Commentary on "Nutrition in the Bible"

PHIL HARRIS

 

Day 5: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 - A Balanced Diet

 

Overview

Hear, my son, and be wise, and direct your heart in the way. Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags. (Prov. 23:19-21 ESV)

Temperance carries the idea that even good things in our diet can be carried to extreme. Following a balanced diet plan would include all the components for a nutritionally complete diet and do that in proportions that are not carried to harmful extremes. The specific illustrations given in today’s theme text are: Wine is not wrong. Drunkenness is. Eating meat is not wrong. Gluttony is.

 

Observations

The motive for confronting the Adventist health message and the issue of diet in particular is to heed the warning found in Galatians 1:6-9 about preaching a “different gospel”, one that is not a gospel. Those who do so Paul declares to be accursed. This is supported in Romans l4:13-19 where the premise is built on the understanding that our righteousness before God has nothing to do with food and drink.

Ellen White made the statement; “In order to know what are the best foods, we must study God’s original plan for man’s diet. . . . Grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables”, She introduces the theme that a vegetarian diet is correct for present day mankind, but this is a blatant assumption not taught from scripture. Looking to mankind’s original diet is helpful for understanding what a balanced complete menu should include. But, it does not take into account the needs of a body that is subject to the effects of sin in our lives.

As mentioned earlier this week, when God instructed Noah to eat all living creatures, he had unstated reasons for saying this which we should not ignore or alter just because we do not fully understand what those reasons might be.

As shown earlier, it is only an assumption that God gave us meat to eat because plant life was in short supply. We know Noah stayed on the arc long enough for geological conditions to stabilize and for plant life to be reestablished enough to support earths living creatures. Therefore, if God was concerned about an adequate supply of food for humans, this would have been an appropriate time to reaffirm a vegetarian diet for mankind and preserve a very limited animal population instead of instructing Noah that all creatures, both clean and unclean were now to be considered a food source. The logic of this assumption found in the lesson is defective.

 

Summary

1. God established our post flood diet with Noah, not based on the original Edenic conditions of a sin-free world, but upon realities only he was fully aware of. Since God did not state his reasons when giving these instructions to Noah we are not at liberty to assume what those reasons might have been. When we put words in God’s mouth, things not stated in the bible and in defiance of what he does say, we cannot be enhancing our health or our understanding of God’s truth.
2. According to I Tim. 4:1-5, those who teach abstinence from eating food such as meat are teaching doctrine of demons. There is no logical biblical support for the claim that we should return to a vegetarian diet prior to the Lord’s return where we will at last be free from sin and its consequences.
3. Remember, when we teach something that alters the gospel message, Paul declares us to be accursed.
4. Nothing said in any of this week’s commentary is meant to convey the idea that God does not care about our physical health or that we can eat or behave in any way we choose and still maintain good health, I Cor. 10:31.
5. Christians do not have the dietary laws which were only given to the Hebrew people and have been abolished in the New Covenant. But, we are reminded that, in our freedom, not all things are ‘helpful’. Instead of the legal restrictions of the ‘law’, we now have the liberty and responsibility to personally grow in our knowledge and understanding of what it takes to maintain good health and apply that to how we conduct our lives.
6. One thing is for certain. God knows far better than any of us what our balanced diet should include.

 

GO TO DAY 6

 

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