Commentary on "Nutrition in the Bible"

PHIL HARRIS

 

Day 2: Sunday, June 13, 2010 - The Original Diet

 

Overview

Based on Gen. 1:26-30 the assumption is made that our original diet, prior to the consequences of sin impacting our lives was totally vegetarian. The assumption is then made that this implies that the best present day diet is also a vegetarian one.

 

Observations

While it seems probable that the original diet was vegetarian it is going beyond what the text says to insist that they were restricted to only vegetarian foods. For instance, livestock is mentioned with no explanation as to what their livestock was used for. The point is that there is no stated restriction from also eating meat.

Shortly after Adam and Eve sinned God obviously killed an animal to provide skins that he dressed them with. The death of an innocent animal to cover their nakedness was a prophetic shadow that points to the atoning work of Jesus Christ but also has implications that impinge upon our changed dietary needs.

Assuming that the original diet was vegetarian doesn’t prove that our present day diet should be the same. Our requirements for maintaining a limited measure of good health are much different from what the original needs of Adam and Eve were. The moment they sinned, Gen. 2:17, they died. While the immediate death was spiritual, John 3:1-18, their physical bodies were now subject to decay, sickness and impending death.

The reference to Rev. 22:2-3 simply shows that when our bodies are changed our dietary needs will again change. It says nothing about what we should be doing now.

 

Summary

1. While it appears that the original diet was vegetarian there is no biblically based support for promoting this diet in a sin fallen world. The only original dietary restriction mentioned in the Genesis account is to not eat from ‘the tree of knowledge of good and evil’. Ironically, this is a vegetarian restriction.
2. Eve made a mistake by adding in “neither shall you touch it”. God didn’t say to not touch or even pick the fruit. Also, the bible makes no mention as to what God’s restrictions concerning the eating of meat might have been for them.
3. To go beyond what the biblical text says is the identical error Eve made when talking with Satan. When we do so we become just as vulnerable to Satan’s lies as Eve was. For truth to prevail we must stay within the limits of what the bible clearly teaches.
4. God did state that in the day they did eat of the forbidden fruit they would die. They did eat and they did die. Their nakedness revealed this terrible truth to them and they hid from God in mortal fear. Since it was not immediate physical death we should look to the bible, and the bible only, to learn and consider what that death was.

 

GO TO DAY 3

 

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