It’s Poison, but It’s Necessary? What?

World conflict is still filling the headlines, but for a moment let’s look at a very different story—about toxins in our food—that teaches a big lesson. And it’s not as unrelated as it might seem.

In February, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order for “promoting the national defense.” What did this order specify? More troops to the Middle East? Security measures at home? A day of prayer? No, it established that “ensuring an adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides is … crucial to the national security and defense” of the nation.

Glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup have been sprayed on American farmland for more than 50 years now, as well as city parks, playgrounds and backyards, killing a broad spectrum of weeds at comparatively low cost. Large-scale farms—which is to say, almost all farms—depend heavily on it to target enzymes and kill plants growing among the crops, while the crops themselves, which are usually genetically modified to withstand the poison, continue to grow.

But glyphosate and the chemicals it is mixed with, such as polyethoxylated tallow amine, soak into the crops, into the food. It doesn’t immediately kill us like it kills weeds, but it damages our metabolism, digestive system, endocrine system, hormones, reproductive system and more.

Protecting and promoting glyphosate with nothing less than a presidential executive order has upset a lot of people. The answer: Yes, using it will hurt us, but not using it will hurt us.

Robert Kennedy Jr. has warned about herbicides and pesticides for years and has called glyphosate a contributor to chronic diseases. But now, as Health and Human Services secretary, he publicly defended Trump’s order. In a post on X, he acknowledged that such chemicals are “toxic by design” but said the U.S. food system heavily depends on them. He warned that an abrupt ban would destabilize American agriculture and food production, so he called for a more gradual shift. Later he admitted that he was “not particularly happy” with Trump’s decision, but sudden elimination of the toxin is impractical.

Yes, this toxin is killing us, but if we don’t use it, we’ll die.

Quite the paradox! But it’s hardly a unique example. In fact, it’s an apt metaphor for much of the way civilization operates, foreign wars not excluded.

As oil prices have soared, fertilizer has become more expensive, highlighting another aspect of this same pick-your-poison paradox. Nitrogen-fixing fertilizer is turning our soil into sand, depleting our nutrition, polluting our environment, and constantly deepening our dependency on importing, distributing and applying even more of it at mass scale. It’s unsustainable. But we have to keep doing it, or people will starve.

Such examples are everywhere. Think of the craze for developing ever more artificial intelligence technologies. Yes, it encourages intellectual laziness, amplifies misinformation, incites delusional behavior, and aides scammers, pornographers and terrorists. Yes, it may one day decide humanity is an obstacle and just wipe us out. But if we don’t develop it at breakneck speed, our enemies will, and we’ll fall behind and be conquered.

Think of the way we use legal drugs, ignoring the long list of shockingly severe side effects because constant ingestion of pharmaceuticals is supposedly better than the alternative. Think of efforts to legalize illegal drugs, despite their deadliness, to circumvent the troubles created by their being criminalized.

Think of the political compromises: empowering the corrupt because they’re less risky than the inexperienced and untried; allowing secret crimes to remain secret because exposing the truth would shatter our illusions and damage our power structures. Think of our economic policy: funding bloated budgets, going ever deeper into deadly debt, because otherwise the government collapses. Think of our weaponry: We must proliferate weapons of mass destruction because if we don’t, our enemies will kill us.

Life in this world is a series of compromises. We are resigned to continually choosing what seems the lesser of two evils. We address problems by resorting to solutions that produce different problems. We put off unplugging from toxic influences because the withdrawal symptoms are too severe. We accommodate evil because the alternative is simply too extreme.

Why this insane paradox? Because this is Satan’s world, and human nature is terminally infected by Satan’s nature (Ephesians 2:2; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Revelation 12:9).

We hate it, but we love it. Like Lot’s wife, even as we flee it, we look back with longing.

No wonder God says, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.”