Lots of people reckon their faith is for Sundays ... but actually what Christ taught was turning to trust him and set out on a complete new way of life.
Now what anyone believes affects everything because it encompasses the way they see the world ... but by way of illustration, let's look at something very close to our hearts, let's look at the food that you put on your plate.
Food is a very current 'hot potato'
(Sorry, couldn't resist!)
Vegan teens
In 2014, the number of vegans was estimated to be 150 thousand, which increased to 600 thousand in 2019. That year, we're told vegans accounted for 1.16 percent of the population of Great Britain. Other estimates put the share of vegans higher ... but the numbers are highly contested.
The growth is all coming from teens, and there are suggestions that this is largely due to peer pressure and the heralded 'conversion' to veganism and vegetarianism of celebrities.
How many vegans are there really?
Due to the small share of vegans in a population, it is often hard to get a reliable estimate of how many vegans can be found in any given population. Often the margin of error in a survey is larger than the share of vegans found.Among U.S. consumers veganism was at estimated to be at roughly three to four percent.
In Canada the share of vegans was estimated to be 1.28 percent.
Across Europe estimates put the number of vegans at about one to two percent generally, depending on the country in question. You can read more about the numbers here.
The increase is apparently driven by teens adopting this diet and that is raising series health concerns for their futures.
Current trends in red meat consumption
There has been something of a push back against this trend. You can read a summary of that material here, and there's been quite a well-documented increase in red meat consumption since COVID.
So the heralded phasing out of red meat consumption is probably not imminently upon us.
Given all the confusion, what has the Bible got to say?
Way back at the foundations Genesis teaches us that in the beginning, God provided for all that His Creation needed and in amongst that He gave humans food to eat:
"Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.’
And it was so."
And you might be left thinking, well ... where's the meat?!
Things went downhill for humanity and creation from there. Creation led to the Fall and then the Flood. God rescued humanity from that through preserving Noah and his offspring with the fauna that would now populate the animal kingdom.
And at that point God made a fascinating change in human diet ... still providing for His Creation and calling the shots ... and that's the focus of our thought for today.
"Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Every living creature of the earth and every bird of the sky will be terrified of you.
Everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea are under your authority.
You may eat any moving thing that lives.
As I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything."
Genesis 9:1-3
The Old Testament example following on from Noah
Subsequent generations of God's people took this message to heart and ate meat drained of its' lifeblood before eating in accordance with God's decree (see Genesis 9:4-5) which governed His Creation up until we read of Daniel and his friends in Daniel 1.
Daniel
The conquering King of Babylon took Daniel and his friends as the brightest and best from the land he had conquered to his capital city to be schooled in the learning and laws of the Babylonians.
As the conqueror he prescribed what they should eat in order to be at peak performance for him ... much like a modern-day football team manager.
But the boys wanted to honour their God, and realised the fine food the Babylonian ruler served up hadn't been handled the way Genesis said that THEIR food should be, so they spoke to the person in charge of them and they invented the vegetarian option.
But they did this in order to honour the regulations about the meat God gave them to eat that were spelled out way back in Genesis 9:4-5, but which were not followed by the butchers of Babylon.
Keeping kosher in godless environments
From that point on and to this day, Jewish people keeping kosher in non-Jewish environments eat vegetarian amongst their non-Jewish friends.
Food laws and the New Testament church
With the coming of Christ and the birth of the Church, keeping rules and ethnic purity are removed from salvation but not from the 'saved way of life' agenda.
In fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies given to the Jewish nation, getting right with and walking with God is no longer a matter of liturgy and legislation but one of grace and of faith ... but God's will for food DOES NOT get removed from the fruit of spiritual life.
When you've got people with strict dietary rules still a really strong part of their culture (Jewish folks) and people who will eat anything at all (the Gentiles) thrown together in a new organisation that puts meals at its centre with one of its central ordinances and regular meetings being the Lord's SUPPER ... well, the new-born Church needed a very clear food policy!
Contrary cultures of food in the Church
To cut a very long story short, Jews and Gentiles both had a strong culture of food.
For Jews sharing a table was all about fellowship and for pagan Gentiles it was often about fornication.
So when the church started to be both Jewish and Gentile, the Council of Jerusalem was called to preserve fellowship between the different cultures at their worship meals.
This was the conclusion it came up with, in order to acknowledge that grace sets Christians free from the dietary laws of Judaism and preserve the unity of the multi-ethnic Church:
"it seemed best to the Holy Spirit and to us not to place any greater burden on you than these necessary rules:
that you abstain
- from meat that has been sacrificed to idols and
- from blood and from what has been strangled and
- from sexual immorality.
If you keep yourselves from doing these things, you will do well."
Acts 15:28-29
This basic element in life ... the food we eat ... was acknowledged as still a matter for the concern of our Maker, but now the fellowship born of Grace was pre-eminent.
The declaration of the Council of Jerusalem ensured that Jewish and Gentile believers could still share in the Church's basic meeting ... their agape (Christian love) fellowship meals and the Lord's Supper, without violating anyone's conscience.
Food fellowship is what becomes the key issue
By the time Paul is writing to believers in Rome in about 57 AD the matter was still being worked through.
After setting out the way that God saves all people from all backgrounds on the basis of His grace by faith alone in chapters 1-3, then dealing with the objections to that which might be raised in chapters 4-11, Paul calls for sacrificial living from believers in response to Christ's sacrifice of Himself (for our sins) because Christ because for our sake Christ didn't please Himself but served us.
He specifies areas of life where - out of gratitude to Christ - we shouldn't just please ourselves but serve our brethren ... because the point of Christ's death was to unify divided humanity in the service and worship of God TOGETHER.
And one illustration Paul gives of an area of life where this principle particularly applies is in the area of dietary choice:
"receive the one who is weak in the faith, and do not have disputes over differing opinions.
One person believes in eating everything, but the weak person eats only vegetables.
The one who eats everything must not despise the one who does not,
and the one who abstains must not judge the one who eats everything,
for God has accepted him."
Romans 14:1-3
See, in the middle of that massive statement on Christian salvation, Paul teaches the implication of the Gospel is believers should lay off with all these food wars!
The Point
The Biblical position on food develops over Biblical history, but ends up in one set fixed place in the Church by the end of it.
That position arises out of the central purpose of the Gospel, which was to save people from the sin that alienates them from God and one another by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, received by grace through faith ALONE.
It was rapidly recognised in the earliest days of the Church that where people were divided by their culture of food and the dietary choices they accordingly made, sacrificing our personal preferences out of gratitude to God for His grace was the position that would safeguard the Gospel.
Meat has been given for food since Genesis 9 declared God's provision of it for people.
But the Gospel is a much bigger issue!
By Romans 14 the New Testament has established that we're put right with God by grace through faith alone because of Christ's Cross, and that neither side of the food preference divide is to judge the other for their choice ... for the sake of Christ and the Father's purpose in salvation.
So this isn't a small issue at all ... but possibly NOT for the reasons you'd imagine!
The Takeaway
It is absolutely the case that our Christian faith affects even the most basic of choices that we make.
But as believers we don't make our daily decisions based on non-Biblical worldviews or ideologies.
We work them out on the basis of the clear teaching of God's Word, with the Gospel itself at the very forefront of our thinking.
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