Life is More Than Food

And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

(Luke 12:22-23 ESV)

Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.

(Philippians 3:19 ESV)

There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half of the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips. 

C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity (Sexual Morality)

Ooopps. Something tells me that Jesus, Paul and C.S. Lewis would probably be fairly disturbed by my Instagram feed. Twitter, I could make an argument. Our website, we hardly ever post recipes, though a few food related articles slip through on “Weekly Links”. But I doubt that I can make much of a fight for my Instagram.

Someone recently asked me what my “Love Language” was and I said quality time. In reality its goats cheese . I am really not being funny. Toast, omelette, pasta, pizza really just about anything dish. Name every Hobbit Meal and my answer would be goat cheese. I suppose any kind of soft cheese would do. Something gooey. Room temperature. A bit of a funk to it. I am there.

I am not sure that C.S. Lewis would have predicted a time when phone photography would make people want to publish their every meal online or let people like me look at all of it and then think about said food in between meals and snacks. For my job I am working by 2 a.m. to make food. So I start thinking about it. And with those early morning hunger pains I start wishing I had more that just bread and butter on hand. Then the mind begin to wander.

Food is used in many redeemed and redeeming ways in scripture. I love those passages and read them often. I really love this book about the same thing. But honestly, if I spent a quarter of the time thinking about Jesus that I spend on food I would be growing a lot more as a Christian and a lot less at the waste (Not that I am wholly opposed to the latter).

What are your gods? Where are they hiding or how have they openly disguised themselves? That is what I was asking myself when I re-read the “Sexual Morality” chapter of Mere Christianity yesterday. I read this last in 2005. Before smart phones and most social media. Before food became something that everyone seemed to take interest in and I would not have thought twice about that passage. But yesterday it meant something very different.