Give Us This Day Our Daily Huel

Learned this morning in this interesting article about something called “Huel.” Writes the author,

Huel — an abbreviation of ‘human fuel’ — is a type of powdered food made of oats, peas, flax and rice. I’ve tried it and it is disgusting — gruel, essentially, in smart packaging. But it’s hugely popular: Huel is now one of the fastest growing companies in Britain.

The article is all about how men in Britain, and I suppose the trend must be growing over here too, are trying to rid themselves of their toxic masculinity by focusing on themselves more, rather than less. This new found devotion is all about being thin, eating virtuously, and reducing one’s carbon footprint. It may be old fashioned narcissism, but it’s the latest thing.

Which is good news for the Christian because it makes having an appealing witness that much easier. You can preach the gospel, not by bothering with words, but just by inviting some over-anxious, too thin, self-absorbed young person over and serving up actual food.

The article is full of interesting information, like this.

Immortality is the latest obsession in Silicon Valley. The fashionable pastime for tech whizz kids is to attempt to ‘cure’ death — and conquer their own mortality. It is the ultimate narcissistic pursuit. Thiel and Elon Musk have embraced transhumanism, an intellectual movement which believes in the body’s ability to evolve beyond human limits. Some transhumanists fantasise about cutting out food and sex entirely. If man can overcome his desire for both, he will be one step closer to becoming a machine — or even a god. ‘The less you eat, the better. You’re better off being borderline starving to live longer,’ says Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist politician who is running to be the governor of California later this year. For breakfast, he eats artificial eggs made out of peas and beans.

Truly, this puts an entirely new spin on Jesus’ propensity to “eat with sinners.”

No indeed, embrace the gospel and eat something delicious. Go out and buy a leek that needs to be soaked and rinsed and then luxuriously minced. Put a little butter in the pan and watch it gently melt. Add the leaks and a clove of garlic. Believe me, it’s biblical.

Throw all caution to the wind and apply some actual yeast to the flour of your choice—whatever kind doesn’t make you ill—and make, what’s that called? Ah, bread. As the heat transforms all the disparate elements into one new perfect loaf, let your senses glory in God’s daily provision. For real, it’s in the literal bible.

Food is for every day. You have to think about it every morning when you rise up. You have to pause and rest and sit and be nourished after a morning of labor, either of the mind or the body, sometimes both together. In the evening you have to sit down again and discover that God fed you through the day, and can do so again, with actual food that you have to put into your mouth and chew. He gave it to you not so that you would live forever, but so that you would live today.

But there is food that reaches over the boundary of death and into eternal life. Not some sort of transhuman bean supplement, some foul gray gruel, a pill that saves you from death’s dark, hungry shadow. No indeed, it includes a beautiful cup, filled with blood red wine of all things…and bread. It is a spare, yet nourishing amuse bouche, a foretaste not of clinically beating back the body’s frail and inevitable demise, but of what will be a banquet, a wedding feast, a table laden with good things to eat. You stagger forward to taste what is to come, the wondrous miracle of Jesus himself. When you bite down on it—which is a curious picture of faith, in a world where every mouthful of food is distrusted, anxious, probably poisoned with fat and toxicity—you know that you are joined to the one who has destroyed death by the power of his own blood.

Go to church, and then go to lunch after. It’s the gospel.