The Maker's diet

Whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we should do it as unto the Lord, the Bible says. So what's for dinner? At first glance, it's a no-brainer: Nothing but healthy food goes into this temple. But what is healthy? Probably what your great-grandmother ate, or before some wise guy figured out how to remove the bran and germ from a wheat kernel and market it.

Even if you wanted to eat what your great-grandmother ate, lots of luck. Your food comes to you drenched with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and synthetic fertilizers, and from a deficient soil. Also, deception abounds for the unwary, as Michael Pollan writes in his book In Defense of Food: "It's a whole lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a raw potato or a carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over in Cereal the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming their newfound 'whole-grain goodness' to the rafters."

Thirdly, there are other valid considerations besides health. Paul said to "eat what is set before you" (Luke 10:8). The feelings of your host, a sensitivity to the occasion of the meal, and other factors besides nutrition come into play. My missionary friend Heidi works in the slums of Uttar Pradesh, and eats whatever they're eating. She gets sick. She sucks it up, for the gospel sake.

The Maker's Diet, by Jordan Rubin, argues (not surprisingly) that the dietary prescriptions of the Old Testament are not only cultic but nutritional directives. There may be a lot of truth to that; it seems to have done wonders for him. But today I read this: "You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you shall give it to the alien who is within your gates, that he may eat of it" (Deuteronomy 14:21). So now I'm not so sure. I don't think the Lord would say to give lousy food to immigrants. It isn't consistent with what we know of his love for them (Deuteronomy 14:29).

So what's for dinner?

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.