Real Food and Religion series: A Christian Perspective

Todays guest post is from Kate Tietje. She blogs at modernalternativemama. She blogs about real food and describes herself as "Living the non-mainstream life: Jesus-loving, debt-free living, home birthing, extended breastfeeding, cloth diapering, non-vaccinating, organic gardening and real-food cooking mama!"

I am a Christian.  Currently I attend a non-denominational church that has Baptist roots.  I grew up Catholic and my husband grew up Church of God.  But now we basically focus on the fact that we follow Jesus.

            The biggest thing we take about food from our religion is that sacrifices and ceremony are not necessary.  We’ve studied this issue indepth in our Bible studies with friends, and Jesus teaches that the “Ways of Old,” like animal sacrifice or avoiding certain foods, are not necessary, because they are just for show and are not as important as loving people and celebrating with them.  This is what we follow – we don’t worry about celebrating with anything in particular, or avoiding anything in particular because we don’t believe that the rituals are as important as the spirit.

            However, we strive to eat what is natural and created by God.  We try to avoid food that isn’t the way God created it – which is anything that is processed, like store-bought prepared meals, canned foods, etc.  We try to be good stewards of the resources God has provided, by doing things like sourcing local foods, picking things wild, etc.  It is important to us to eat naturally.  Although not as important as not offending our hosts should we be fellowshipping with others who don’t share our passion!

            Our church highly encourages us to get together with a small group on a regular basis and share a meal.  There is no specific menu, it changes every time (we eat together about once a month).  The idea is to sit down and “break bread” together, as Jesus did with many people during His lifetime.  Our focus is on togetherness and sharing.

            We don’t have much of a problem between science and religion.  It’s funny, but I’ve done a lot of research on diet and have come to various conclusions based on my research and my religion, but the “mainstream scientists” don’t agree.  Then, within a few weeks or months, a new mainstream study will come out basically proving what I said all along!  I have a friend who frequently sends me articles she finds, saying, “There’s that thing you were talking about!”  So science vs. religion isn’t really a problem for me.

            We do take this seriously!  Following God’s design for food and the world (looking for food that is in season, prepared the way it was designed to be, eating things as minimally processed as possible) is very important to us.