The Theology of Food

I like food. If you talk to any of my friends, they may refer to me as the human garbage disposal (or human garburator for the Canadian readers). I also made a very good choice of who to marry based on my love of food. That's not the most important reason of course, but she is an excellent, intelligent, and healthy cook. Despite our love of food, we do not commit the sin of gluttony, but rather, recognizing that God instructs us to be good stewards of our health, seek to nourish ourselves in a way that is in line with His Word and instruction as outlined in Scripture. As a quick disclaimer, I am in no way a part of the "health and wealth" or "prosperity doctrine" scam that has so thoroughly distorted Scripture, and I condemn preachers like Joel Osteen that advance such filth. This article will incorporate several different ideas as I have had over the past couple years in the area of what Scripture has to say about food. My initial motivation was Dr. Jordan Rubin's book The Maker's Diet [Rub], and since then I have realized that much of today's eating habits and health are based on evolutionary thinking, occult practices, and Luciferian agendas rather than on God's Word. Before you call me a whacko (some of you probably already have), I encourage you to hear me out on this because I have done a lot of thinking and research on this, and I may just be right. As always, I encourage the reader to compare what I have to say to the Bible to verify it. If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, clarifications, additions, etc. please feel free to email me.

"Yahweh, God, gave Adam this command: "You may freely eat from every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You are not to eat from it, because on the day that you eat from it, it will become certain that you will die." (Gen. 2:16,17, CJB)

One paradigm shift I have had recently is my view of the Torah, the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses. Current mainstream Christian theology largely views God's commandments in the Torah as a set of laws that Yeshua (Jesus) fulfilled so that we don't have to. In other words, this theology states that we can more or less forget these commandments and should focus on the more important doctrines of the New Covenant Scriptures. The misconception therefore is that Torah equals Law, and is viewed in a negative light. However, Torah is more accurately translated "Instruction" or "Teachings." This puts the Torah in a much more positive light. The Torah is simply Yahweh's instructions to mankind on how to love Him and love your neighbors as yourself, as Yeshua said in Matthew 22:37-40; they are His instructions for how to be blessed and live abundantly in this life. Yeshua and the early apostles taught that we could not be saved through legalistic observation of the Torah, but through grace (Gal. 2:16, Eph. 2:8), through the One whom the Torah, Prophets, and other Scriptures spoke of (Matt. 5:17, Luke 24:27). The apostle Paul writes in Romans 7 and 8 that while the letter was the means of intepreting Scripture in Old Covenant times, the Holy Spirit is the means by which we interpret them today.

Moreover, in the Sermon on the Mount, Yeshua upheld the Torah saying that He did not come to abolish the Torah, that not even a yud or vowel mark will pass from the Torah until heaven and earth pass away, that whoever disobeys even the least of the mitzvot (commands or general principles for living) and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the Kingdom of God, but whoever obeys them and teaches others to do likewise will be called great in the Kingdom of God. (Matt. 5:17-19)

In short, the Torah is applicable to today, but we are not to be legalistic observers of it. Legalistic observance of the Torah has always been condemned in Scripture. Read about Yeshua's interactions with Pharisees and Sadducees or Paul's letter to the Galatians for examples. So now that we have established that the Torah has meaning for today, let us look into Leviticus 11, the dietary instructions and explore why these instructions were given.

Yahweh told Israel that they could not eat any animal that does not both have a divided hoof and chews the cud. This allows for the consumption of beef, lamb, goat, elk, deer, and buffalo, but regards pigs, rabbits, horses, and camels as unclean. Why does this make a difference? Let's take pigs as an example. If you were to examine pork under a microscope, you would see bacteria squirming around in the meat. Pork contains a lot of bacteria, viruses, and parasites. It doesn't matter how much you cook it, much of it will survive. [Mer, Kom] Now there is good bacteria and bad bacteria. Most of this bacteria is bad. One type of bacteria commonly found in pork, Enterococci, is bad and is resistant to antibiotics, and is a common cause of food poisoning.[CBC] Furthermore, it is well-known that many viruses can be easily transferred from pigs to humans. [Mer] Also think about what pigs eat. Pigs are scavengers, eating anything, even cancer from other pigs. [Jos] There is a reason why Yahweh would prefer us to not eat pork.

As for marine animals, Yahweh said that anything with fins and scales was kosher, and everything else was not. This calls shellfish, sharks, and catfish unclean. Why is that? Catfish are bottom feeders. They eat muck. Do you want to eat something that eats muck? Didn't think so. They serve a purpose - to keep bodies of water clean. The same is true for shellfish. Shellfish are the vacuum cleaners of lakes, ponds, and oceans. They tend to ingest a lot of pollutants and tend not to store them. By eating lobster, clams, shrimp, scallops, mussels, and oysters you are consuming a high concentration of toxins. [Kom] In the interest of health, I've given up my New England Clam Chowdah.

Further restrictions are placed on mammals with paws, many birds, rodents, many insects, and reptiles for the simple fact that many of them are scavengers or their diets aren't very good. Chicken, turkey, etc. are kosher of course along with locusts, grasshoppers, and crickets oddly enough.

It would be an extensive project to thoroughly analyze the meat of all these different animals to determine why some were deemed clean and others unclean. Perhaps on a later draft of this article I will go into more depth on this subject with more and better documentation. The main point I wish to make from this section however is that certain foods are labelled unclean for a reason and so the Torah is God's way of instructing us how to best nourish our bodies, the body whose digestive system and immune system, etc. He designed and made.

A good chart listing clean and unclean animals is at Biblical Holidays, and there are more interesting articles there about dietary instructions. One point they make there is that eating meat from unclean animals won't keep you out of Heaven, but might get you there much sooner. [BH] I think they nailed it there.

Even if you still subscribe to the belief that pork is clean, consider Genesis 7:1-3. These are the days leading up to the Flood, well before the dietary laws were given in the Torah.

"Yahweh said to Noach (Noah), 'Come into the ark, you and all your houshold; for I have seen that you alone in this generation are righteous before me. Of every clean animal you are to take seven couples, and of the animals that are not clean, one couple; also of the birds in the air take seven couples -- in order to preserve their species throughout the earth." (Gen. 7:1-3, CJB)

So the difference between clean and unclean animals was known by Noah and probably even earlier. It appears that up to that point, everyone, including animals, were all vegetarian, (Gen. 2:16, 6:21) or at least were supposed to be, so there may have been no reason to make this distinction other than for sacrificial purposes (Gen. 4:4, 8:20). However, after the Flood, and after the waters receded, Yahweh allowed Noah and his family to eat meat, but only if the blood was not in it (Gen. 9:3). (I hope to comment on why God may have made these changes later.) Since there were only two of each kind of unclean animal that went into the ark, we can assume that in order to allow a species to survive, that for a while the only meat that was consumed was from clean animals. Therefore Noah and his family followed the kosher dietary laws of Leviticus 11 before the Torah was given to Israel, indeed even before there was an Israel. The only strike against them recorded in Scripture was when Noah got drunk (Gen. 9:21).

I like to joke that a "beer" commercial taught me something about the wisdom of God. I put beer in quotes, since it was one of those cheap beers that really doesn't deserve to be called beer. I digress. The diluted fermented beverage commercial pictured a guy grilling steak with a voice talking about Noah on the ark, being around cows for a long time, and how he must have been tempted to grill up some beef one day, that nobody would miss the cows. The narrator then ended by saying, "Hats off, Noah. You're a stronger man than me." The premise there is that Noah was tempted to eat beef, and also that he'd eat all 14 cows on board. But, there is God's wisdom. By not allowing the consumption of animals, there would have been no temptation to eat any animals, thus ensuring the survival of the species on the ark. Otherwise, if God had allowed meat consumption by humans, there may have been the risk of extinction of some species because of a barbecue on the ark.

This topic is covered well in [BH], but in short, their article comments on Mark 7:18-19 in which there is a parenthetical remark stating that Yeshua declared all foods ritually clean. Some take this to mean that Yeshua declared that it is acceptable to eat meat from unclean animals. There are a few problems with this interpretation. First, the parenthetical remark does not appear in all manuscripts, in particular the ones from which the King James Version is translated from, so it is unlikely that it was in the original, but added much later. Next, the context of the passage is dealing with the disciples eating without ceremonially washing their hands first. This was a law, not in the Torah, but in other Jewish tradition. This is a perfect example of what I mentioned earlier, where Yeshua gets on the Pharisees and Torah-teachers about neglecting the Torah and enforcing man-made laws. Basically the parenthetical remark says that Yeshua said that you can eat without washing your hands first. (Though in many cases it would certainly be advisable to do so.) Lastly, we need to understand Scripture in its Hebraic context. In the Hebraic mind "unkosher food" is an oxymoron. They would not have categorized meat or any product from unclean animals as food. Thus we would better understand the intent of the parenthetical remark if it read "Thus He declared all Biblically kosher food ritually clean." Yeshua upheld the Torah.

Before Yahweh opened up my eyes to His will for nourishment, my fiancee, now wife, pointed out a billboard for a local health food store picturing an apple with the caption "Organic." I immediately pointed out that all apples are organic. How blind I was then! Essentially, we say that produce is organic if it is not genetically modified, and grown without the use of unnatural fertilizers and pesticides. This definition is extended to any processed foods made from organic produce, such as organic flour and organic teas, for example. Likewise, livestock can be called organic if they eat an organic diet and are not given growth hormones or antibiotics. I will argue later that it is even better to consume meat from free range, naturally raised, or wild animals, since they eat what Yahweh designed them to eat. For example, cows should eat grass, not corn.

Yeshua said that the greatest commandment in Scripture is to love God and the second greatest is to love others. With that in mind, if you are like my wife and I and number of our friends, and choose to eat an essentially organic, Biblically kosher diet, there will be times when you are invited over to eat with those who do not have the same mindset about food. This is nothing to break fellowship over. Our closer friends understand if we don't eat a pepperoni or sausage pizza, for example. But as Paul writes:

"If some unbeliever invites you to a meal, and you want to go, eat whatever is put in front of you without raising questions of conscience." (1 Cor. 10:27, CJB)

It may be a hindrance to the spread of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God if you refuse such hospitality, especially in some cultures. In that case by all means, obey the greater law of love.