All food is a gift, whether we grow it or we buy it or it comes directly from the windows of heaven as flakes in the desert (Exodus 16, Malachi 3). We don’t have anything which isn’t a gift from the hand of God (James 1), whatever proximate causes there may be, the Lord is always the ultimate giver.

Have you ever considered what you eat and how you eat it from a theological angle? It’s a conviction of mine that everything is theological, and that God’s people can speak to all of life with his word and reflection. There’s nothing that the Bible doesn’t speak to, for all we must admit that some matters it speaks to more tangentially than others.

There’s a whole literature on the theology of food, which I must admit to not having read. As a result, this post is brief not so much in length but in breadth: this is a sketch of the contours of how we think about food and about eating.

Food is Not Fuel

We live in a moment that wants us to think that we’re machines. We eat to ‘refuel’ our bodies to go again. There’s obviously something true in that we can’t go without eating for all that long (though it’s a heck of a lot longer than most people think, as anyone who has done some serious fasting can attest to), but we don’t eat to ‘refuel’ as though it were a required task that we can forget about once it’s done.

The trees in the garden were ‘good for food’ (Genesis 2), which is to say that they were to be enjoyed. Bacon sandwiches are not fuel, I’m sure they allow my body to continue but they’re also art. Any suggestion that a good future would be one when we don’t have to prepare or eat food—which is common in science fiction—is not a good or godly vision of life.

Food is a Gift

All food is a gift, whether we grow it or we buy it or it comes directly from the windows of heaven as flakes in the desert (Exodus 16, Malachi 3). We don’t have anything which isn’t a gift from the hand of God (James 1), whatever proximate causes there may be, the Lord is always the ultimate giver.

When we dig into rich chocolate sundaes and slice our knives into tender steak these are good gifts that God has given us. When cheese exists, how could God not love us? When eggs exist, how can we doubt the creator?

Gluttony is a Sin, Feasting is Not

Any good thing that we become addicted to is a problem (Philippians 3).

Read More