Real Food And Theology? Accept No Substitutes

Also posted at Ezekiel's Valley.

I was pondering aloud with dh the other day; wondering why it is that The Food Police seem to think that they need to convince the world that the food God gave us will kill us. Then, just phrasing it like that, I had an epiphany.

Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden because they believed they might be like God, and all the time since then we have been trying to prove that we are autonomous beings, not created, but accidental: We decide that God did not create us, we evolved - as though it is some great feat we should pat ourselves on the back for. "Hey, look at us! We single-handedly turned ourselves from a single celled organism into a walking talking human being!" We don't need to worship our creator, we can create gods for ourselves and worship them. It began with food (eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil), why would it not continue with food?

After all, we were created in God's image. God is a creator, and we long to create. You can see that in the fact that we love to build, to create art, to have children. The problem is not with our desire to create. God put that desire in us. The problem is that sin in us distorts that desire. Our desire to create mutates into a desire to create better than God does. It evolves into a desire to be solely independent of our Creator, left to only create and control.

So we see the food that God gave to us in nature, and we try to do one better. God said, "Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. " We take corn and turn it into hydrogenated corn oil and high fructose corn syrup. We inject cows, chickens, and pigs full of chemicals, antibiotics, and hormones so that they grow faster, bigger, and "better." We spray poisonous chemicals to protect fruit from bugs, and so poison the honey that is a healthier, natural sweetener with natural healing and soothing properties. We take what is natural, what God gave us; and we twist it like sin nature twists us. And we have inexplicably rising rates of cancer, heart disease, genetic mutations (not the cool comic book kind, but the real and painful kind); just like the persistence of sin in humanity leads to social cancers like envy, theft, murder, and adultery.

We did not start eating real food for theological reasons. We learned through research and the pursuit of healthy living that meat, butter, cheese, whole grains, and vegetables were better than rancid oils, sugar, refined flour, and MSG. And when we found out how much better, we could not figure out why people keep pushing the fake junk down our throats. "Meet the Buttertons" commercials tell you that margarine is better than butter, without telling you that indigenous tribal peoples all over the world who have high amounts of butterfat in their diet have straight teeth, healthy skin, and practically no incidence of heart disease. I do not know about anyone else, but I have dealt with the pain of braces, and my kids are going to have straight teeth if I can help it.

It boils down to trust. There are foods that God told us were good for us. Do we trust Him? Would God tell you to include something in your diet that was going to give you heart disease or cancer? The thing is, in our humanity, we take what God gives and we try to go further. We think that saturated fats being healthier than polyunsaturated fats means that we should mainline them. Honey was almost always known as a healing agent. Sweet and soothing, honey has antimicrobial properties that can help fight infection, settle the tummy, and soothe the throat. So what does wisdom (a.k.a. common sense) tell us about honey? "If you find honey, eatjust enough-- too much of it, and you will vomit ." Honey is one of the things God said the Israelites would find in the Promised Land. Honey is not a bad thing. Overindulgence, though, makes you sick.

We may have started eating real food for different reasons, but we keep eating real foods because we trust that what God has for us is the very best we can get. We do not want the world's imitation food, just like we do not want their imitation love, their imitation success, imitation pleasure, and imitation life. Jesus said in John 10:10 "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." I want life. I want a full life. I want to trust God's best for me.

DISCLAIMER: I am not saying that NOT eating real food is heretical, NOR am I saying that eating real food makes anyone more righteous than anyone else. This is SIMPLY an interesting look into the reasons why it may be so hard for scientists to accept that real food is better. Aside from pharmaceutical company payoffs.

This is a part of Real Food Wednesday!