Every faith community carries some wisdom other people of faith can learn from—a style of worship or focus in ministry or way of understanding Spirit or scripture that may complement or correct our own. I’ve found myself this year especially grateful for the way Seventh Day Adventists practice and teach healthy eating as a dimension of spiritual life. Vegetarian eating is one of the commitments they’re probably best known for by folks who know little else about their theology and shared practices. They also avoid alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. The ones I’ve met are not rigid about these guidelines, but believe, as one of their websites says, that “God calls us to care for our bodies, treating them with the respect a divine creation deserves.” Collectively, over a period of long shared conversation, they have arrived at a common understanding of what caring for bodies looks like.
There are plenty of references to eating meat in Scripture. Jesus fried up fish with the disciples even after the Resurrection. So it’s easy enough to quibble about vegetarianism. I think it’s a good idea, but that’s not my point at present. Rather I find myself reflecting on eating and the life of the spirit. The clearest connection between healthy eating practices and spiritual life is that we are stewards of our bodies, reminded to remember that they are “temples of the Holy Spirit” and we are keepers and inhabitants of those temples.
I like the simple bumper-sticker reminder: “Eat to live; don’t live to eat.” Eating to live seems to me to be one practical, earthy way of claiming and buying into the promise that we who follow the Way Jesus opened will have life, and have it abundantly. Eating to live involves paying attention to what foods in fact do enhance life, energy and clarity and what foods (or artificial food-like-substances) on the other hand, clog the system and induce sluggishness or cravings or addiction.
Advent, since it is not only a sacred season in the church year but also a season of frenzied shopping and eating, seems a good time to embrace physical health as a dimension of faithful living. And perhaps to watch a good food documentary: Fed Up, for instance, or Forks Over Knives, or Food Stamped or Food, Inc. Or to read Michael Pollen’s inspiring In Defense of Food or Jon Robbins’ Diet for a New World or Jonathan Foer’s stirring personal story about food and conscience, Eating Animals. These works all focus widely and compassionately not only on personal, but also on public health as a matter for ongoing ethical reflection. They’re not offensively doctrinaire, but encouraging and heartening: living healthily lifts up the heart, enlivens community, and readies us to undertake whatever is given us to do with “energy, intelligence, imagination and love.” Bon appetit.
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