Super Bowl Sunday is notable not only for the National Football League championship and the festivities surrounding it, but also for the fact that it is the single busiest day of the year for two of the most popular takeout food businesses — pizza and submarine sandwiches.

Do you enjoy a pizza or a sub now and then? Most people do, even on days when there’s no big game being played. In fact, I’m not sure that I know anyone who avidly dislikes either subs or pizza. The two foods share a number of characteristics in common: both are Italian inventions that became far more popular and diversified in the U.S. than in Italy; both can be eaten without utensils; both are easily packaged for transport, making them ideal for the takeout menu.

The quality that makes pizza and subs (or hoagies, heroes, poor boys, torpedoes, or any of the other regional names attached to the sandwich) most popular, however, is the nearly infinite variety with which they can be garnished. When you walk into most pizza parlors or sub shops, you’re confronted with an imposing list of possible ingredient selections. You can add all the ingredients you prefer, and leave off all the things that don’t suit your taste. You can finish a sub or pizza as elaborately or as simply as you like. There are no “wrong” choices.

Unfortunately, many people approach the religion of Jesus Christ as though it were a pizza, or a sub sandwich. They want to treat the Bible like the menu at Round Table or Subway — selecting from it all that pleases them, and rejecting all in it that they don’t like.

The Golden Rule? Oh, sure, I’ll take some of that. Do not steal, do not kill, do not commit adultery? Why not, pile ’em on — I wasn’t planning on doing any of those anyway. God is love? Plenty of that, please. If you love Me, keep my commandments? Hey, go easy on those commandments, will you? Remain faithful unto death? Sounds a little spicy for me. Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men? You know, I’ve never really been fond of anchovies — I think I’ll pass.

The words of Jesus — including everything He directed through the Holy Spirit in all of the New Testament Scriptures — are not menu items from which we can pick and choose. We cannot both accept His “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28) and reject His “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). We cannot endorse “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9) while shunning “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). It is impossible to do justice to “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9) in the absence of “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” (Romans 6:3).

Our Lord is not in the pizza business, nor is He selling submarine sandwiches. Being His disciple is a total commitment, not a selection from among an abundance of menu items. With Christ, there is no “have it your way,” but only “not my will, but Yours, be done.”