Why Should Christians Eat Ethically?
Food holds a central place in our everyday lives. It is essential to our long term health and short term sustenance. We feel hunger or delight or refreshment on a daily basis, all because of food. No matter how much life changes from generation to generation, from new technology to new technology, food will always be necessary.
Food has always been necessary, but it has not always been cheap or plentiful. As the huge drought conditions stretching from New Mexico to Georgia killing cotton and corn right now shows, food is necessary but not a luxury. It doesn’t just happen. It is the product of a tremendous amount of manpower, horsepower, tractor-power, petroleum-power, water-power and solar power. It is toil.
With food being central to our daily lives as both work and pleasure, it is astounding the lack of a discernible theology of food in the church today. There has been a lot of writing, thinking and practice advancing a holistic theology of communion with food and hospitality at its center, and this has helped communities of Christians to think critically about why they are supposed to gather around a table each week and the spiritual, social, cultural and political ramification of gathering around a common table. Authors such as Eugene Peterson have implored us to bring the hospitality of the eucharistic meal into our own homes, and break bread with all we invite in and find the spirit of Christ in our small gatherings.
This has been a very fruitful exercise in reclaiming the Christian notion of hospitality in the church today, and it is to be commended. Yet, the focus on community and food has not gone far enough. Many have asked the questions: how should food play a central role in the local church gathering? In the practice of communion? In the Christian home? And the answers have been great. But not many have been asking the questions: How should our local church choose the food we eat? and the broader How should Christians eat?
In the next several posts I will be laying out a theological framework of what I view as the five spheres that influence a Christian ethic of eating as I answer to the question How should Christians eat? The five spheres are:
Creation Care – how should a Christian view of the created world influence how we eat?
Animal Care – how should a Christian view of the created world influence how we treat animals and whether we eat them or not?
Economic Care – how should a Christian view of God’s economy influence how we eat?
Body Care – how should a Christian view of the physical body influence how we eat?
Soul Care – how should our spiritual practices influence how we eat?
At the end of each post I will be giving a series of discussion questions for use in personal, family and small group conversations about the topic. I invite you to think critically about your view of food as we journey together in a discussion about how Christians should eat.
Discussion Questions:
What do you eat or not eat? Why have you made those choices? Because of taste, preference or a conviction?
If you could give a definition of Christian eating what would it be?
What do you think of the five spheres that make up a Christian ethic of eating? Do you think they are all relevant to the act of eating?
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Christian eating. For me the terms are redundant.
It seems particularly American to consider this because our selections and abundance of food in the U.S. gives us the luxury of thinking of it deeply, rather than wondering where our next meal will come from.
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6).
If the acquisition of food, as a thoroughly pragmatic part of life, isn’t the main issue, maybe these questions center more on ideas of eating well, or consuming fine foods, or eating for pleasure. Of course in countries where the U.S. has supplied grain for less than it costs to create it locally (because of bountiful government subsidizing to our midwest farmers) the fact is that they wholly depend on us, and can now not support themselves on their own grain production. The latter is not an everyday American problem, but could cause global famine if the supply chain is disrupted. Does this figure into the ethics of eating?
Does our ability (in the U.S.) to be careful food choosers improperly slant our outlook or ideas of Christian eating ethics?
Also, Thom, I would be interested to see a sacramental take on this too, and also the interplay of the Eucharist.
cheers!
Lisa, I see where you are coming from. I think that without choice there is to a certain extent only one ethic — what you have. The fact is, the developing world eats better than we do quality wise, but the problem is the severe lack of quantity and sustainability on the short term. The developing world doesn’t have the luxury to eat un-ethically. We unfortunately do.
Until modern industrial agriculture came about there was no need for major need for a definition of Christian eating. Just like theologians like Karl Barth had to construct a theology about nuclear war after the atom bomb, Christians in countries infected with modern industrial agriculture need to construct a theology and ethic about eating.
When I think of Christianity and eating, I think of God’s call for us to care for the animals of the world. I that light, Christians should be opposed to factory farming. I think too of how our waste of food as Americans contributes to hunger elsewhere. Our gluttony also comes at the expense of other people. Our demand for perfect fruit leads to farm workers’ suffering of cancer and birth defects. Eating organic, locally, with less meat and more vegetables, seems to me to be the right thing to do.
Thanks Ozark. I am going to be touching on all of your points in the coming weeks.
Thomas,
Thanks for bringing up this important topic, and especially for providing thought-provoking discussion questions. My small group at church recently worked through some PCUSA material called Just Eating? that you might want to check out. (It’s free to download.)
Something that I struggle with relating to these questions you’ve posed is how to talk to people about these issues in a humble and gracious manner without coming across as condescending or condemning. I happen to think that the facts and figures related to hunger, poverty, the environment, etc., speak for themselves and once you know them, you can’t stop knowing them. At the same time, people really take their food choices personally.
We, of course, happily and graciously accept hospitality in a charitable way, regardless of what is being offered, but we’ve noticed that the more we change our own lifestyle to reflect our convictions, the more people apologize for the food they serve us. It’s very uncomfortable, no matter how gracious we’re trying to be. And when we serve food to others, we serve them the food we normally eat. We don’t get preachy about it, we just serve it and don’t even mention those things. But it’s sometimes so glaringly different than the food some of our loved ones eat, that it can be difficult.
I feel like I’ve rambled a lot here, but my point is just that I don’t struggle as much with my own decisions regarding food (because, I think like you, it just makes sense to me, and the benefits outweigh the sacrifices), but I do struggle with how to approach the topic in a loving way with people who don’t really think this is an important topic.
Oh, and I do miss bananas. A lot. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me how much overlap there often is between food that travels a REALLY long way to get to us–carbon footprint issues, etc.–and food that is tainted by human trafficking, another serious concern of mine.
Yes, worker issues are huge. Something I am going to talk about in Economic Care.
We are relieved to be able to buy fair trade bananas. I can feel your pain of not being able to eat them.