We Are How We Eat?

“Are there any donuts left?”

This question marks the end of the 30-second dash toward the pink bakery boxes most Sunday mornings in our student ministry. As teenagers (and let’s be real here, adults too) clabber for a sugar rush, inevitably someone ends up a few seconds too late to snag that last culinary treat.  And even when I’m in the dash (full confession: I adore high-sugar food products) I sometimes wonder whether we’re doing anyone any favors. To push a bit more, as someone who thinks too much about just about everything, I wonder if our food consumption patterns do much to bring glory to God.

Following Cody’s post about pizza and a thoughtful conversation with my undergrad students this week on food and prayer, I read Leslie Leyland Field’s latest article in Christianity Today entitled “A Feast Fit for the King: Returning our growing fields and kitchen table to God” and wanted to suggest some ideas for youth ministry conversation.

Fields recounts the all-too-familiar plight of the church potluck table, complete with buckets of fast-food chicken, orange cheese puffs, and jell-o posing as real food. She observes, “We pray our thanks over this smorgasbord of chemical wizardry and marketing genius, ask that it would strengthen our bodies (something I believe will take divine intervention), and invite Jesus to be among us as we eat.” And that’s eating a step up from typical youth ministry fare.

Alongside a healthy critique of the “new food movement,” its self-absorption, and its misguided quest for salvation outside of Christ, Fields prompts the Church to ask new questions about food.  Food clearly matters in scripture, and big-industry food and farming raise a lot of ethical questions Churches tend to skirt.  Namely, “Beyond a quick word of thanks before meals, have we seriously considered how our eating and drinking either reveals of suppresses the glory of God [referencing 1 Corinthians 10:31]?”

So at the risk of stirring the pot (pun intended), here are some perhaps well-timed questions for us to consider in youth ministry:

• What’s our theology of food—its role, growth, production, consumption, and function in the life of the church?
• What’s our theology of eating? Throughout history and across cultures, eating together has always had relational and spiritual implications. Have we de-spirited our meals, or do we eat and drink together in ways that honor one another and God and that foster reconciliation (the core imagery of the shared table)?
• How are we responding to concerns being raised about local and global food patterns (some would say injustices or crises), and the questions our more thoughtful students and families are asking?
• What practical ideas has your church had about eating (and sharing) food to the glory of God?

This Saturday I’ll pick up my family’s local organic CSA (community-supported agriculture) farm box, and I’ll probably also nab one of the remaining highly-processed and non-fair-trade-chocolate Halloween candy treats in my house. I don’t pretend to have my own contradictions worked out on this.  But I think it’s worth some conversation.

©2010 Fuller Youth Institute