Diet, dirt, dates, and deliverance, Part 2a: Diet in our world and in Israel
This is the second part of a multi-part series; part 1, the introduction, is here.
In the previous post we considered that the old covenant believer had four concerns at the forefront of their minds that we, as 21st Century Christians, hardly give any thought to at all. Today we'll consider the first of these concerns - diet.
In this post we'll consider our present relationship with food in the modern Western world, and then return to the old covenant believer to explore the food laws of ancient Israel. In the next post we'll consider how the coming of Christ and the new covenant has changed things, and what that ought to mean for our attitude to food now.
The state of play
In order to talk about our attitude to diet in the West in the 21st Century, I'm of course indulging in some sweeping generalisations, but hopefully I won't be too wide of the mark. I think it's fair to say that our relationship with food has been characterised by the following statement: food is cheap and easy to obtain, and we can choose to eat whatever we like.
Head into any supermarket in the Western world - even now, in the midst of a global pandemic - and you can be fairly confident you'll be able to buy whatever takes your fancy. Pretty much every fruit is available all year round, imported from whatever country it happens to be in season. The shelves will be crowded with options - hundreds of breakfast cereals, a dozen different varieties of butter, alternatives for those who are allergic to gluten, or lactose-intolerant, or vegan, or who prefer to buy organic. Garish signage will advertise how cheap everything is - the special offers, the buy-one-get-one-free deals - and many of the foods on offer will be calorie-dense.
That is not to say that no-one in the West ever goes hungry. Food banks have been a sad necessity in the UK over the past few years. But for the first time in history, children from poorer backgrounds are more likely to be obese than children of more affluent parents. Processed food, high in sugar and fat, is cheap and easy to obtain. It is no accident that Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, has recently embarked upon a drive to get Britons slimmer and fitter (occasioned by his own health scare which was exacerbated by his weight).
Of course, not everyone eats badly. In fact, barely a month goes by in which we are not introduced to some new healthy-eating regime - from the Atkins diet to intermittent fasting to keto - which promises to restore our health and our waistlines. But the proliferation of such diets tells us two things. First, we in the West generally eat too much rather than too little (or else we wouldn't need the diets). And second, we are generally in control of what we eat. We can choose to indulge in whatever calorific snack or treat takes our fancy at any point in the day or the year; or, if we fancy losing a bit of weight, we can choose whatever diet we like the sound of, and switch between diets effortlessly once we get bored. Food is cheap and easy to obtain, and we can choose to eat whatever we like.
Dissenting voices
However, there are voices in our culture which would want to fight back against this general trend. I will mention just three notable arguments.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is just one of the chefs who has championed a return to seasonal eating - committing oneself to eating only the food which is locally available at any given time of year, arguing that "those who shop and cook in harmony with the seasons will get immeasurably more pleasure and satisfaction from their food than those who don't." Allied to this are those who are concerned that our food is too cheap, meaning that we are becoming wasteful, that farmers aren't getting a fair price for their labour, and that intensive farming practices are damaging the planet.
Veganism is on the rise, often supported by the claim that meat-eating is bad for the environment or ethically dubious because it causes suffering to another creature. If the scientific or philosophical rationale behind veganism is debatable, the moral implication is clear: veganism is not just a lifestyle choice that I have made, it is a way of living which all should subscribe to.
More recently, occasioned by heightened sensitivities surrounding race and identity, the question of cultural appropriation has been applied to food. Chefs have been pilloried for offering recipes for dishes which lie outside their own cultural background, or for passing off bastardised versions of traditional dishes as "authentic." Again, the ethical imperative is clear - there are certain foods which you are allowed to prepare, and some which you are not.
A range of dissenting voices, then, all pushing back against the dominant assumption that food is cheap and easy to obtain, and we can choose to eat whatever we like. Some of these voices are a gentle plea to reform and rethink our habits; others are strident, demanding we conform to a new orthodoxy. We don't have the space to directly speak to all of these concerns, though we will return to some of them later. But for now, let's pause and return to our old covenant believers, and their relationship with food.
Back to Israel
You don't have to be a biblical scholar to know that one of the distinctive marks of the nation of Israel was its kosher food laws (largely laid out in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14). These included both a catalogue of creatures that the Israelites must not eat, and a catalogue of forbidden culinary practices.
A complex formula determines the former - a land animal is clean if it "parts the hoof and is cloven-footed and chews the cud" (and only if it does all three); sea creatures are clean if they have fins and scales; birds of prey are generally banned, and so on.
The latter includes things like eating things that are found dead, using any piece of kitchenware that a dead lizard has fallen into (apparently a regular occurrence), or boiling a young goat in its mother's milk.
What is all this about? Let me suggest that the food laws are about three things - distinctive fellowship, gracious authority, and whole-life awareness.
Distinctive fellowship
In Leviticus 11, God gives his reasons for restricting the Israelites' diet:
"For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”
Leviticus 11:44-45
We'll talk more about defilement, and the concepts of clean and unclean, in a future post. For now, notice that the reasons God gives for these laws are to do with a) who he is; and b) what he has done for the Israelites. He is holy - separate from his creation, perfect and pure, undefiled by sin. And he has brought the people out of the land of Egypt to be his people. He has separated them from the nations around them and made them his treasured possession, his holy nation (Exodus 19:5-6) - and that extends to eating differently to the nations around them.
Even when they were living in Egypt, God's people lived separately in the land of Goshen, where they were regarded as an abomination because of the animals they farmed (Genesis 46:34), and therefore the Egyptians did not eat with them (Genesis 43:32). Now, rescued from that land, they must maintain their separateness.
But this is not being different for different's sake. They do not eat like the nations around them - and therefore do not eat with the nations around them - because they have been uniquely called to table fellowship with God himself. At the beginning of their time at Mount Sinai, the elders of Israel are granted an extraordinary privilege: they ascend to the mountain of the Lord, and have a picnic in the presence of God:
And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.
Exodus 24:11
Indeed, the climax of the sacrificial system in the nation is the fellowship (or peace) offering. This is the final sacrifice made after the atoning sin and burnt offerings (Lev 9:22), and it uniquely culminates in the worshipper eating some of the offered food along with the priest at the entrance to the tabernacle (Lev 7:11-16). The result of the sacrificial system is a symbolic meal with God!
In other words, Israel were a people called to feast with their Creator. Albeit in an uneasy and provisional fashion - as befitted the types and shadows of the old covenant - they were called back into restored relationship with their Creator, the author of life. And that new table fellowship was expressed in a tangible way through their diet. Scholars have often struggled to find a common link between all the creatures that are forbidden to the Israelites, but perhaps the most convincing explanation comes from L. Michael Morales:
Many of the unclean animals are associated with death in some fashion, whether in being carnivorous predators or scavengers, living in caves (tombs), or, like pigs, by being associated with underworld deities in pagan worship. Along these lines, creatures that demonstrate some abnormality within their class (like fish without scales) are considered further from the wholeness of an ordered cosmos in terms of life...
The need to separate life from death, the unclean from the holy, also helps to explain why.... a young goat is not to be cooked in its mother's milk.
L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?, 158.
Israel's diet demonstrates that they are a people who have called from death to life, and granted table fellowship with the author of life. Their diet is symbolic of a return to life in the Garden of Eden.
Thinking about Eden brings us to the second reflection on the food laws of Israel - that they represent God's gracious authority.
Gracious authority
It is striking that the loss of Eden hinged on a question of diet. Adam and Eve were told not to eat the fruit of a particular tree, or else they would die (Genesis 2:17). Now, it is clear that the fruit is not poisonous - it is "good for food" (Genesis 3:6) - and it does not seem that it has some extraordinary power or magic effect on the couple as they eat it. It is the act of disobedience - spurred on by the serpent's honeyed lies - rather than the taste of the fruit itself, that introduces Adam and Eve to the thrilling suggestion that they could ignore God and make the rules for themselves. In one sense, the choice of the tree to be "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" seems almost arbitrary, just as (some have argued) the food laws in Israel were arbitrary.
But this is not an arbitrary rule if we mean that it was simply a rule for rule's sake. Rather, the designation of one tree to be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a gift to mankind. It marked off a boundary for our first parents: it told them that, in the midst of God's generous, abundant provision of food for them (Genesis 2:16), there was some food - which was otherwise completely edible and delicious - which they should not touch.
Why should we think of this as a gift? Firstly, because the marking off of boundaries is the means by which God creates a safe, stable, and good world for us to live in. The entire formation of the created order is described in Genesis 1 as the creation of bounded spaces and the filling of them with creatures who would flourish there. Water is bound into seas and rivers, and fish are placed in them. Air is corralled into sky, and birds are made to fly there. Ground is shaped into land, and land animals have somewhere they can now walk. The path to joy is to remain within those boundaries - a fish who wishes to express its freedom by spending time on land will not last long (and yes, I do think this has implications for evolutionary theory - but that will have to wait for another time).
And so when God creates a boundary for Adam and Eve - even one which does not make any apparent sense to them - the path to wisdom and joy is to remain within that boundary. Indeed, the very existence of a boundary is a gracious reminder that their good creator God is in charge, and they are not - a truth which, if whole-heartedly embraced, would lead to great contentment and joy (see Psalm 131).
The question of diet, therefore, was not an arbitrary imposition in either Eden or Israel. It was a significant reminder of the gracious authority of God. He is the one who has created everything and provided all humanity needs; he is the one who had rescued Israel and brought her into a good land which was flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:8). The food laws were a gracious reminder that he is in charge, and not the people - and that that is very good news indeed.
And that gracious reminder of God's good authority leads to whole-life awareness.
Whole-life awareness
There are many things in life that we can comfortably do without. I don't strictly need the latest smartphone, or any phone for that matter. I don't need a TV or a computer; I don't need more than one or two changes of clothes; I don't even need (gulp) hundreds of books. But I do need to eat, and to do so fairly regularly. It is an intrinsic part of every person's life on the planet - we can barely get through a day without some kind of sustenance.
So what does God intend by being so prescriptive about the diet of his people under the old covenant? As well as offering his distinctive fellowship to Israel, and calling her to a acknowledge his gracious authority, the food laws also extend God's rule to the most basic and fundamental areas of life.
The Israelite could not compartmentalise his or her worship of God to the times when they went up to the tabernacle to offer their gift, or to their "quiet time" at the beginning of the day. Every time they sat down to a meal with their family, or grabbed a quick bite to eat on the way to the field, or welcomed a neighbour round for the ancient equivalent of a cup of tea and biscuit, they would have to consider the legality and cleanliness of the food in front of them. They would be compelled to think: "is God pleased with the food that I am preparing, that I am eating, that I am serving to others?"
This would also be true at the significant feasts of the Israelite year (something we'll come to when we consider the question of dates), and the times of fasting. Actually there was only one regularly mandated fast in the calendar - the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:31) - at other times fasting was called for as a way to express repentance when it was particularly needed. But whether the Israelite was called on to particularly reflect on their food (either to feast or fast), or whether they were simply having their breakfast, the existence of the food laws reminded them at every turn that they were a people who belonged to God. Their diet was a tangible expression of their status as God's people. Every part of their life resounded with that truth - here, even here at our kitchen table, we are God's and not our own.
But how does all this translate to the new covenant, wherein Jesus has declared all foods clean? And how should modern-day Christians think about food, and respond to the voices of our culture (whether mainstream or dissenting)? Check back soon for the next instalment!