Daily Devotional

This week, we celebrate the classic American holiday, Thanksgiving. As the commercialization of Christmas pushes the season closer and closer to November 1, I firmly believe it’s important to preserve Thanksgiving’s place in our festive calendar. This at the very least because Thanksgiving is unique among our holidays in that it is food-centric. Other holidays typically include a meal (Christmas dinner, Easter brunch, 4th of July barbeque), but at Thanksgiving, the celebration is the meal, a commemoration of the first Thanksgiving feast between the Plymouth Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people in 1621. I enjoy Thanksgiving because it is the closest thing we have to a celebration of food itself, and of the One who provides us with food.

Perhaps, however, we Christians can get some wrong ideas about food. And for good reason: like all created things, food has the capacity to make us desire the gift more than the Giver. Traditionally, the church has identified enjoying food too much as the sin of gluttony. Historic Christianity (and Scripture as well) speak positively of fasting, a means of taking our attention off of physical realities and directing them to “the things above” (Colossians 3:1). It’s easy to see why some Christians might get the idea that food is a necessary evil and adopt a “Daniel Plan” of eating only vegetables.

Yet I think it would be wrong to identify the love of food as the root of all kinds of evil, to paraphrase 1 Timothy 6. In our desire to fast, to be self-controlled, and yes, to avoid packing on those extra pounds during the holidays, we can easily miss what the Bible says about the joys of food. Allow me to offer us, by way of reminder, some Thanksgiving-inspired musings regarding a biblical theology of food.

• Food is good because God made it. 1 Timothy 4:4 tells us that “everything created by God is good.” In context, Paul is talking specifically about food and arguing against those who “require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving” (v. 3). Food is not evil, or even neutral, but part of God’s “very good” creation.  After all, who invented our senses of taste and smell?

• God likes it when we eat food. In Genesis 2:16, God tells Adam, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden.” I’ve been told the original Hebrew has imperative force – “Eat!” It’s a command, and the second ever to appear in Scripture (after “be fruitful and multiply,” Genesis 1:28). For as often as God is portrayed as a sort of cosmic buzzkill who is against physical pleasure, it’s strange that the first two commands in the Bible are about food and sex.

• Food is part of being human. We humans are a unity of body and soul: we need both spiritual and physical food to function. When Elijah had given up on life, God sent an angel to feed him a cake before he carried on (1 Kings 19:6). Sometimes the most “spiritual” thing we can do is eat!

• Food is key to Christian community. I find it interesting that the only day when fasting was required by Mosaic law was the Day of Atonement. The other six Levitical festivals were feast days; Old Testament Jews feasted way more than they fasted. So did the early church: in Acts 2, they made “the breaking of bread” part of their meetings (which I think refers to actual meals, not just Communion). Eating food together is something that has always characterized God’s people.

• Food isn’t going away. Revelation 19:9 describes a marriage supper in Heaven, celebrating Christ and His bride, the Church. Revelation 22:2 describes the Tree of Life in the new Jerusalem, bearing twelve different kinds of fruit. (And I love fruit!!) In His resurrected body, Jesus not only ate fish (Luke 24:42-43), but took the time to cook breakfast (John 21:10)! Food will continue to be part of our life, even in eternity.

• Enjoying food glorifies God. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). When we enjoy food... when we give thanks to the God who made the food and our taste buds... when we use food for the good purpose for which God intended it... then God is glorified. According to this passage, eating not only can, but SHOULD be an act of worship!

 
We must not take these truths in isolation, however, nor use them to justify selfish indulgence. The Bible speaks of the value of self-control (Galatians 5:23); it warns against those “whose god is their belly” (Philippians 3:19); and it reminds us to steward our bodies as God’s temples (1 Corinthians 6:19). It also speaks about the spiritual benefits of fasting (Acts 14:23). But there is “a time for every matter” (Ecclesiastes 3:1), including both feasting and fasting. Thanksgiving is a time for feasting – so as you partake, enjoy the “very good” blessing that is food. And maybe let God know how much you enjoy it. Bon appetit!

"English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers."