Enjoying Food
When is the last time you really enjoyed food? When is the last time you really paused to savor every crunch of that toasted bread and whiff of creamy butter, the juicy sweetness of strawberries tinged with refreshing piquancy, and the cleansing, thirst-slaking purity of cold water? If it’s been a little while, it may be that your surfeited appetite no longer appreciates the finer tastes in life.
Those in Florida cannot welcome the warmth of Spring like a Winter-weary New Englander, and those who are always full cannot delight in food like those who fast. This is why, if you’re a foodie (or anyone for that matter), you should consider fasting.
Gluttony
But fasting is difficult, because we’re a nation of gluttons. Christians of old used to understand the danger of gluttony (it was numbered among the seven deadly sins), but people nowadays are more concerned about gaining weight than about the more fundamental problem of gluttony.
And you don’t have to be overweight to be a glutton. Weighing in at a whole 125lb, no one would accuse me of being a glutton, but the truth is I fight the sin of gluttony daily, when I’m tempted to grab that one extra chocolate-covered almond, or two, or three, or when I scarf down a bowl of noodles and pour a second helping before the noodles have traversed the length of my esophagus.
Fasting
By exercising restraint when we eat and/or by fasting from food altogether, we counteract this mindless indulgence and rightly order our physical appetites. But isn’t eating good food harmless? Why be so legalistic? John Piper puts it pointedly:
The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable (A Hunger for God, p. 18).
The truth is that our appetite for food is connected to other physical appetites, and what we do with, and to, our body has spiritual implications. As embodied creatures, “our mind is helped by what comes to us embodied in concrete form; fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, to sacrifice ourselves, to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God” (Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer, p. 85). Fasting helps us understand viscerally (literally), that God, not food, is our most fundamental need, that we do “not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).
Paul writes, “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything. ‘Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food’—and God will destroy both one and the other” (1 Cor. 6:12-20). So we are to “exercise self-control in all things” and “discipline [our] body and keep it under control” (1 Cor. 9:25-27).
“Our human cravings and desires are like rivers that tend to overflow their banks; fasting helps keep them in their proper channels” (Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 56). By subduing our appetite for food, we can restrain other appetites that threaten to control us, whether it is a minor obsession with coffee or serious addictions to cigarettes, alcohol, or pornography.
A Picture of A Godly Foodie
I have a good friend, who, every time he sits down in front of a meal, slowly lowers his face toward the plate and waves his hand over the food toward his nose. He does this in order to get a whiff of the wafting aroma before giving thanks to God for the food. I think this is a perfect picture of a godly foodie.
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). When you eat your meal(s) today, remember and thank God for Christ, our ultimate Bread of Life (John 6:22-59). And when you fast, likewise, acknowledge that your spiritual dependence on the Bread of Life is even more profound than your physical dependence on daily bread. Only when our appetites are rightly ordered and submitted to God, will we truly enjoy food to its fullness.
