What would Jesus eat?

This is a talk I gave at St Luke’s Holloway on 27.10.19. You can listen to a recording of the talk here.

Mangoes are my favourite fruit. I can’t get enough of them. But as we heard in the Mary Oliver poem this morning, The Mango, our decisions about what to eat can quickly get complicated. As Mary Oliver tucks into a tasty bit of fruit, it suddenly becomes a morally questionable event. The poem says:

When I began to eat
things happened. 
All through the sweetness I heard voices, 
men and women talking about something—
another country, and trouble. 
It wasn’t my language, but I understood enough. 
Jungles, and death. The ships 
leaving the harbors, their holds 
filled with mangoes. 

I grew up on a classic British diet. Ham sandwiches for lunch. Meat and two veg for dinner. Sunday roast every week. And, as my mum pointed out to Annabel last time we visited my parents, a year-long spell where Mum made me a bacon butty every morning for breakfast.

I love meat. I love chicken, especially when it’s deep-fried. I love sausages and mash. I love beef burgers. I love pigs in blankets. I love turkey and stuffing. I love fish and chips. I love ham and mustard sandwiches. And now I’m salivating.

Over the past few years, I’ve been thinking a lot more about the impact that my diet has on our planet. The one that we’re rapidly destroying. In 2016, I went vegan for the year. And, to make it more fun, teetotal. I partly went vegan to see if it would help with my running, but mostly for environmental reasons. And to see if it was even possible to keep it up.

Well, I managed to do it. Tea’s not quite as good with oat milk, but you get used to it. My drunken cravings for fried chicken went away because, well, I wasn’t drunk. And I developed a deep love of sweet potato, avocado, hummus, and all manner of beans. Most of the time, I didn’t even miss meat.

As 2016 drew to a close, so did my year of veganism. I broke my meat fast with a frankly disgusting amount of fried chicken at Bird on Holloway Road, on January 1st 2017. I ate so much that I thought I was going to be sick and spent the rest of the evening sweating in bed.

At this point, it’s probably a good idea to say that it’s widely agreed that eating less meat is an effective way to help our planet. A recent newspaper report says: ‘Deforestation to make way for livestock, along with methane emissions from cows and fertilizer use, creates as much greenhouse gas emissions as all the world’s cars, trucks and airplanes.’ 

Our meat addiction is more calamitous for the planet than most people are prepared to admit.

Over the past three years, I’ve tried to navigate the complicated world of diet alongside Annabel, my steak-loving wife. And, while it’s confusing, it’s somewhat comforting that our pals in the Bible also struggled with some of the same questions a few thousand years ago—albeit under slightly different circumstances. 

Today’s reading, where Paul writes to the early followers of Jesus in Rome, puts it like this:  

If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love.

We’ve moved way beyond the situation that Paul describes. Back then, people were arguing about which Jewish laws and traditions people were now free from since becoming followers of Jesus—for instance, dietary habits like eating certain types of meat.

On one level, from a biblical perspective, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with eating meat anymore. Dietary laws are from a past time, and we’re now in a new time. 

On another level, though, something deeper is going on—and the spirit of what Paul’s saying could hardly be more relevant. Paul is asking us about whether what we eat or drink is acting in love for our sisters and brothers. 

How can we embody the loving message of the gospel with the food we put in our mouths?

If our decision to eat meat contributes to climate change—which disproportionately affects people in other countries that are more vulnerable to extreme weather conditions—is that acting in love?

If we were to act in love for people across this world we call home, would we eat less meat? 

It’s questions like these that have led me to my current diet, where I try to eat only one meaty meal each week. But, as with many things in life, there are grey areas. On Tuesday, I found myself at a fancy Norfolk pub dealing in venison. It was on a large patch of land that was home to 1,300 deer.

While looking over the menu, I felt a bit weird about eating one of these majestic creatures that we’d seen while entering the pub. But, as Annabel pointed out, eating something killed in the next field is about as low impact a meal as you can find. Eating the deer forms part of controlling their population levels. And, as it turns out, the venison sausages—cooked over an open fire—were to die for.

However, we don’t often find ourselves at a gastropub surrounded by fields of deer. And, given what we know about meat’s effect on the environment, how can we continue to eat it in such vast quantities? 

In the 17th century translation of the Bible, known as the King James Version, God is quoted like this, in the first book of the Bible, Genesis: 

“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Then God says, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.”

Back then, it was all well and good for God to talk about us chomping our way through creation. The planet wasn’t on fire. God had only just made the thing, and we hadn’t had time to start destroying it. But things have changed.

The other problem with this 17th century translation is the use of words like ’subdue’ and ‘rule’. More recent translations talk about ‘stewarding’ creation, or ‘being responsible’ for it. And that gives a different flavour to the text. 

Suddenly, rather than ruling creation—doing whatever we want with it—we’re now called to be responsible for it. To care for it. To nurture it. And right now, we’re doing a horrible job of it.

If you’re anything like me, you might feel pretty hopeless about the state of the world. I question whether my decisions about diet will have any effect in the grand scheme of things. Whether our choice to holiday in the UK rather than flying overseas matters, particularly when the likes of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West book an entire 747 jet for themselves so they can work out on the plane.

But as Christians we’re called to be hopeful. To resist apathy. To fight despair. To find ways to fill our lives with love—in everything we do. And that includes how we eat. If eating our favourite food contributes to a cycle of poverty, or is flown over from the other side of the world and warms the planet more, or means an animal spends its life in a cage only slightly bigger than its body before being slaughtered for our consumption, should we eat it? 

Is that a loving thing to do?

Perhaps we need to get more comfortable with learning together about a new way of living on this earth—adapting our habits in light of love. Not arguing with each other about the merits or problems with veganism—just so we can feel okay about eating steak—but challenging each other in a loving way. 

It’s going to take all of us. Because tackling climate change is a tall order. Even just this one part—the impact of our diet—is riddled with complications. We’re going to need to pool our thoughts and wisdom to navigate what we consume in 2019.

So let’s talk about it. Preferably over food. Food that we’ve tried to source and prepare in a way that’s as loving and kind to the planet—and our fellow planet-dwelling humans and animals—as possible.

Let’s think about vegetarianism and veganism. About buying local and organic and FairTrade. About checking the ingredients on a packet to see if they contain palm oil. Let’s think about the packaging our food comes in. Whether it’s recyclable. Whether we can avoid it entirely. 

What we choose to buy and eat makes a statement. It sets an example for people around us. Our friends, families, partners, coworkers. It’s a chance to communicate this gospel of love that we believe in. It’s not going to be easy, but I think we should give it a try.

As Paul put it to those early Christians, we don’t want to distress our sisters or brothers because of what we eat. Our goal must be to act in love.