More with Less Part 2: Why it Matters What We Eat

Lovely, uneaten beans in our kitchen. 

It's August 20th, and I had a left over lemon poppy-seed scone for breakfast. And plenty of random processed stuff all weekend. And our fridge is still full, and our good intentions have not yet leaped onto our plates of their own volition. It's the truth. It is hard to eat well and thoughtfully. It is much easier to go with the path of least resistance (and least cooking, and least menu-planning, and least dish-doing). I'm still convinced it is worth the effort, but I have to get over this hump somehow.

I was sitting awkwardly at the little picnic-table area of Costco on Saturday, guiltily wolfing down my slice of Desperation Pizza and wondering exactly what it would take to turn things around. When presented with a quick, cheap slab of gooey cheese and pillowy dough and I haven't eaten lunch and it's 2pm, I lunged for it. Even though I knew I would be muttering profanities under my breath in a few hours because of the wheat. I wanted something to eat, and I hadn't set myself up to make a good choice. So I went back to the easiest and fastest path to shut off the rumbling in my stomach.

And besides, it doesn't really matter what I eat, right? I mean, those hungry people in North Korea or sub-Saharan Africa or downtown Raleigh or rural Mississippi are not going to go to sleep with full bellies just because I refuse to buy BigBox Store pizza or out-of-season tomatoes or anything that was shipped from Chile, right? Even if I change my diet and a few others follow suit, we're not going to change the food industry or re-direct any of my uneaten bagels to Bangladesh. So, do my food choices really matter to anyone but me?

Here's where I would love to reprint the whole 4-page chapter from the More-with-Less Cookbook called "Change - An Act of Faith". I have re-read it a couple of times this week to help me keep my eyes on the bigger picture, which, as the book points out, is essentially this:

In our complex world, it is hard to visualize how the struggles of a few families to save food will help. Channels to the needy are long and circuitous. Yet deconsumption is an obvious first step. The very complexity that frustrates easy answers also means that our decisions in the global family are interrelated. "Life is a huge spider web so that if you touch it anywhere you set the whole things trembling" says Frederick Buccher in The Hungering Dark.

 ...How can we continue overeating in the face of starvation, and be at peace with ourselves and our neighbors?... If we expect North American food conservation to totally solve world hunger, with good reason we sound naive and even paternalistic. Concerned Christians will move on to initiate food production and distribution programs. They will challenge oppressive government policy. But these broad areas are being dealt with in other settings. The scope of this book is necessarily limited to what some older preachers call "putting our own house in order". 

So that's where I'll commit to start. Putting our own house in order. My parents worked hard at this when we were kids. They were committed to some counter-cultural convictions, and it caused endless misery in my school-age years. WHY can't we have this toy or those jeans? WHY do we do these lame Family Devotions every Sunday? What if my friends find out that I'm reading Bible stories with my family, and that's why I've never seen The Simpsons?  They were putting their own house in order. They were looking at the Bible and at Jesus' teachings, and saying, as did the little cross-stitch next to the front door, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." For me and Les, we've been convicted that part of that means getting a handle on our consumption.

The More-With-Less Cookbook cites Jesus' miracle of feeding the 5,000 as a model for how WE are to respond in the face of seemingly impossible instruction and an overwhelming number of hungry people. We look at the huge need, then at our limited resources, and then back up at Jesus. He says "Share what you've got! There will be enough." and then we have to be obedient, even though that idea sounds nutty. Even if our faith is wobbly and our desire to trust and be obedient causes us to shrug and walk sheepishly into the crowd with one little loaf. We act in obedience, and God takes care of the rest.

Handily enough, the sermon we heard in church yesterday was ALSO about this miracle and the same point about obedience in the face of the overwhelming needs of the world. Here are the 3 tidy points of his three point sermon:

1. Jesus models a new perspective - We see overwhelming needs and feel powerless and frustrated. Jesus sees the crowd and is filled with compassion. 
2. Jesus gives us a new role - We're called to serve! Creatively, compassionately. Servanthood, he reminded us, is not limited by convenience, and we're not intended to take this all on our individual shoulders - we all share responsibility for everyone.
3. Jesus gives us a new set of rules - Nothing is impossible with Him. 

The disciples looked around at all those hungry people, and what did Jesus do? He didn't zap the loaves and fish and watch them mount into huge mountains of food. No, he looked at the disciples and said "You give them something to eat." They had some, and everyone around them had none. Sure, it looked like there was no way it would be enough. But it was! Plenty. Miraculously. And, as the story of the 5,000 reminds us so terrifically when it makes a point to mention that there were 12 baskets of food left over at the end (one for each disciple), when we work alongside God to fill the needs of others, HE PROVIDES FOR OUR NEEDS AS WELL.

So, bottom line. Will changing your food habits solve the world's food crisis? Will the world be a better place because you or I cut back? Will a scrappy band of Jesus-following vegetarian Robin Hoods start redistributing food all over the US and stand on a hill in the sunset and yell "As God as my witness, THEY will never go hungry again!"?

Maybe not. But maybe. And I'll just end with this. Like so many other ways that followers of Jesus are called to live lives that are not conformed to the patterns of this world, maybe our food choices are part of that set-apartness. Maybe they should be, if they are not. Maybe you or I or someone we know will feel God calling them to advocacy, or food redistribution, or to go down to the park where all the homeless gather and just share a big pot of chili with them and get to know their names. Maybe it's just time to get our own house in order, and keep looking up to God when we come face to face with the hungry and the sick and ask "Ok God, what are You and I gonna do about this? What do you want me to do here?". We have to start somewhere. Because I have already committed to Follow Jesus. And guess who he hung out with? Guess what his kitchen and pantry were stocked with? (Trick question!).

So I'll keep re-committing to getting my own house in order, and keep plodding along as I biff. I'll try to Give Thanks, to share, to be grateful. To celebrate joyfully, to live more within the bounds of "enough" and "plenty" instead of constant feast mode. And maybe, as the Mennonites who brought us the More-with-Less cookbook did, the money we trim from our food budget by eating simply can go directly to the folks who are hungry rather than right back into our pool of cash for other stuff we don't really need. It is not easy. It's a road less traveled. But we're on it now. One foot in front of the other, slowly first, then skipping. Then dancing.