It's not a secret that food issues tend to divide, isolate, and ruffle feathers.
After reading an interesting post a few weeks ago, I found myself chewing and chewing and chewing over the same question:
Does God care what we eat?
The more I chewed on this topic, the more I realized how impossible it is to answer in one blog post. Stuart and I even kicked around the idea of writing a small book on the subject matter – after all, food production and Jesus Christ are both passions of ours.
So as this idea fleshed out in my mind, I found myself flipping the coin continually – yes God does care what we eat, no God doesn't care what we eat.
These are questions, as a food producer, that I have to ask myself. Is what I'm doing important? Does a free-range chicken really matter? Are we under any sort of God-given-mandate to eat a certain way?
And while I continue to wrestle with this, I thought it best to point out a few things.
I'm the extreme foodie that I'm talking about
I care about food – call it a hobby, passion, favorite pastime, lifestyle choice, or what have you. But I am writing this article from the perspective of a foodie who gets up at dawn to milk her cow each day so that she can drink raw milk, make cultured butter and artisan cheeses. We bake our own traditionally prepared breads. Each day, we gather organic eggs from our free range hens. We maintain large, organic, heirloom vegetable gardens. We avoid prepackaged foods and GMOs when possible, preserve the summers bounty via dehydration and canning, and prepare all our meals from scratch. We grow our own pastured chickens and make bone broth from their heads and feet. We take a teaspoon of cod liver oil daily, incorporate lots of fermented foods in our diet, opt for naturopathic medicine if possible, and think breastfeeding our babies aids in a healthy gut and optimal development.
I am part of the foodie culture. But I am also a part of the Christian one.
Someone's gotta define the terms.
A lot of foodie conversation revolves around determining which food choices are “better” than others. But the difficulty with this conversation is that the term “better” remains undefined and carries with it a bag of assumptions. For example, a family on a tight budget may be able to accurately argue that non-organic food is “better” for them at the present moment – it enables them to get more food for their dollar (sure, we can argue about empty calories and long term effects, but not now) while at the exact same time an extremely health conscience individual could accurately argue that only organic food is “better” for them. In both cases the consumer is determining which is “better” for them, but the term “better” is defined by a different set of priorities and values. One values quantity. Another values quality. Another may value environmental effect, cost, ease of preparation, taste preference, or nutritional preference.
“Better” then becomes a term as defined by the consumer.
Each of us has a “better” as defined by ourselves. So when we talk about good, better, and best food choices it's important to note: we shouldn't assume we're talking about the same thing. It can make the argument a difficult one. Everyone in the conversation needs to recognize that we are defining our terms differently.
The Christian perspective
I am a Christian. This means that my entire view and the exploration of this topic is shaped by my worldview – that is, a Christian one. This is an important reality to note because while many may see this is a biased approach to answering the questions of food production, I see it as a pair of glasses with which I am able to see the world (as we all wear, whether it is ‘Christian glasses' or not).
Let me explain further.
From a Christian perspective, everything is understood by our union with Christ. Christ lived a perfect and holy life, was crucified, and rose again from the dead to atone for my sins. His holiness was given to me freely, as a gift. Christ is pure and in Him, I am pure as well.
What other great gift comes from this?
Freedom.
As my husband so often reminds me, “where God has not bound your conscience others are not free to”.
This is applicable to all sorts of areas in our lives: what kind of music we listen to, what color we paint our house, what car we drive, what work we do, what musical instruments we play, what food we eat, our hobbies, etc. We have a freedom to choose these things because God has not bound our conscience in regard to them.
From a Christian perspective, true freedom is only found in Christ and in Him, we are free to be individuals. We are free to wear skirts or jeans. We are free to listen to country music or folk music. We are free to go hiking or go waterskiing. We are free to eat cheese or eat McDonalds. We. Have. That. Freedom!
Isn't that great?
We don't have to look the same, act the same, behave the same, raise our children the same, worship the same, sing the same, or live the same where God has not directly instructed or convicted us. Diversity, as they say, is a beautiful thing.
So now that we've established a) the terms of the argument are defined by the consumer and b) as Christians we are free in Christ, the question becomes: has God directly instructed us on what to eat?
I'm telling ya folks, I don't think this is an easy answer. But after studying, praying, and grappling with it for some time now, I have to say: I think the answer is yes, though it's far from the dogmatic and false standards we've decided to impose on one another.
The reality is God has never said:
My people! You shall only drink raw milk from organic, pastured cows!
My people! You shall only eatest of the natural sweeteners!
My people! You shan't eat any genetically modified foods!
My people! You must only eat organic produce!
While I can easily say why these choices may be better (by my definition of better and the values and priorities which our family has set for ourselves), God has not established these same values and priorities for everyone. God doesn't care if we're gluten-free, vegan, or just a typical eater. God cares about our hearts. Not what's in our refrigerator.
Now, again, it's a difficult issue because I find myself wanting to argue a few points:
1. God did directly call us to be good stewards of His creation
2. Food fuels our bodies which are used then to serve the Lord in our calling
3. God HAS convicted some consumers about their food choices and that shouldn't be disregarded
4. Many negative aspects of our culture might be corrected by a reassessment of our set values and priorities
These are valid points, I believe, and not to be disregarded. But they also need to be debated, expanded and refined (that will serve better as a separate point of discussion).
What we've done and our hope for the future
Food is finite and temporal. It is a perfect example of taking something good that God has given to us to enjoy, only to have our sinful hearts twist and morph it into some sort of sick idol that will never bring us ultimate satisfaction. We cannot look to food as means of salvation, world peace, or for the meaning in this life. The answers to these questions and dilemmas are not in food. When we put our love of food (or anything else) above our love of Christ, we will never be ultimately satisfied.
The food culture tends to put food and healthy living up on a pedestal that is unable to support it. Good food choices will not save the world. The seeds of heirloom vegetables will be lost, animals will become existent, bees will die, resources will be exploited. I'm not saying that I want any of these things to happen or that we shouldn't fight to fix these issues (in fact, I think we should!) but what I'm simply pointing out is that our food choices will not ultimately and completely fix any of these problems because it's a fallen and broken world. Sin is present in this world and has grievously damaged it – perfection cannot be found in something broken. Try as we might, everyone in the world will not think/act/participate in what we wish them to. If we are looking to right the wrongs of mankind and fix it ourselves, we will forever be disappointed in the outcome. Individuals can accept this reality and simply grieve over the world's brokenness with no action, or they can take it upon themselves to completely heal and restore the wounds of this world. Both of these responses are inadequate. The Christian perspective allows me to avoid both ditches.
It is purposed for us to intentionally live in the brokenness of the world, all the while with a great hope of restoration. Christ promised that he would return to Earth to fully and completely redeem it once and for all. As I see the bees of this world vanish and reflect upon the countless other things that have already passed never to return, I gaze even more longingly towards that which is eternal and infinite.
The extinction of heirloom vegetable varieties doesn't make me curse conventional vegetable farmers who aren't doing “what they should be doing” in helping to preserve heirloom varieties. It simply makes me long for Christ, in whom is promised all the things that will never pass away.
Why am I telling you this?
Because I want you to know and experience the beautiful freedom you have in Christ. The pretentiousness of the food world can be suffocating, can't it? Do you ever feel like your choices aren't good enough? Do you hide the Cheerios in your diaper bag around your crunchy mama friends because you're embarrassed? Do you lie about your family's food choices so that you feel more accepted in your social circles? Do you feel like you're failing as a 21st century Mama in getting the perfect meal on the table three times a day?
DON'T.
Christ lived, died, and rose again so that you could know true freedom. God gave you personal choice and freedom in so many areas of life so that you could develop as an individual with individual tastes and preferences.
Don't feel guilty about a self-imposed standard that God has not set for you.
Don't look down on other people's food choices just because they eat differently than you, whether you see it as “better” or “worse”.
Give others the freedom to make choices for themselves. And love them. Because in Christ, God loves them. And you.
And Amen.
Kimmie
Totally agree. Thanks for this post. Keep up the good work!
Liv Maynard
Shaye, you help renew my faith every time. As I’m always striving to “do” better and healthier, this is such a great reminder to keep it about the heart. When your heart wants what’s best for your family it’s a great thing; when you’re hiding food from judgmental people you’re becoming one of them! I love that you have no shame in the Lord and rejoice in His freedom. Thanks for being such an encouraging mama!
sheryl
Glad you could express these meaningful principles! I am with you all the way! What know ye not that your body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you? Therefore glorify God in your body and your SPIRIT!!!!
Jenn Dana
This is truth. In my opinion, the ‘real food’ movement is the idol of our times. I am guilty of spending more time researching food chemicals than reading my Bible. Friends argue with each other over what they are feeding their children or worse yet talk about their friends behind their backs about it. Perhaps modern conveniences and modern food are a timesaver that allows us to spend more time with people. Because in the end, it’s all about people right? We can’t take our raw organic milk or homemade bread to heaven but we can spend time with people ministering to them. Isn’t that what God calls us to do is love people? Or does he tell us to judge them for their food choices or any other choices they make? Love people, please….just love.
Lisa
Amen Sista
Nikki
AMEN! And wouldn’t it be fun to use this same standard of giving people (and ourselves) a break in every aspect of our lives! What a different world we would live in. Beautiful words. Thank you.
Randi
Thank you for sharing this Shaye!
Ashley
Thank you for your beautiful words. One of the reasons that I love your blog is that you are not ashamed to share your beliefs or to ask questions. I love so much what your husband tells you, that people cannot bind our consciences if God has not. What a wonderful, freeing truth. I appreciate your viewpoint on this, because I have wrestled with the exact same question. Thank you for reminding us what is really important. ๐
Karly
Nope, don’t feel guilty for the Cheerios one bit. I know it’s a cliche, but life really is too short and the world really is too big to feel bad about something so benign. We live in a very crunchy, liberal town and don’t imagine anyone would look down on us unless we fed our daughter straight up junk food and soda in public. Are people online so judgmental?
Evelyn
Shaye,
To follow along with your thoughts on Christians and food and how we should treat our bodies, “What, Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. 1 Corinthians 6: 19-20 (King James version)
I think God expects us to take care of the temple He has given us and that includes what we eat. He gave us wholesome food; but unfortunately, because of human interference, we now have to go search for the ‘real food’.
Thank you for your commitment to follow your beliefs.
Heather Anderson
I love this. It needs to be said and said often. Food can bring division, but doesn’t need to. Although we may have many good reasons to love REAL food, and to think it ideal, we have no right to judge others for not being in the same place. God has us in different places and on different time tables. We all have different strengths and weaknesses; failures and flaws belong to each of us. But one Lord died for each of us just the same.
Emily
I love how you maintain the focus on Christ – what a beautiful use of your “foodie” platform. Thank you for wrestling with the issue and writing about it so well.
Kara
This is a great post and you have wonderful perspective! I think it’s so important to let each person and family make their own decisions and choices and figure out what works for them.
For me, I choose to use our food choices as a way I worship and a way that I can teach our daughter about the world God created. So for us, we love to relate it to embracing God’s world and not man’s. ๐ However, I do indulge in some coke now and then, but it’s so good for our family to see food as a wonderful and beautiful gift from God – because it is!
jennifer
I find that I actually do the opposite sometimes; I tone down my foodie-ness around some people. I would love to share what I believe but have been met before with hostility ask around these people I just don’t say anything, which makes me a little sad.. Just recently I was called a snob for not wanting to give my toddler a sugar free hot chocolate packet at my in-laws. I am all for compromise around the grandparents but artificial sweeteners are just on my never list. There was cocoa powder and sugar available and I wasn’t snotty about it. I just want to illustrate that depending on your circle of friends and family this judginess or fixation can go both ways!
Hannah
Well said! I definitely need to re-read this later – at the moment my hens need to be fed! ๐
Thank you for sharing this!
Aviva
Shaye – I love your blog. I think you would enjoy “The Gift of Good Land” by Wendell Berry if you haven’t read it already. It addresses this question head on.
Tina P
Thank you for following His lead and sharing with all of us. To say I’ve been struggling with the many platforms we humans have chosen to promote and demote is putting it mildly. I believe many try so very hard to get everything right that WE end up loosing site of our real purpose. Thank you again for helping this child of God on a piece of my journey.
Daria
Hi Shaye! I’ve been reading your blog for a while now, but I don’t think I’ve ever commented. I really like this post, and it made me think of a similar one I read a while back (though the topic was natural living in general, not food specifically) entitled, “Can Natural Living Become an Idol?” She doesn’t blog there anymore, but it was one of my very favorite blogs when I first got into homemaking and natural living.
I think the issues you’ve raised here are very important kinds of things for Christian women (who also happen to be crunchy, natural-life-loving, baby-wearing, from-scratch-foodies) to think about and consider as we interact with our families and the world around us, and I am proud of you for putting yourself out there so nakedly to do so. Specifically, I would like to comment on a question you posed in this post: “has God directly instructed us on what to eat?”
You made some good points. I definitely agree with your husband about “where God has not bound your conscience,” which I think is clear in the Bible from verses like Romans 14:14 (“I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean”). I’m curious to find out what you think about clean vs. unclean meats (if you have an opinion). This topic, in my experience, causes a lot of controversy amongst Christians (as well as non-Christians, but that’s not who I’m talking about here). In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God instructed Adam and Eve as to the clean vs. unclean animals, and we see it again in the time of Noah where God specifically states how many of which kind of animal–clean and unclean, this making a distinction–are to enter the ark. Whenever people tell me that those laws were from the time of God instructing Moses in the wilderness, that they were part of the “Mosaic covenant” or “only for Jews,” and thus don’t apply to Gentiles or anyone who lived after Jesus came, I try to tell them that God gave those guidelines to Adam and Eve before the Jewish nation ever evolved, which would make those laws (along with being good stewards of the earth) applicable to anyone who is a product of Adam and Eve…so, all humanity.
Others try to tell me that God “did away with” the unclean meat laws in Acts chapter 10, which describes a dream Peter had that involved unclean animals coming down to him in a sheet. God tells him to “kill and eat.” In the dream, Peter argues with God that he’s never eaten anything unclean in his life, to which God responds, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.โ Since Peter, a former Pharisee, thought that no one could be saved but the Jews and so considered Gentiles “unclean,” I think that God used this dream to make a deeper point to Peter, not to excuse the eating of unclean meats. When I put it together with what I know about those cultures and of the way God sometimes uses dreams in the Bible to make a point, I think it’s clear that in this passage God is talking about the state of our hearts being “clean,” as you write about in this post.
This isn’t a trap or me trying to spark a religious debate or troll on your page, I just read your blog a lot and want to know your perspective because I think you have some interesting and well-thought-out points about Christianity and healthy living. You seem to be willing to put yourself out there and think through biblical issues for yourself, so I feel like you would give a kind response even if you disagree with me, and it’s a topic I encounter every time I eat with people who don’t follow those specific health laws, which is often. I haven’t yet found (though admittedly I haven’t looked) a blogger that feels the same way I do about keeping the unclean meat laws in the Bible (among others), and i often wonder if it’s because they don’t believe in them or that they just don’t know about them.
Have you studied this issue? As one Christian woman to another, what do you think about it? If you don’t want to respond here for whatever reason, you can email me privately if you like (I believe my email will show up to you even though it doesn’t appear in the post). Thanks for any insights or feedback you can give me about this!
-Daria
Jamie
I have the same question. Following this post.
Daria
Wow, I didn’t realize how long that comment was until I posted it just now. It’s positively massive! Sorry to be such a page hog.
Janie
Thanks for this post. For reasons I won’t go into, I needed to hear this today. Your husband’s words, “where God has not bound your conscience, others are not free to”……….great words and exactly what I needed today. Thanks so much.
Honey Tadiaman
Great post! My personal conviction to eating real, unprocessed food is that we should glorify God in our bodies and that we shouldn’t put anything in or out of our bodies that can ruin the temple of the Holy Spirit. I’ve learned so much from your blog and it is a blessing to me which consequently benefitted my family. So thank you. God bless you and the pregnancy.
Allison
Shaye, I love you. I was laughing the other day because I wanted to throw out all the food in my pantry until I happened upon your blog post for french baguettes, and I thought, “wow, that’s balance for ya!” My husband and I are adopting the word “gradual” right now. My self sufficiency plan (I’m talking food, power, water, not sanctification. =) is a 50 year plan. Right now I have 4 lovely laying hens, and tomatoes growing in my drawing room, and I feel pretty good. Thanks for keeping the perspective. Our freedom in Christ is so valuable! It is for freedom that Christ has set us free, do not allow yourselves therefore to be burdened again by a yoke of slavery! Gal. 5:1
Stephanie C.
NEED TO READ THIS ALL THE TIME.
Boy I have a judgmental heart when it comes to food. Oftentimes it is directed at myself just as much as others. ๐
I think another point to add is that I know for myself, when I eat “bad” foods, I feel and act badly. Like sugar–you don’t want to be around me when I’ve had too much sugar. I am cranky, impatient, unloving, and lazy. It’s so much easier to sin when I’ve had certain foods that I know affect my mood and behavior. What I’ve wondered sometimes is, since I know beforehand that eating that brownie (natural as it may be) will make me more prone to being sinful, is it a sin to eat that brownie? I can’t be the only one. How much adult “misbehavior” would go away if everyone ate… “better”? Would love to know your thoughts. ๐
Therese Bizabishaka
Spot on. People are at different places in their life, have different budgets and priorities. Does the food we eat matter? Well yes and no. For our physical health yes but in the long term faced with eternity no. I do the best with what I have. Five children and one income I don’t buy organic chicken but do buy free range farm eggs. It’s what I can do with what I have. I think it’s important to remember that in Christ’s time our food issues now never existed. Everything was produced on a small scale, non gmo and natural. For the early Christians they were just trying to wrap their heads around the revelation that after centuries choosing g food due to religious constraints now all food was permissable. I don’t think that meant that the quality of the food didn’t matter rather we are justified by who lives in us not what we put in our mouth.
Marcia
Its Aug 19, 2015. I just read your post for the first time. You are so eloquent. I totally agree with everything you said, and especially your heart that you shared. You have a gift. And God has given you a huge platform to share His mercy and grace.
I pray that God will enlarge your sphere of influence for His glory. And I pray that those who have never heard the love of God shared will find and unexpected door to know Jesus. God bless you and your family. You are an inspiration!
Nikki Shuptar
Amen! Matthew 15:11. I struggle with this as well. Itโs important to live our convictions, but to not force them on others, or allow it to be the rock we die on.