Can you keep several verses in your mind as you read today?
Truths like:
“The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit…” (Rom 14:17)
“‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean…'” (Acts 10:15b)
“For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died.” (Romans 14:15 ESV)
And I’m talking through my motives with God in line with these truths (excerpts from The Message version of Romans 14) :
“Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do…remember they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently…
What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake; if you eat meat, eat it to the glory of God and thank God for prime rib; if you’re a vegetarian, eat vegetables to the glory of God and thank God for broccoli. None of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters…
It’s God we are answerable to—all the way from life to death and everything in between—not each other. That’s why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other.
If you confuse others by making a big issue over what they eat or don’t eat, you’re no longer a companion with them in love, are you? These, remember, are persons for whom Christ died.
Your task is to single-mindedly serve Christ.
So let’s agree to use all our energy in getting along with each other. You’re certainly not going to permit an argument over what is served or not served at supper to wreck God’s work among you, are you?
When you sit down to a meal, your primary concern should not be to feed your own face but to share the life of Jesus. So be sensitive and courteous to the others who are eating. Don’t eat or say or do things that might interfere with the free exchange of love.”
The free exchange of love. I hope I’m not kidding myself that those are my motives in being public about this with you. Because, in all honesty, it would be so much easier for me not to make this public.
If I really thought He only had something to say to our family, I would just type it on a Word document. But I think He may have something to say to more than just our little family. And if this is what swirls through my mind after asking what message He has for me today, I dare not disobey.
Not as in
Oh my goodness, what will happen to me if I don’t?
But as in
What blessings will I miss out on by not obeying?
Here we go with today:
Jen quotes In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan in this Food Week:
“By the 1960s or so it had become all but impossible to sustain traditional ways of eating in the face of the industrialization of our food. If you wanted to eat produce grown without synthetic chemicals or meat raised on pasture without pharmaceuticals, you were out of luck. The supermarket had become the only place to buy food, and real food was rapidly disappearing from its shelves, to be replaced by the modern cornucopia of highly processed foodlike products.”
From Jen now:
“At the very beginning, God told Adam and Eve this:
‘I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This food will be for you.’ (Gen 1:29)
Thank You, Lord, for making wheat a seed-bearing plant.
Bread = good.
So He launched humanity as vegans, and they stayed this way for some time.
After the flood, God told Noah:
‘Every living creature will be food for you; as I gave the green plants, I have given you everything.’ (Gen 9:3)
This was good inclusion at this point, since all the vegetation was, well, drowned.
OK, so now meat is fine. Well, not all meat…
Most clean animals are herbivores, whereas most unclean animals are carnivores…Generally, God forbid the consumption of scavengers, predators, and bottom-dwellers…Obviously, these animals are ridden with toxins, parasites, and pathogens; great for the earth [to be part of the ecological cycles as the Environmental Clean-Up Crew] but terrible for our bodies.
God is protecting His entire creation…
Most of what we find in the grocery store isn’t even food…This [defies] the whole food, farm-to-table system God designed for us.”
Okay. Deep breath. This is no time to freak out and completely overhaul every single thing you feed your family.
One of my favorite people is very deliberate and slow in this area. She slowly made the switch to ground turkey in her recipes instead of ground beef. Now her husband prefers it. Her kids don’t know the difference. She added brown rice a little at a time to white rice. Now they eat brown. She started dumping ingredients in a bread machine in the mornings and now they eat fresh bread without preservatives (I don’t think anyone needs to be talked into fresh bread). She averaged out what she spends per meal and once a week they eat rice and beans and put the excess money in a jar by their dinner table. They talk about what most people around the world eat and when they have accumulated enough, they go shopping for the local Food Bank.
See what I mean? If you’ve been reading articles about this, hearing news reports, noticing the trend of local or organic or all-natural, and feel convicted (not guilty!) start where you are.
And let me just address my biggest hold-up in this area: the emotional energy this requires! I mean, we are all busy. If you’re a mom, oh my word. Sometimes we just don’t have the bandwidth. Tell God all about it and ask Him what He would have you do next. Is there one tiny step of obedience He would want you to take?
I’ll make my embarrassingly small one public: I need to eat oatmeal in the mornings. That’s it. One thing. It’s not even the fancy, steel-cut variety. Just pop it in the microwave. But with my tendency to rebel against restrictions put upon me (even from myself!), I’m taking this thing slow.
Next time we’ll talk about how the New Testament teaches our bodies are a temple of God. When we see the great, intricate details God put into place with the structural temple, we can glean some of those concepts for how He wants us to treat an even more holy temple: our bodies.
Go with peace and joy and freedom today!