“Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” — how should we then eat?
by VivianOkay, so organic food is not new, but “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” a non-fiction book by novelist Barbara Kingsolver, was really eye-opening for me.
Kingsolver tells about the year her family spent eating home- and locally-grown food, rather than supporting the food industry. I was struck by the descriptions of how industrial farming is detrimental to the soil, unhealthy and inhumane to the animals being raised for food as well as the animals that live among the crops, and produces food of inferior taste and nutrition. Furthermore, the process from seed to grocery shelf consumes significant amounts of fossil fuels.
“If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.”
The impact of the food industry, in striving to make available to everyone any food in any season, illustrates one of my concerns with a capitalist society. We become accustomed to getting whatever we want, whenever we want it, whether it’s good for us or anyone else.
Where are our priorities? Perhaps it’s worth putting more investment in diversified farmers, in teachers, in what truly makes the world a better place. Sacrificing convenience and affordability for quality.
You get what you pay for. You are what you eat.
Does God care how we affect the world and all its creatures? I think so. I’m not saying I’m going organic tomorrow, but it certainly gives me pause.
What would the world be like if we were conscientious stewards of His creation?
March 2nd, 2008 at 7:22 am
> We become accustomed to getting whatever we want, whenever we want it, whether it’s good for us or anyone else.
There was an NPR story recently about people who are choosing not to get vaccines for their kids because of perceived risks of bad vaccines. While there has been no accredited medical study tying vaccines to autism (one of the concerns raised on the internet), and basically all doctors will say you are better off getting most vaccines, the response from one parent was, “they are concerned about general health risk for everyone, not the benefit to my child.” While it’s true that if everyone else gets the vaccine, I don’t need it — the personal risk of dying of measles is still higher than the risk of dying from the vaccine. It saddens me that we are self centered and not interested in the greater good.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Yes, I do believe God cares “how we affect the world and all its creatures,” and I derive my understanding from verses in the first couple of chapters of Genesis, after God has done all of his creation activity. In the Common English Version, that from Genesis 2.15. God had just finished creating and blessing humankind, and he said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea, the birds in the air and every living creature that crawls on the earth.” (Jewish New Testament Publications version)
It is my humble and understated view that only a red-necked moron would interpret “subdue” as “abuse,” even if they sort of rhyme. Anyone who takes a longer than 5-minute view of things will realize that what hurts the earth and what grows from it ultimately will hurt the humans living on it. Doh.
A few verses later, God put Adam in the garden of Eden “to cultivate and care for it” (JNTP), a clearer explanation of what he meant by “subdue.” Tame might be another good synonym for subduing the wildness of nature.
So, the upshot is that I prefer to eat organic produce, free-range chickens and their eggs, venison that my brother-in-law shot and dressed, tomatoes that grew up in my backyard, and so on.
(Bonus plug for three relevant items: Unwrapped TV series and the books Twinkie, Deconstructed and Omnivore’s Dilemma.)
I don’t like using up fossil fuels, which is one reason why I just signed a contract to install a solar power system on my roof and why our next car will be electric or hybrid. However, I’m actually a sybarite at heart (I like to think I enjoy God’s world thoroughly), so I do purchase my favorite fruits in season or out. I’m delighted to be able to keep the Chilean organic farmers employed, and I wish our own government would quit paying American farmers to grow things we don’t need or want.
March 2nd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
While I agree that it’s important for me to be a “conscientious steward[] of His creation,” it’s also important (and hard) for me to be a more conscientious steward of my own body. God made it and gave it to me to subdue/cultivate/care for/tame, and I’m trying very hard to stay off of the slippery slope of couch potato (or, in my case, ‘puter potato) obesity that affects so many Americans now.
Actually, I’ll just admit it: I’m already obese, and I don’t get enough exercise, and I’d much rather eat ice cream than spinach and drink coffee than water. But I’m in a personal fight to tip the balance in each of those areas because (2) I’d like to live a long, healthy life, and (1) God wants what is best for me, and he has made it clear that personal health is one area in which he expects me to have self-control and discipline.
Where do I get that view? Gluttony is considered one of the seven deadly sins (a medieval classification), and our body is considered a temple of the Holy Spirit.
For a Christian, the upshot is this: “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10.31)
March 15th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I was just reading about Mahatma Gandhi in Philip Yancey’s book, “Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church,” and the following paragraph seems to relate to this thread:
“Gandhi had suspicions about modern technology. He believed people who owned cars, radios, and well-stocked refrigerators and clothes closets would become psychologically insecure and morally corrupt. He knew enough about soil conservation to realize that India’s land could not tolerate even a few decades of the soil abuse caused by high-technology farming. (In 150 years, Iowa has lost more of its topsoil than India has lost in five thousand years.) He had questions about how long energy sources would last. And besides, Gandhi said, he would continue to recommend cows until a tractor was invented that could produce milk, yogurt, and fertilizer. Ironically, the stimulus for Gandhi’s drive toward simplicity came from the writings of Westerners — Tolstoy, Ruskin, and Thoreau — who convinced him that riches were a burden, and that only the life of labor was worth living.”
How should Christians live in a capitalistic society?
March 26th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Gosh, it’s hard to know where to begin — and I don’t have a lot of battery power left in my laptop. Does that mean I’ve been a poor steward of that power?
Interestingly, this is actually illustrative of the outlook we wealthy humans have most of the time. I charge my laptop and the battery lasts for a while. When it runs down I can charge it again unless, as happened today, I leave the only charger I have at the office. So when I run out of power, I’ll do something else for a while. It won’t be a crisis, and neither will it be a crisis when we run out of fossil fuel. I’ve been trained to think that way, and I’ve learned well.
It may well be that the resources granted us in the earth are being depleted–undoubtedly some of them are–but we generally don’t much care.
Of course there are people who care a great deal, but I’m not among them. You won’t find me in Berkeley sitting in a tree, you won’t find me picketing to save the rain forests, and you won’t find me shopping at Whole Foods, the most successful purveyors of organic food in the country. They are a very real part of the capitalist society, being a darling of Wall Street with more than $7 billion in sales each year (and a goal of $12 billion by 2010).
And speaking of capitalistic, one of the organic farms Whole Foods buys from is in California, is over 26,000 acres, and produces 17,000 pounds of lettuce every hour.
So it seems to me that capitalism and healthy food (assuming organic food is the healthiest kind of food commercially available) are not so much at odds with each other. Unless, like me, you prefer not to shop at Whole Foods because it is expensive.
Where is the disconnect? It has to be in our minds–in our way of thinking about things. The word we hear over and over is “preservation,” and because we hear that so often we seem to assume that making something last longer is “good” stewardship. While that sometimes is the case, sometimes it is not. Using something up may be better stewardship. Like that gallon of milk in my refrigerator that will spoil if I don’t use it.
Even spending money is often a better use of it than saving it, because the velocity of a dollar is a very good benchmark for the financial health of a society.
So the issues are complex, but in my mind I think we do a pretty good job of being good stewards of the earth. And part of the reason for that is that someone other than me *will* sit in a tree in Berkeley, and someone *will* shop at Whole Foods and make money for organic farmers, and someone *will* grow their own tomatoes to save fossil fuel.
Personally, I’m just going to skip a meal. That’ll save even more fossil fuel. Barbara Kingsolver will be happy and at the same time it’ll save me a few calories.
At the end of the day my perspective is not quite as convoluted as this post. Simply put, Christianity is not about saving the planet, it is about saving people. When my focus is taken off of Jesus and the people he died for and put on this world that is going to be destroyed, I am at least partially off the mark.
Should I be a good manager of all that I have been given? Of course. But to me that means using it in the best way I can to help me accomplish the task that I have been given (as have all Christians), which is to carry the good news of Jesus to as many people as I can.
Should stewardship for its own sake be my primary goal in life? No. Even Paul wrote to Timothy that “bodily discipline is only of little profit but godliness is profitable in all things.” When stewardship spills out of godliness, I’m all for it. When it becomes a substitute for godliness, I am firmly against it. And when we make it a measure of godliness, stewardship may be at its most dangerous place.
March 30th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Lewis said, “Christianity is not about saving the planet, it is about saving people.” In other words, Lewis would say that being a good steward (which some may define as environmentalist, locavore, etc.) is not the sine qua non of Christianity.
And indeed it may be dangerous to make stewardship a measure of godliness, but I wonder how that squares with what we have been looking at in the “Total Truth” book, which makes the case that there is a Christian way to approach every aspect of life. Getting rid of the sacred/secular divide means there is a way to “think Christianly” about what we eat — which is about as physical as you can get — and other “secular” areas, not just spiritual health and spiritual activities such as evangelism.
We as Christians are told to love God and love others. In my mind, it does not appear loving to others to encourage self-indulgence at the expense of the admittedly physical health of the earth’s flora and fauna and even people.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Vivian raises an interesting point vis-a-vis Total Truth and the basic assertion that there is a way to think Christianly about everything, including what we eat. I’m down with that, and so was Paul and so were the early rest of the apostles, as demonstrated in some instructions that are related in Acts 21.25.
But the passage that is most inclusive and addresses this point best, I think, is 1 Corinthians 10.23-33. That has guided me both in my personal freedom and restraint (23, 25, 26, 29), in my caring for others (24, 28, 29), and in my duty to God (30-33).
What I don’t see in there is some guideline (other than verse 23) that says I should eat “healthy” and encourage others to do the same.
In Vivian’s last paragraph from her 3/30 comment, she says, “In my mind, it does not appear loving to others to encourage self-indulgence at the expense of the admittedly physical health of the earth’s flora and fauna and even people.” The key phrase there is “In my mind.”
Two Christians can look at the same thing and “think Christianly” about it and have very different thoughts. I respect what Vivian thinks and does, but I still don’t think it is my job to be “the food police” or “the tree police” or even “the you-ought-to-take-better-care-of-yourself police.”
And now I will go and have some Baked Alaska. (I wish.)
April 16th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I am of the opinion that the whole save-the-earth mindset that is popular with the environmentalists and their religion would be better served if those people would recognize the earth as the work of the Creator and we have been entrusted with it. Rather, for the eco-faiths, the earth is their god and they want to protect it.
Which do we treasure more - the ball we found on the side of the road walking home from school or the one given to us as a present?
God cares how we treat the planet we live on the way we care how someone values a present we give them.
I am not an activist, but maybe I should be. I am more of a zealot for Christ. When the world recognizes what Jesus did, many other things fall into place.
As for treating animals inhumanely…uh, yeah. How else could they be treated?
April 16th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
It’s not just about eating “healthy,” and I am not saying that people should treat animals as if they were humans. But even the Bible says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” which implies some level of consideration for the ox, whereas some CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) are just plain capitalist-driven animal abuse. That causes me to think twice about where my food is coming from.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
So, is it better to let some people go hungry than to operate CAFOs for profit or otherwise?
The problem is not capitalism or mistreating of animals, but rather people mistreating people and those who are able being left to make do.