What Would Jesus Eat?
I was recently reminded of a conversation I once had with a woman who insisted that Jesus didn’t eat.
Her thinking was somewhat reasonable. Jesus, after all, created the earth and all the plants and animals therein, so the Creator, logically, wouldn’t consume that which He created, right? Well, I guess that stands to reason, other than the fact that the New Testament records several occasions of Jesus eating, even after His resurrection when he was no longer mortal and wouldn’t need food to sustain Himself.
Ah, but that was just an illusion, she said. He simply pretended to eat.
And how did He do that? I asked.
Answer: He’s Jesus. He’s the Son of God. He can do whatever He wants.
Yes, well, I suppose there’s some truth in that, too. But the woman’s supposition doesn’t really saying anything about Jesus, per se, although it says a lot about the woman herself. Jesus may have been capable of going without food his whole life – 40 days of fasting, anyone? – but if we are to believe the NT writers, He ate. Her dismissal of inconvenient scriptures as illusory simply meant that she’d found a way of remaking God in her own image. She says Jesus can do whatever He wants, but her Jesus doesn’t do whatever He wants.
He does whatever she wants.
I’ve also heard others claim that Jesus is a vegetarian using a similar rationale, despite the whole loaves and fishes thing. Maybe fish are a vegetable. I have a sister-in-law who is a vegetarian but still eats fish, so there you go. It’s all so complicated – even today, nobody can give me a straight answer on what a tomato is. But I digress.
You see a bunch of this kind of nonsense in the world today, like the environmentalists who ran the "What would Jesus drive?" campaign, insisting the Lord would prefer a hybrid to an SUV. Or consider Cornel West and/or My Esteemed Colleague, both of whom insist that Jesus was a Marxist, ignoring Marxism's contempt for religion, something Jesus would have been unlikely to overlook.
Disagreements about God’s dietary habits exemplify one of the reasons I’m a Latter-day Saint that believes in continual revelation. It’s much harder to remake God when He’s still around to correct the record.
Most Christians believe that all revelation ended with the complete, self-sufficient, self-explanatory Bible, but they have a hard time agreeing on what the Bible is or what it means. If you were to drop the Bible on an alien world with no instructions other than to fashion a religion based on its precepts, how much would you want to bet that whatever they came up with would look radically different from anything we see on Earth? You think they’d spontaneously come up with the Nicene Creed or Christmas trees? You think they’d celebrate the Resurrection by having rabbits hide colored eggs?
The Bible isn’t religion. The Bible is a record of people who had religion. True religion comes via direct revelation from God. That’s how the people in the Bible did it, and that’s how we should do it, too.
Which gets to the heart of the matter:
The question “What would Jesus do?” always bugs me.
We really don’t know what Jesus would do under most circumstances, and, like the "Jesus is a Fruitarian" example, our guesses say more about us than they do about Him.
Case in point:
At a critical moment in my life, a church leader – I’ll call him Phil - provided me with counsel that I’ve never forgotten, although not for the reasons he intended.
On this occasion, I was wondering whether or not I should pursue a career as an actor. To help guide my decision, Phil told the story of going to see a movie that his son had picked out. Phil found the film to be highly offensive.
“Ah, gee, Pop,” the son told Phil, “compared to most stuff in theatres today, that movie wasn’t half bad.”
“Would you take a date to see that movie?” Phil asked.
“Sure,” said the son.
But then Phil delivered what he considered to be the coup de grace:
“Would you take the Savior to see that movie?”
I knew where he was heading with this, so I stopped him and said, “I wouldn’t take the Savior to see any movie!”
To which Phil replied, ”That’s why I don’t go see movies.”
I still agree with my answer, but not because movies are inherently immoral. I wouldn’t take the Savior to a movie, but I wouldn’t take the Savior to a baseball game, either. Heck, I wouldn’t take Him to a Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert. So, certainly, if the Savior showed up at my doorstep, I wouldn’t say, “you know, there’s a matinee of Dan In Real Life playing at 4:45 – we can just make it if we leave now, though we might miss the previews.”
When I was getting my MBA at BYU, we were presented with an ethical dilemma. Suppose you work for a bank, and it’s your responsibility to evaluate business loans for a new customer. You discover the financials are rock solid, but there’s a slight hitch – the client's business is producing pornography.
Do you recommend that the loan be approved?
I thought the answer was clear cut. I wasn’t the one making the final decision on the loan – it was my job just to make sure the financials were in order. They were. So I would do my job.
Then one of the other students got indignant. “What would Jesus do?” he asked me, certain that would change my mind and put the issue to rest.
“I don’t know,” I answered back. “Would Jesus be a loan officer?”
That's not the only question. Would Jesus refuse to pass on the information because it would be used in a way He would disapprove of? Would Jesus fulfill his obligations, despite the fact that he worked for an imperfect employer? Would Jesus grab his cat-o-nine-tails and clear the moneychangers out of the bank? Would he call down legions of angels to bring the pornographers to their eternal reward?
What would Jesus do? The only way to know is to ask Him. And if He doesn't tell you, you're on your own.
Summing up: I like fresh tomatoes slices with pepper, no matter what they are.
Her thinking was somewhat reasonable. Jesus, after all, created the earth and all the plants and animals therein, so the Creator, logically, wouldn’t consume that which He created, right? Well, I guess that stands to reason, other than the fact that the New Testament records several occasions of Jesus eating, even after His resurrection when he was no longer mortal and wouldn’t need food to sustain Himself.
Ah, but that was just an illusion, she said. He simply pretended to eat.
And how did He do that? I asked.
Answer: He’s Jesus. He’s the Son of God. He can do whatever He wants.
Yes, well, I suppose there’s some truth in that, too. But the woman’s supposition doesn’t really saying anything about Jesus, per se, although it says a lot about the woman herself. Jesus may have been capable of going without food his whole life – 40 days of fasting, anyone? – but if we are to believe the NT writers, He ate. Her dismissal of inconvenient scriptures as illusory simply meant that she’d found a way of remaking God in her own image. She says Jesus can do whatever He wants, but her Jesus doesn’t do whatever He wants.
He does whatever she wants.
I’ve also heard others claim that Jesus is a vegetarian using a similar rationale, despite the whole loaves and fishes thing. Maybe fish are a vegetable. I have a sister-in-law who is a vegetarian but still eats fish, so there you go. It’s all so complicated – even today, nobody can give me a straight answer on what a tomato is. But I digress.
You see a bunch of this kind of nonsense in the world today, like the environmentalists who ran the "What would Jesus drive?" campaign, insisting the Lord would prefer a hybrid to an SUV. Or consider Cornel West and/or My Esteemed Colleague, both of whom insist that Jesus was a Marxist, ignoring Marxism's contempt for religion, something Jesus would have been unlikely to overlook.
Disagreements about God’s dietary habits exemplify one of the reasons I’m a Latter-day Saint that believes in continual revelation. It’s much harder to remake God when He’s still around to correct the record.
Most Christians believe that all revelation ended with the complete, self-sufficient, self-explanatory Bible, but they have a hard time agreeing on what the Bible is or what it means. If you were to drop the Bible on an alien world with no instructions other than to fashion a religion based on its precepts, how much would you want to bet that whatever they came up with would look radically different from anything we see on Earth? You think they’d spontaneously come up with the Nicene Creed or Christmas trees? You think they’d celebrate the Resurrection by having rabbits hide colored eggs?
The Bible isn’t religion. The Bible is a record of people who had religion. True religion comes via direct revelation from God. That’s how the people in the Bible did it, and that’s how we should do it, too.
Which gets to the heart of the matter:
The question “What would Jesus do?” always bugs me.
We really don’t know what Jesus would do under most circumstances, and, like the "Jesus is a Fruitarian" example, our guesses say more about us than they do about Him.
Case in point:
At a critical moment in my life, a church leader – I’ll call him Phil - provided me with counsel that I’ve never forgotten, although not for the reasons he intended.
On this occasion, I was wondering whether or not I should pursue a career as an actor. To help guide my decision, Phil told the story of going to see a movie that his son had picked out. Phil found the film to be highly offensive.
“Ah, gee, Pop,” the son told Phil, “compared to most stuff in theatres today, that movie wasn’t half bad.”
“Would you take a date to see that movie?” Phil asked.
“Sure,” said the son.
But then Phil delivered what he considered to be the coup de grace:
“Would you take the Savior to see that movie?”
I knew where he was heading with this, so I stopped him and said, “I wouldn’t take the Savior to see any movie!”
To which Phil replied, ”That’s why I don’t go see movies.”
I still agree with my answer, but not because movies are inherently immoral. I wouldn’t take the Savior to a movie, but I wouldn’t take the Savior to a baseball game, either. Heck, I wouldn’t take Him to a Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert. So, certainly, if the Savior showed up at my doorstep, I wouldn’t say, “you know, there’s a matinee of Dan In Real Life playing at 4:45 – we can just make it if we leave now, though we might miss the previews.”
When I was getting my MBA at BYU, we were presented with an ethical dilemma. Suppose you work for a bank, and it’s your responsibility to evaluate business loans for a new customer. You discover the financials are rock solid, but there’s a slight hitch – the client's business is producing pornography.
Do you recommend that the loan be approved?
I thought the answer was clear cut. I wasn’t the one making the final decision on the loan – it was my job just to make sure the financials were in order. They were. So I would do my job.
Then one of the other students got indignant. “What would Jesus do?” he asked me, certain that would change my mind and put the issue to rest.
“I don’t know,” I answered back. “Would Jesus be a loan officer?”
That's not the only question. Would Jesus refuse to pass on the information because it would be used in a way He would disapprove of? Would Jesus fulfill his obligations, despite the fact that he worked for an imperfect employer? Would Jesus grab his cat-o-nine-tails and clear the moneychangers out of the bank? Would he call down legions of angels to bring the pornographers to their eternal reward?
What would Jesus do? The only way to know is to ask Him. And if He doesn't tell you, you're on your own.
Summing up: I like fresh tomatoes slices with pepper, no matter what they are.
posted by Elder Samuel Bennett | 10:51 AM
9 Comments:
Tomatoes are a fruit.
Whether or not they are good for you has been debated.
Of course they're good for you. They came out of the ground, didn't they? (yes, well, so does pot, but ok)
They're too acidic. Bad for you, burn out natural chemicals.
Good for you. They have licopene.
Bad for you. They're part of the nightshade family of plants.
I say - fresh tomatoes good, unripe tomatoes bad. Best with mozzarella or gorgonzola.
I also tell people when they ask if I would take the Savior to a movie, that He's already seen it.
I concur. Tomatoes are a fruit.
They are eaten best freshly picked, sliced, doused in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, topped with a slice of gournet mozarella and fresh basil.
Now I'm hungry.
the only good tomato is in a sauce
You know, it's amazing to me that my little throwaway lines are always the ones that spark the most comments.
Many Christians have a very difficult time in general with the corporeal nature of Christ. Many believe that the body is a lesser vessel, a necessary evil of this world, and that the most perfected state is spirit only. Yet Christ was resurrected, performed physical acts after resurrection, and ascended into heaven in full glory with his perfected body.
The LDS belief, based on ancient and modern revelation, is a radical departure from this belief. I believe that because Christendom had been so changed from the truth regarding the nature of the Father and the Son, that the only way to wrench the truth back was a full-body, complete, and physical manifestation of the true nature of God and Christ. Hence the reason why Joseph Smith experienced this form of revelation, rather than just a dream, or "still small voice," or some other method of personal revelation.
I knew this guy once, let's call him Bill. Bill wanted to borrow $20 to go to the movies. I said, "No, Jesus wouldn't lend you $20, and neither will I."
There's no moral to this story.
How could Christ have been tempted by the devil after fasting 40 days if he wasn't hungry?
Jesus would probably like this article.
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