

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