Douglas Wilson, one of my favorite authors, has written a great article entitled, "The Fat is the Lord's" in the latest issue of "Credenda Agenda." He claims that the modern dieting and health-pursuit craze can be classified as worldliness, of which Christians should take care to "not be conformed to" (Romans 12:2). As Christians, we should feel no need whatsoever to rule out certain food or drink! Matthew states that "John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, he hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children" (Matt. 11:18-19). God spoke to Noah, and told him that "every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you" (Gen. 9:3). In the Garden, God told Adam and Eve to eat freely (Gen. 2:16).
Now, what about modern foods? So much fat, grease, MSGs and the like; what of those? Obviously, the Bible speaks of none of these, so it is impossible for Christians to hold as law a charge to not consume them. Author James Jordon puts it this way: "it is not a serious matter for a physician to advise abstaining from foods for medical reasons, based on human wisdom. It is, however a very serious thing when men advocate abstaining from foods for religious reasons...valuable as exercise, good diet, and the like may be, they are not delineated in God's revealed law" (from his book, Pig Out?).
Now, this may prove offensive to many Christians, but there are many verses, some of which I have already quoted, that simply stand at odds with diet-crazed moderns. Isaiah, when speaking of the New Covenant, states that "on this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined" (Is. 25:6). God's design for His people is for them to enjoy all things edible. I'll close with a final quote from Wilson:
at the root of all the problems, we should be able to detect a false doctrine of God. Ours is a lost generation, in the grip of a deep father hunger. Because we have not had healthy relationships with our human fathers, God, we naturally assume, is parsimonious. He is tight-fisted with His abundance. We slander Him in our hearts. If it tastes like gravel, it must be from God, so the thinking goes, and restaurants tout their 'death by chocolate' concoctions as 'decadent' or 'sinful.' Something is desperately wrong here. God - not the devil - was the inventor of pleasure, sex, goodness, fermentation, and satisfaction. He was the designer of all our nerve endings and our taste buds and over a million tastes, and He gave men the ingenuity to be able to figure out how to combine all those tastes in ways that would create a trillion more. Where could we have possibly gotten the idea that He was stingy? An enemy has done this.
7 comments:
Dre,
Mom and I read this. She wonders if this is the result of your "high-consumption of hot pockets." :)
I say well done in the research.
God created tastes, and good tastes are to be enjoyed as from Him. But what would you say of the dietary restrictions that God placed on the Israelites (e.g. Lev. 11:4 and following)? Was it merely to look different from the other countries, or was there some reason as to why God picked certain animals for Israel to refrain from eating?
well, considering that those very same animals God later commanded Peter to "kill and eat," I'd say that the dietary restrictions incured upon the Israelites were both a form of punishment (Noah enjoyed all kinds of meat, but this allowance was revoked) and a mark of differentiation, akin to circumcision. Now, when Christ came, He abolished both the consumption laws and circumcision. God says to Peter, who refers to the "unclean" animals as unedible to him, a Jew, God responds with this: "What God hath cleansed...call not thou common."
I agree with the removal of the dietary restrictions of course. That is the most important point of this commentary discussion. What I was trying to get at is that I remember hearing that there were actually health benefits to not eating certain animals like camels and animals that met certain requirements like chewing cud or having a cloven hoof, etc.
I'd love to see that evidence, because I've always wanted to try camel.
I know this isn't exactly the point of this post, but I think that the diet of most Americans is atrocious. We eat a lot of food that has been so tampered with by adding fake flavors, dyes, hormones, preservatives, etc. that it seems more like "food." Using Doug Wilson's same line of argument that God is the designer of "our taste buds and over a million tastes," eating food that has been stripped not only of its nutritional value, but also its original taste, texture, and character just seems wrong for that same reason.
I agree, but that doesn't mean it's sinful or morally wrong, as some Christians would like to argue. Again, I completely agree with you, Erica.
Unfortunately, I began reading the comments from the bottom up for some reason. When you said you wanted to try "camel", I thought you were talking about smoking. Good thing I kept going.
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