Author: Jim Poitras

Imagine you’ve gone to a restaurant that boasts of southern cooking. You order pork chops and mashed potatoes. How would you feel when you find out they actually served you instant mashed potatoes?

What is the difference between real mashed potatoes and the instant variety? What’s the big deal anyway?

I mean when you make mashed potatoes you peel, cook them in boiling water, drain the water, add butter/margarine, then use a potato masher to produce the perfect mashed potatoes. Sounds like a lot of work.

Read some of the things I’ve learned in my expansive Google search about instant potatoes and see if you can relate them to a discussion on true versus false teachers, real versus unreal Christianity…

Instant Potatoes boast:

1. Only real potatoes match their taste.
2. Come out of a box. (Many false teaching come out of the empty box of someone’s head rather than firmly found in God’s Word).
3. Tried a variety over the years and knew instantly they were not real mashed potatoes. (When you know the real thing the counterfeit or the unreal is easier to determine).
4. Smell just like baked potatoes when you put your nose in the box. (I’ll leave that to your imagination).
5. It is easy to prepare.
6. Because our facilities are located in Idaho our products provide unparalleled appearance, aroma, and flavor.
7. My husband tells me they are as good as cooking your own potatoes and can’t see why he or I should stand in the kitchen peeling potatoes when neither of us can tell the difference. (Perhaps, nothing theological here, just marital psychology. Husbands will say almost anything to get out of work especially on Saturday).
8. Think how much potatoes cost in the market and then how inexpensive the instant potatoes are. Save time and money. (Some religions are cheap, easy, and of the instant variety, but do they stand the test of eternity?)
9. One lady wrote, “I cheat a little…” I guess so. (I imagine that could be the testimony of many a false teacher or preacher. Cheating a little, subtracting a little, or changing a little of God’s Word could be detrimental to both the changer and the follower).
10. “There is a way to eat instant mashed potatoes so that it tastes like the real thing. Use twice-diluted sweetened condensed milk in place of the water called for in the recipe on the package. Then use twice-diluted evaporated milk for the milk ingredient.” (You’ve probably guessed my thinking here is with the “twice-diluted.” Beware of any teaching that is obviously “twice-diluted” and waters down the Word).
11. They can be an inexpensive alternative in areas where fresh potatoes are scarce. (Don’t look for the alternative. Go for the real. It may take a lifetime of discipline and obedience but ends up in an eternity of joyful bliss and blessing).
12. One place called them “speedy spuds.” (Matches right up there with goofy gospel. If it rushes through and jumps over the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ or repentance, baptism, and the infilling of the Holy Ghost it isn’t a gospel).
13. Most people cannot tell the difference between real mashed potatoes and the dehydrated potato flakes that come in a box or bag. (Study the Word. Stick to the Word. Listen to the Word. You will be able to tell the difference between the real and counterfeit; true and false).
14. You can enhance the recipe for instant mashed potatoes to make them taste almost as good as the real thing. (Adding to the Word; taking away from the Word; check out the consequences).
15. Instant potatoes have an excellent shelf-life when stored in a cool, dry environment. (Following false teaching and preaching has a deplorable, wretched, shelf life and it couldn’t possibly be described as a “cool, dry environment”).
16. I used to hate instant potatoes but I think the technology has improved and I can’t taste the difference anymore. (Be careful of the technology and presentation of things you hear and see. Flashy could be an indicator of false. Not always, but often).
17. “The only way I’ve ever eaten them is the instant kind so I can’t really tell the difference…I would like to try making mashed potatoes…Hopefully, after that, I won’t dislike instant mashed potatoes because they’re just so convenient to make. It’s pretty tough for most people to tell the difference, unless they eat a lot of mashed potatoes on a regular basis.” (Come into constant contact with the real thing. Encounter the truth. Love the truth. Stay faithful to the truth. You’ll never enjoy the false and fake again).
18. I like them better than real mashed potatoes…they have come a long way from the pasty mashed potatoes of the past…
19. “The little blob that comes with frozen dinners is pretty pitiful, watery, and taste like nothing.” If it tastes long nothing. If it looks like nothing. If it sounds like nothing. It probably is just that—nothing).
20. “Well, my step son and I actually like instant mashed potatoes, because they are smooth, they are fast to make and they fill you up like real potatoes.” (Just because it gives you that feel-good religious warmth in your heart doesn’t measure up to a life that is totally and radically changed by obedience to the gospel).

Note that during the process of this investigation, comparison, or writing no instant or real potato was used, abused, damaged, injured, impaired, or upset.

Although insight was taken from a Google search this was not meant to verify or deny the viability, reliability, or validity of instant potatoes as appropriate sources of dietary nourishment. Neither is it meant to imply that salvation and the work of the Spirit cannot be instant, speedy, or quick.

photo credit: PetitPlat – Stephanie Kilgast via photo pin cc