I love food.
I would like you to sit with that sentence for a moment and notice what it makes you feel or think. I will, too.
I love food.
For me, it brings up a sense of enjoyment, because it’s true! But it also makes me feel defensive and apologetic, because I love food in a culture that talks about eating as though it’s sinful.
My boss brings in donuts, and while I try to appreciate both a donut and her generosity, coworkers talk about how they shouldn’t eat this (but they usually do anyway).
I watch most of the world around me go on and off diets and wonder if they think less of me because I don’t participate in this club I don’t want to be in.
I sit down with a plate of dessert at a potluck and wonder if everyone around me is silently criticizing my choices.
Food is something other people “can’t” or “shouldn’t” eat. Or, “This is really good even though it’s really healthy!” Or temptation.
Temptation. As though eating something you like is a sin.
This gets explained in terms of health and self-control. Both good things! In Christian circles, there’s the added pressure of, “God wants us to take care of our bodies and to avoid gluttony.” Honoring God is good! But there’s so much more behind it. There’s a culture obsessed with idols of beauty and thinness and health, and the constant, if often subtle, message that without more of those things than you currently possess, your value is in question.
Disclaimer: There are many foods many people genuinely cannot eat. And choosing to pursue weight loss can be a healthy choice done in wholesome, holistic ways. I’m not criticizing those things here. I’m concerned with the fact that our cultural language about food gives the impression that eating something you enjoy or gaining weight is always, inherently wrong.
There’s so much wrapped up in this. So much I’ve been trying to slowly unwrap in my own life. I want to talk about just one factor today: Enjoyment.
When we talk as though food is sinful, enjoying it becomes guilt. No matter how strict your diet. No matter how healthy or unhealthy the food you’re consuming. Surrounded by constant insinuations that enjoying food is a guilty indulgence, it can become difficult to properly enjoy any of it.
But God designed food to be enjoyed! He could have made it boring, but instead he filled the world with different animals and vegetables and spices, with cultures that cook the same things differently, with blackberries that taste amazing plucked fresh from a bush and with pork that must be cooked properly to be safe, and is well worth the effort. God created foods to be received with thanksgiving! He richly provides us with everything to enjoy! Taste and see that the Lord is good! (1 Timothy 4:3; 6:17; Psalm 34:8) These attitudes honor God just as much as avoiding gluttony.
When it’s hard to enjoy food on an ordinary day, these problems also leak into celebrations. We must have endless self control and/or feel guilty about eating and enjoying it even when we feast.
Guess what? Feasting can honor God, too.
In Deuteronomy 14, God gives the new nation of Israel instructions about tithing. Every year, they’re to gather up a tenth of everything their fields produce. All of it. Grain, wine, oil, animals. Take it to the temple.
And do what?
Eat it.
EAT IT.
A TENTH OF EVERYTHING IN ONE FEAST.
If it’s too far to transport all that stuff, sell it, take all the money, buy whatever food you want, AND EAT IT.
You, your household, and hey, include the Levites who live near you, because they don’t have land to harvest from.
Every three years, this tithe was instead to be collected in all the towns and gifted to everyone around who needed it. So they could EAT ALL THAT FOOD.
As the Spoken Gospel podcast says, in an episode on Deuteronomy 12-14, “The first ten percent of the harvest, every year, was supposed to go towards enjoyment.”1
They point out that if a modern day household’s annual income is about $40,000, this is like spending $4,000 on one meal.
My good sirs and madams, that’s a whole lot of food.
Surely that involves everyone eating until they can’t move and spending the rest of the day napping.
And this is a good thing. Enjoying things this way honors God because it acknowledges to him, “You gave us this. You gave us more than we need. We trust you to continue to provide. What you have given is good, and we thank you.”
The podcast points out that we’re not currently commanded to do exactly this. But, “What it communicates is that the Lord wants you to celebrate what he has given you.”
In our culture now, holidays are approaching. Holidays packed with opportunities to eat. I’m not necessarily asking you to eat more or less or differently. I don’t in any way wish to criticize food choices made for health reasons, or encourage you to consume and consume for the sake of consuming.
I am asking you to enjoy what you eat. To enjoy it without guilt in order to celebrate God and the gifts he has lovingly given you. To consider how you speak about food while you celebrate, to yourself and to others, and what your words communicate about that God and those gifts.
Taste and see that the Lord is good.
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His Words, My Delight. 
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