If you search on my blog or health website, you won’t find much written by me about the Bible’s clean and unclean food laws. It isn’t because I don’t have an opinion; rather, it’s more because I just haven’t gotten around to tackling such a controversial topic.
I really don’t like controversy! 
However, if you want to know the truth, our family does try to follow God’s commands about clean and unclean food. Most of our friends don’t agree that we should avoid foods like pork or shellfish, and we’re not trying to force our views on them. But over the past few years, as we’ve searched the Scripture, we’ve gotten more and more convinced.
- An excellent discussion of Leviticus 11 you might want to read (free registration required)
- Online studies of various Bible passages on clean and unclean foods
There are huge theological implications behind this, and maybe someday I’ll have the energy to write about some of that here. Not today. But besides what I’ve read in the Bible, I’ve also been thoroughly convinced by the scientific research that validates God’s Word. I won’t even share all that today. I’ll leave it to you to begin searching it out, if you’re interested. But it’s intriguing that science and the Bible agree, isn’t it?
Why would God make such strange laws anyway? Well, it’s similar to why a mother would not allow her children to jump on the furniture or to tip their chairs back on two legs. They could get hurt! She knows from experience what can happen, so she lovingly makes a “commandment.” Of course, she won’t stop loving them if they fall and knock their heads open… yet, her rules are there for their protection.
For me personally, I’ve suffered physical consequences from eating pork. One of the strange “benefits” of having Addison’s disease is that bad food choices (whether unclean foods, sugar, or MSG) make me feel yucky pretty fast. It’s great motivation for me to try to make good choices.
But even if I were healthier and could eat whatever I wanted, with no regard for the Bible’s opinion on food, it wouldn’t mean that my body wasn’t being harmed at the cellular level, where no one could see.
So today’s post isn’t an attempt to convince you. I’m not even interested in comments or emails trying to convince me that I’m wrong. I’m just hoping to make you think… to consider that there might be another way.
Lovingly,
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I’m not trying to change your mind or challenge your position, rather just curious your stance of Jesus’ words in Mark 7:18b-19.
Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, 19 because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?”[g]
“The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.) So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with ‘unclean’ hands?” (Mark 7:1-5, NIV).
My quick answer is that these verses are talking about eating with unwashed hands, not eating foods that God declared unclean in Leviticus 11. Compare “thus purifying all foods” (Mark 7:19) in several translations and by looking at the Greek (even through Strong’s) if you can. Try blueletterbible.org for a good resource for this.
You might enjoy my long answer at http://anneelliott.com/blog/2010/11/is-gods-law-for-us-today/
*Thank you* for asking! I appreciate it…
~Anne
I followed the link to Hallee’s Give a Pig a Pancake. Good article, convincing and encouraging. I am coming to the point where I want to follow the biblical guidelines out of love for God who made them and hopefully by the urging of his spirit. Slow turning, my ship!
I was studying today about Paul going to James and Peter and John in Galatians 2 and Acts 15, and the decision not to make the Gentiles be Jewish in order to be saved through faith in Christ Jesus. Yet in following we may be led to obey the scriptures we read and with such joy that the Jews around us recognize and are drawn to God so that we can speak to them of Jesus. I want to keep the feasts. I want to recapture simple, clean food life. I want to trust God’s provision.
Thanks, Anne, for your reading and your posting. God bless you and yours.