The Importance of Feasting and Feeding

 I have been learning recently about the importance of food. I would like to share a few seemingly unrelated experiences and tie them together:

Experience #1: When I was 16, living on the outskirts of Bozeman, MT, we had a few sheep. One was named Porkchop. Porkchop was really good at breaking through the fence and wandering around the hillside by our house. The problem was, the wildflower lupine grows all around that area, and lupine is poisonous to sheep. So, one day, when Porkchop escaped, my mother sent myself and a friend out to return him to the corral. We chased him—he ran. We cornered him—he dodged us. We tried to lasso him—he jumped out of reach. I was getting exasperated with this stupid sheep. Didn’t he know we only wanted to help? Didn’t he know we were trying to protect him from danger? 

Finally, my friend had an idea. We walked into the corral, leaving the door open, and poured some sheep pellets—a tasty ovine dish—into a bowl. Porkchop heard the pellets being poured and the other sheep bleating from across the hill and he came literally running into the corral to eat. 

Experience #2: This week I listened to a powerful lecture by Star: a woman who spent 20 years being trafficked as a sex slave around the United States. One day, with a bullet in her head left there by her pimp and all of her fellow “employees” dead, she found herself floating in the ocean off the coast of California. She heard a voice tell her, “This is the last time I save you from yourself,” not a threatening voice, nor a spiteful voice, but a clear and loud and “booming” voice full of love. Soon thereafter she was found and saved. She came to Utah and met a bishop working at Deseret Industries. Since that time she has found a source of healing, peace, and purpose in Jesus Christ. She founded “Rockstar Ministries” in Salt Lake as an outreach program for victims of human trafficking. She told us that there are people recruiting new human trafficking victims all over the place: they look for vulnerabilities and needs in young women and become their friends. They help them when it seems no one else will. They buy them things. They listen to them. Then they ask them to do things in return. It is a slippery slope with violent beating, manipulation, and coercion mingled with affection and validation. Star told us, “When Jesus begged Peter to ‘feed my sheep’, I think He did so because He knows that if we followers of Christ don’t feed the sheep, someone else will feed them, and it will be someone who wants to take advantage of them.”

Experience #3: I recently came to learn of the nutritional studies of Dr. Joel Furman, MD. He focuses on diet to treat disease. His prescriptions are not all that revolutionary (eat your fruits and vegetables!) but the results he reports are astounding and the theory is fascinating. Cancer is measurably decreased and slowed, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis are cured, heart disease is reversed. Everyone’s mother knows that eating low fat, low sugar, non-refined diets with lots of fruits and veggies is healthier, but why? Dr. Furman thinks of it this way: our bodies are hungry for nutrients. Not just macronutrients like carbs and protein, but micronutrients: vitamins, minerals, flavins; the symphony of nutrition that is provided most perfectly in the flora of our world. He theorizes that our bodies need these micronutrients to function, but you can’t get those nutrients in a twinkie or a waffle or a poptart or a steak. So, to get the nutrients, our bodies make us feel hungry. We respond by eating a poptart. This doesn’t solve the problem, so our body still feels hungry. We put junk in our bodies trying to fill our innate need for the simple good stuff; and the result is a population where heart disease is our number one killer, obesity is an epidemic, and diabetes is as common as McDonald’s. 

Experience #4: In my marriage preparation class last week, our teacher discussed one of the fundamentals of personal preparation for a happy marriage: personal security. This is somewhat synonymous with the modern definition of “self-esteem” and we discussed various sources of false self-esteem: wealth, image, popularity, health, intelligence, self-righteousness, talents, weight, the number of friends you have etc. These can all be good things if kept in their proper place, but they are a lousy and ephemeral foundation for your sense of lasting self worth, which is prerequisite to happiness and healthy relationships. What is a good source of self worth? Our teacher called to mind the old TV show “Antique Roadshow.” On the show, the people look at antique items and appraise them, discuss their good and bad qualities, and finally discover how much they are worth. Is the value of the item being auctioned off its age? Its condition? Its original price? Nope. The item is worth….exactly how much someone is willing to pay for it. Even if it is a beat-up, dirty-looking rag, it is worth a million dollars if someone is willing to pay it. 

The teacher then applied the same to us: how much are we as people worth? We are worth what God was willing to pay for us. In this case, it was the suffering of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, which was a price beyond what we understand. We were worth it to Him. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16).

I think these four experiences teach a lot of lessons when considered together, and I don’t need to bore you by making this post any longer with analysis. Suffice it to say, I think it is clear that all of us as humans hunger for love, for appreciation, for understanding and hope. There are poisonous wildflowers out there in the world, there are insubstantial twinkies, there are people who will love you to take advantage of you, and there are sources of false self-esteem ever-ready to satisfy our need to be recognized and valuable. But there are also sheep pellets, there are fruits and veggies, there are people who love you for who you are, and there is a never-ending source of identity that you can feast upon: you are a child of God, and your existence and your preservation are no accident. Even with all your flaws and faults, you are worth it to Him. That is a major part of what Christ came to teach us. 

The funny thing about hunger is that it never goes away for good; it keeps coming back. So we have to keep eating, eating either the good stuff or the bad stuff. We have such a feast at our disposition. I intend to, in the words of Dr. Seuss, “feast, feast, feast feast.” I hope these thoughts are helpful to you, and if you are hungry, come knock on my door. Food is always better shared.