FOOD: IS IT FOR BODY, BELIEF OR BOTH? BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE – Part 1

I have a forum on which am a member where we are reading the entire Bible this year. I deliberately I avoided the discussion that always sparks from reading Leviticus 11 which concentrates on what meats are proper for Christians to eat and which ones are forbidden.

The reason I have been dodging this debate is that it is one of our appetites and these days I hate subjecting people to pain. But now that i have been pushed, I will say something.

I think the best place to kick of this discussion is by asking this question.

WHAT IS FOOD: What do you think of when you see or hear of food? Is it pleasure, like people visit pork joints not for hunger but for pleasure, comfort and happiness that comes from taste? When you think of food, do you visualize your need for it; need for survival, or need for a particular nutrient? What is food to you?

Well, there are two definitions that I know of:

1. Food is anything you put in the mouth, chew, swallow and you don’t drop dead in a day. It is under this definition that people have turned everything that doesn’t kill in a week, month or a year to be food. Under this definition, manageable poison, probable dangers and bearable side effects in both edibles and drinks are licensed. People who smoke cigarettes know it causes cancer but not now, people who take alcohol know that the danger is only determined by the alcoholic content (quantity), people who eat meat, pork, etc. know that the risks of such diet depends on the preparation of the food but not the meat itself. The idea here is about QUANTITY but not QUALITY.
2. Food is the substance the natural organism of the consumer (Man or Beast) is designed to take in and profitably use to produce appropriate results without harming the organism itself. This definition is one that puts everything back into its rightful place. And takes all of us back to the origins where we ask a very serious question: WHAT WAS THE ORIGINAL MENU?

Before we argue which animals are clean (food) and which ones are unclean and therefore believers in God should not eat, we should be asking: Was flesh part on the human and beast menu? The answer according to the Bible is NO.

This is what the Bible says:

Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground– everything that has life.” And that is what happened. (Genesis 1:29-30).

If we read the Bible chronologically, it looks like we were never designed to eat flesh. Not until something went wrong in Genesis 3, and the entire vegetation was wiped out in Genesis 7 that man was allowed to circumstantially use some animal flesh as food and the beasts to hunt each other for food, but originally both man and beast were not designed to eat flesh.

What we are living today is not nature but instead, man and the beast have been nurtured to eat flesh to the extent that some beasts like Lions, Leopards and Hyenas have evolved mastication and digestive features circumstantially tuned to tear and grind meat. This sin/fall of the world evolution, however, should not be mistaken to be originality. Neither man nor the beasts were originally designed to eat flesh and blood.

The rationale for this is: we cannot have flesh and blood on our dining tables without taking the life of that particular creature. Killing these creatures through exercises like hunting, slaughtering, etc., is not under the original design of God but desperate measures for desperate times like ours.

So before we even designate which flesh is ritually clean and which ones are unclean, we must understand that the de facto truth is we were never designed to eat flesh (both what we esteem clean and unclean) since it involves the taking of lives.

After the predicament of the floods Noah was warned about blood in these words:

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning; of every beast, I will require it and of man; of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. (Genesis 9:3-5).

The Jews argued that God forbid them to eat blood (fluid) but not the flesh of at least clean animals, but a reasonable scientific mind should ask, which part of the flesh has no blood? And a theological mind should ask if blood stands for life, how do you access flesh without the shedding of blood? God again reminded the Jews after over 1000yrs later in these words:

“If any man of the house of Israel or of the strangers that sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people.

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life. (Leviticus 17:10-11).

Honest modern science will tell you that the most suitable food for humanity is grass/vegetables, grains and all that grows on and under the ground but not flesh (Genesis 1:29-30).

I briefly now come to the question I began with…in the next post.

God Bless you.