How To Eat A Taco

Originally Posted April 29, 2011

For those of you who don’t know, my husband is Mexican.  Which in turn makes my children half Mexican.  So let’s just say I’ve learned a thing or two about tacos.  I thought I’d share my insight in true Devotion Mama style today.

Taco Tip #1  What you see in the picture above are NOT tacos!!!  They are an American fast food called tacos.  For the real thing you’ll have to go to Mexico or to a very select few taquerias here in the US owned by Mexicans where the cooks are Mexican.  Even then you run the risk of eating Tex-Mex which while it is not necessarily a bad thing isn’t Mexican either.  In Mexico there is no such thing as crunchy vs. soft tacos.  All tacos are soft and they are all made with corn tortillas.  A flour tortilla turns it into something completely different and could be called a burrito or a “gringa” (white girl).  

Taco Tip #2  A taco is generally served with just the meat inside.  This is usually NOT ground beef.  It can be made of a variety of meat including, but not limited to: steak, pork, tongue, and intestine.  Customers can typically garnish their tacos with lime, salt, salsa, onion, and cilantro.

Taco Tip #3  Regardless of what kind of taco you are eating, be it authentically Mexican, Tex-Mex, or Taco-Bell, do NOT eat it like Matthew in the above picture.  Doing so leaves you at risk of emptying the contents of said taco into your lap.  

We couldn’t help but laugh as we watched Matthew pick up his taco and bite into the bottom middle.  My first instinct was to correct him, to show him the correct way to eat a taco.  But I held my tongue.  I began to think.  Is there really a right way to eat a taco?  Sure there’s a cleaner way.  There’s certainly a more efficient way.  But is there a right way?  Is he really doing it wrong?  Isn’t the point to get the food in the tummy?  Isn’t the taco made to be enjoyed?  Can’t I let him be creative?  Maybe he’ll actually come up with a better way of eating tacos!

As I read through my taco tips I gain a fuller understanding of what a religious spirit does.   It takes something pure and good and adds unnecessary rules and regulations to it.  While I may be 100% correct in my taco tips in the end there is nothing wrong with enjoying an American style taco.  There’s nothing wrong with calling it a taco.  Regardless of whether or not you follow my taco tips the taco will still be a taco and you will enjoy it just as much.  

What unnecessary rules and regulations are we adding to God’s good, pure Word?  Can’t we be free to enjoy a relationship with Him without all the red tape we find so often connected to the word Christian?  Can we get back to His goodness and enjoy who He is?

Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that's not the way of Christ.  Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don't need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him.  When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.

Colossians 2:8-10