It’s the Lenten season right now.
Growing up in a lackadaisical Protestant family, I didn’t practice Lent as a child; nor did my non-denominational awakening really encourage participation in it.
This year, I thought it was time. I can’t explain what pushed me towards it, but in the end, more than a whim and less than a Word from Heaven caused me to decide I wanted to go Vegan for the six or so weeks that comprise the Lenten season. Vegan means no meat, no dairy; I have felt it good to also eliminate refined sugars and caffeine as much as possible.
On Ash Wednesday, which kicks off the season, I went to an Anglican service with friends Jonathan and Ben. I’d never been to one before, and actually had no idea what Lent is actually about in the Christian tradition, outside of giving stuff up. That night I learned that it’s considered a time of “Bright Sadness.” It involves, first, examination of our human condition, turning away from what is unhealthy, unjust, dysfunctional, or otherwise grieves the heart of God. That’s the sadness. But then, it’s also bright, made so by the glorious hope that things of difficulty and mourning in this life can and will be made right by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
“Hm, that’s interesting” would more or less summarize my reaction to these findings, as I was then concentrating on teetering on the edge of my new diet.
Oh, but the Lord is interesting. I thought I ought to look at the story of Daniel, since a Vegan diet is pretty much what Christian fasters call a “Daniel fast”—eating only things that grow from the ground. In the first chapter of the book, Daniel and his friends are living in captivity in Babylon, but as the choicest of the young men, are being trained and pampered. Presumably, they are given the richest of foods to eat. However,
“Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.” (1:8)
So it is that he and his buddies eat only vegetables and water, and turn out healthier than all the other strapping young men.
I began, as I carried this story in my mind, to consider how partaking of certain foods might defile us. There’s some clear evidence that we as a culture aren’t consuming the healthiest of diets; we’re heavy on the grains, fats, sugars, and processed foods, and many of our kids can’t recognize simple vegetables in their original form. We’re defiling our own bodies and stealing our own health by not eating as we should.
So that’s one thing. I can choose to take responsibility, when I eat a big ol’ cookie, for the extra weight those kinds of choices add to my body and the other ways it messes with my system. But do my choices about what to eat only defile me? Maybe Daniel and company abstained from the foods of Babylon for an even bigger reason than personal health. This is the train of thought that has turned everything upside down.
At work, I thought about what we sell.* Consider the muffins we sell, that have an ingredient list three inches long. Who made them? Where did the flour and sugar come from? Where they grew, was the soil managed well? Were chemicals used on the crops that could harm our health? Were the farmers compensated well? And what about our meat? Who raised the turkeys whose meat we put on our sandwiches? Did those birds ever see the light of day? How were they killed? Who butchered them, and are they making a fair living? Was the feces of the beef cattle allowed to leach into a town’s water supply?
There are answers to these questions, but I don’t know them for sure. In the last year, I’ve learned enough about these issues to know that, in general, these answers paint a bleak picture. As consumers, we’re enabling small farmers (those remaining, and there aren’t many) to be run out of business, soil to be sapped of its health, animals to be treated as objects, and workers to be treated as animals or pieces of a machine.
I say “we” because I’m totally included in this. My choices do this. I am responsible.
This understanding has brought repentance to a whole new level. Suddenly, as I look at how we—I—treat food, I’m looking at a giant cultural deficit that I believe is evil and has gone astray from God’s good, righteous, functional plan for us as human beings. And I’m saying, over and over, several times a day, with all my heart, “I’M SO SORRY. My choices deserve death because they have caused death. Help me change my ways, God. I want to align my life, ALL of my life, with who you are.” From that place, then, I’m crying out that God would have mercy on our culture for these ways that we ignore or deny what is true and good.
Because there’s better, right? There’s a “bright” to this sadness. We’re meant to feel good, all the time. There are good, healthy, loving, joyful, caring ways to eat, to buy food, to grow food, to run food companies. And they come from a good, healthy, loving, joyful, caring God who is seated in Heaven rooting for us, and our children and all our descendants, to have good, whole lives.
*I use this not to defame my workplace, but because it’s the closest, most regular way I come into contact with the “normal” way our culture interacts with food.
