Eat and Drink to Glorify God

1 Corinthians 10:31, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."

In our diet culture, foods that we have enjoyed all our lives can suddenly be deemed unhealthy. One minute fat is bad and fat-free food reigns and the next fat is good and carbs are the foods to avoid. As a child, I fondly remember the smell of bacon sizzling, Wonderbread toasted to perfection and slathered in salted butter, and creamy scrambled eggs made with heavy cream. As we gathered around the table we joined hands, bowed our heads, and thanked God for the food that he had given us without any consciousness of good or bad, it was food, plain and simple. Sometime later bacon and eggs disappeared from our table because they supposedly caused cancer and cereal became the breakfast staple.

I grew up in the Seventies when we were told that butter was poison, and eggs could give you a heart attack. Of course, my imagination ran wild and I pictured minuscule cancer cells bouncing around in my body and I wondered if I'd keel over with a heart attack or poisoned from the butter smeared on my Wonderbread. This was when I became aware that there was an outside force that deemed food good or bad.

Like many people in America, I have been swayed one way or another by food fads. In my twenties, I ate fat-free because it seemed logical that fat caused a person to gain weight and I frowned upon my girlfriend who ate full-fat yogurt, or when the Atkins diet exploded on the scene and I watched a friend gobble up a pound of bacon and half a dozen eggs. The scale of good and bad ruled my life, it affected my friendships, the way I looked at myself, and my relationship with God. Glorifying God with my food choices was not part of my vocabulary, and eating or not eating was to help me achieve the thin body and the happy life that I desired.

Fast forward thirty some odd years and I can tell you that my relationship with food, myself and God has changed. Five years ago I bought a book called The Wellness Revelation and within its pages, I learned that God loves me because he loves me not because I eat good food or am a certain size but because He loves me because HE IS LOVE. I learned that all relationships, with people, with myself, and with food all flow out of the knowledge that God loves me, I am His child and He takes care of me. Now I can give God the glory while I eat eggs and bacon without fear of cancer, full-fat yogurt without being afraid of getting fat, and bread and butter without fear of being poisoned because God is good and he is taking care of me.