Miracle Berries

By Anonymous -
Today wasn't my first time "doing" miracle berries. While abroad last year, studying food security, we spent a class discussing sugar, obesity and the relationship between the two. As part of the class we had miracle berries and tried apples, lemons and limes, just like today. We were talking about how the miracle berry and its chemical components could be used in food and how that would be beneficial. By incorporating the berry into other foods that we eat, we could make them taste sweeter, and more enjoyable, without actually adding sugar or other sweeteners which can be harmful to our health.

The way we used the miracle berry then was in a social/health context, so I tried thinking about how that could overlap with our religious context that we discussed today. We discussed how by using the miracle berry we were changing the food to taste differently and better (sweeter). That relates to how we understand God as being good. It then becomes a question of "is God good or not?" or "Do we perceive God as good, and can we change things so that we do perceive God as good?'

I think that using miracle berries as a replacement for sugar and sweeteners falls under how we perceive God as good, and maybe validates it further. Sweet things, like candy and chocolate, can often be seen as guilty pleasures, something we know might not be so good for us in one way, but just tastes so good and we enjoy it anyway. By using the miracle berry we can eat something that we know is good for us, and get the taste and sensation of eating something not as good (relatively speaking). It's like with the bite of apple. Apples of course already are delicious, but then the sweetness of apple juice is so good. With the berry, the apple slice tasted like sweetened apple juice.

So maybe, there are ways that we can change how we perceive and interact with God so that we get the benefits of one aspect of it, while "tasting" and enjoying the sweetness we've created.

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