Update: Apparently not everyone could access here yesterday because it said there were links known to distribute malware. I'm sorry about that - I had no idea. I've taken out all the external links and hopefully everything works fine now. If you are interested in any of the links, please just email me at thatmarriedcouple @ gmail . com and I'd be happy to share!
This post is the third in a series on cultivating a home that glorifies the Lord. Part one on simplifying and responsible purchasing is here; part two on wall decor is here.
It sounds kind of silly to talk about a kitchen glorifying God, doesn’t it? Because I’m not even referring to the act of sharing a meal with others, but to the actual food itself.
I certainly would have thought it silly a couple of years ago. And yet as I slowly started inching down the path to real food, I started reevaluating how God created us to live. I kept coming back to the conclusion that honoring our bodies – in this case by nourishing them properly – honors The One who designed our bodies.
This is not a new idea. St. Paul discusses our bodies several times in First Corinthians, for example. This verse, which closes a discussion on sexual immorality, is always a good one:
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.” 1 Cor 6:19-20
And this one is directly applicable to the topic of food:
“So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” 1 Cor 10:31
Now obviously St. Paul isn’t talking about our modern food system. He’s addressing questions from the Corinthians about whether it’s okay to eat food that was sacrificed to idols (chapter 8 and then 10:23-11:1). And yet I believe his conclusion is just as applicable now, almost 2000 years later: whatever you’re eating and drinking, do it to the glory of God.
History hints at our design
But what exactly does it mean to eat in a manner that glorifies God? Okay, honoring our bodies by nourishing them properly – but what exactly constitutes “proper” nourishment? Probably not a Big Mac and supersized fries and coke, if for no reason other than its excessiveness. So nix the value meals. What else shall we do away with? Skittles. Pop-tarts. My beloved Doritos. The list can go on and on.The thing is, a list of prohibitions is less helpful than general principles when it comes to joyfully embracing life in the Lord. As I stumble along this path to a kitchen that glorifies the Creator, I’m finding the most useful litmus test to be a simple question: Have humans historically eaten this?
If so, it’s probably nourishing. By “historically,” I’m basically referring to the past several thousand years, not the past several decades. I'm not basing my dietary ideals on what my grandparents eat now, but more on what their own grandparents ate. The industrial revolution spurred on changes to our food system that have advanced so incredibly rapidly that I don’t see how our bodies have had time to adjust. And since so much of what we call "food" is truly junk, I don’t think that our bodies will be able to successfully be nourished from it. Yes, God gave us brains for a reason, and yes, God wants me to be happy, but He didn’t create me to eat Twinkies. He designed my body to eat the wholesome foods that have been keeping the human race alive for an untold number of years.
Interestingly enough, it turns out that when animals also live the way that they’re designed to, it’s healthier for both them and us. There are quantifiable differences between, for example, eggs from (true) free-range hens and eggs from battery hens.* Unfortunately, the goal of conventional agriculture is not to raise livestock and plants the way they were originally designed.
For some people, animal living conditions alone are enough to spur them to make radical changes to their diet. I’m not one of those people. I was raised on a conventional farm, after all (technically a CAFO, even!), and animal rights propaganda did nothing to endear me to the real food cause.
What did convince me
It’s taken me a while to get past associating “organic” with “pretentious.” And yet now that I’m throwing my towel in with the real food crowd, I see how easy it is to fall pray to a sense of smugness and even moral superiority based on what’s on our dinner table. But we have to remember that our food choices do not make us holier than others. Food itself is not what will get us to heaven, as St. Paul states very clearly:
“Now food will not bring us closer to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, nor are we better off if we do. But make sure that this liberty of yours in no way becomes a stumbling block to the weak. … Therefore if food causes my brother to sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I may not cause my brother to sin.” 1 Cor 8:8-9, 13
I like the way the notes in my Bible explain this passage: “Although the food in itself is morally neutral, extrinsic circumstances may make the eating of it harmful. … [Paul’s] own course is clear: he will avoid any action that might harm another Christian.”
That approach sounds like a good one to me. However healthy or unhealthy a particular food may be, that is not in itself a moral issue. But the conditions surrounding that food – its creation or marketing or consumption – may very well be.
St. Paul is basically saying that as Christians we’re free from strict dietary laws insofar as what we eat is not harmful to others. Unfortunately, it turns out our modern methods of cheap food production are harming others. Specifically, they’re exploiting immigrant workers. Remember how I said I didn’t want to support products that were produced to the detriment of God’s children? It turns out that’s happening right here in the good ol’ US of A.
If you’ve watched some of those food-related movies, you know what I’m talking about. I couldn’t even get all the way through Fast Food Nation, even though I knew it was fiction, because the storyline of the illegal immigrants was too much for me. These type of films focus on how immigrants are being exploited in animal processing plants, but I wonder if it's any different from our country’s fruit orchards and vegetable fields, where the workforce is almost completely made up of immigrants.
Maybe these types of jobs really are good employment opportunities for immigrants, as lobbyists would have us believe. Maybe they’re being horribly abused. I imagine it’s a complex combination of both, and at the end of the day I don’t know. And I can’t trace the origins of every mass produced thing we put in our mouth.
The only way I can be sure that the food on our table hasn’t been detrimental to workers is by buying it locally, as close to the source as possible. This realization was the push I needed to find a local farmer for all of our meat and egg needs, and I’m hoping to rely on the farmer’s market this summer for more (hopefully most) of our produce needs.
Now it’s easy enough for me to say all this in a suburb in the middle of the land of plenty. What about the starving people in Africa? I’ve worried about this myself. Even though overpopulation is a myth, there are still billions of people in our world – don’t we have to have conventional agriculture to feed them? Apparently not. I’ve been very encouraged to find studies concluding that smaller-scale sustainable agriculture can indeed feed the world.
I'm not writing this post to make people feel guilty or to make it sound like we've got our food choices all figured out. We're still far from it. As much as I may daydream, we won't ever be those amazing homesteaders who produce all their own food. We're just trying to do what we can to honor God with our bodies and our buying, and that starts three times a day in my kitchen. It's just another way I'm attempting to glorify God in our home.
*I had to remove this link, but if you just search for "mother earth news meet real free-range eggs" it'll be the first page to pop up. I’m aware that this link is biased. If you do an internet search, in fact, the predominant headline you’ll find is that free-range and battery eggs are no different nutritionally. However, as I unsuccessfully tried to hunt down the root of this story, I found this quote from the lead scientist: “We sampled eggs from a number of stores…” That was enough for me to discount the study. “Free-range” on an egg carton in the supermarket simply means that there was access to the outside, not that the birds ever went outside. “Free-range” to the local farmer means the chickens are pecking around outside a majority of the time. It may be better to use the term “pastured” to prevent this confusion.