A New Testament World in 2015: To Eat, or Not to Eat

A Bit of Context: Skip if you Hate History

 

Roots in history...

The Old Testament became clearer to me once I had lived in Taiwan. I don't mean that I was enlightened as to the theological significance of certain passages (although that's happened naturally along the way too), but that you simply look at the Old Testament differently when you've lived in a culture that was around in one form or another while it was being written.

For example, around the time Moses was ruling as the Prince of Egypt, the Shang dynasty was succeeding the mysterious Xia dynasty as the precursors to the ancient Chinese empire. Chinese culture had barely begun to develop then, of course, but the important thing is that it's considered the same culture in a sometimes jumpy but unbroken line since then. That line was frayed and all but severed in China by the devastating and culturally suicidal Cultural Revolution, an intentional attempt to break from the past, but in the end China is still China. (Taiwan never experienced the Cultural Revolution, and Chinese visitors are sometimes shocked to see how traditionally Chinese it feels, like an alternate future in which China was never Communist)

In cultures this old, regardless of the great changes experienced along the way, certain ancient things get passed down, even a lot of things of which people inside the culture are unaware, and including some things we see in the cultural setting of both the Old and New Testaments. A lot of the context of Biblical culture applies more easily.

So it is for reasons of history and not of cultural compatibility that America and Christianity have been so closely identified. Historically speaking, America was settled largely by Christians from Europe when Europe was still Christian, and therefore from its earliest days, the faith and ideals associated with it were present.

Culturally, however, it's one of the current existing cultures least like those in the background of scripture. Most Americans today are descendents of those who left the Old World and together created a new one, quite unlike the place they left behind. Even back at America's founding, the post-enlightenment West was teetering at the brink of the Industrial Revolution, and already entering Classical Modernity. The West had been Christian for a while, at least in the official sense. The dark, old fear and ritual appeasement of the spirit world of the pre-Christian West was confined to the remotest areas where the church was least strong, or else carried on in folk traditions. Those kinds of traditions are usually tied closely to the land, and only in the countryside of the earliest-settled parts of the US do you see these kinds of folk traditions having any kind of strength. Mostly they endure in individual family customs, things done because grandparents did them, though the grandparents themselves might not have fully understood why, only that it's nice to keep family traditions alive.

So ironically in the foremost country of the New World, one that had (at the beginning) an appreciation for but the least possible ties to global Antiquity, the ancient books of the Bible were more known, revered, and followed than in most of the Old World where the very cultural legacy of those events could be seen and felt all around. Americans believed the Bible even while they could only guess at what life was like back then, whereas in much of the world life continued much as it had at that time.

Taiwan and the world of the Bible

Traditional worshipers offer incense to a goddess idol

Here in Taiwan it is nearly the opposite. The legacy of those ancient days in which the Bible was written can be seen around one. People perform spirit-channeling or exorcism rituals and occasionally still cut themselves bloody in front of idols to evoke a response. Food is offered to idols before being eaten. Divine lots are cast. Whole pigs are sacrificed to ancestral spirits. The "spreading trees" the Old Testament talks about in connection with idolatry are here and there, called "divine wood" and often marked with red ribbon. Birds and insects are placed alive in the back of some newly-made idols as sacrifices in order to bind their associated spirits to them. The lunar calendar is closely followed, and all religious and traditional events are based on it. (like in Jewish culture)

One can walk through noisy and bustling markets filled with the smell of internal organs, fresh produce, and incense wafting from the central temple (around which most traditional markets are based). Beggars and monks beg, stall owners call out to for you buy their wares, idol processions pass with blaring trumpets and pounding drums, navigating streets which are not always straight; a maze known to locals but confusing to outsiders.

The difference in 2015 is that those monks sometimes have smart phones, and you can get to those temples by taking the subway. But technology is merely a feature of life, and in the East (outside of Japan, perhaps, but to some extent even there) it rests much more lightly on the shoulders of culture.

In terms of Biblical culture, America is like having moved far away from the old family farm to a new house in the city, and your descendents having to look at pictures of old farmhouses and tractors and imagine what it was like for their family to have once lived there. Taiwan is like still living in a family farm, generations later. The old farmhouse has electricity now, and your tractor has GPS, but it's still an old farmhouse and tractor. You "get" that life, because you still live in that context, and the advances of technology are a comparatively minor difference compared to that major point in common.

For a more vivid example, imagine the difference between someone saying "there is a rabid dog loose in the next building," and "there is a rabid dog loose at the end of this hallway." In the former case you recognize the threat, but also that there is an effective separation between you and it. In the latter, you feel the force of the threat directly because there is nothing between you and it but an expanse of empty space. Taiwan feels like that; ancient times are only separated from you by the passing of generations here, and you feel their force.

So while those dwelling in the lands of suburbia or coffeeshopolis can only imagine what it might be like to live in the cultures of the Bible, in Taiwan one has the sense of what it would be like if those cultures were merely updated to the present, without any real breaks from the past. Give Paul a cellphone, Demetrius a megaphone to incite the protestors in Ephesus, stick King Agrippa in a motorcade, and maybe get the lecture hall of Tyrannus some whiteboards and a projector, and you get the idea.

Food Sacrificed to Idols: A Personal Example

If you have spent more than a couple years in church, you are probably familiar with the writings of Paul. One of the things Paul talks about, in one of his brilliant passages about Christian freedom/responsibility, is the question of eating food, in this case meat, which has been sacrificed to idols.

²⁵ Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. ²⁶ For “the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof.” ²⁷ If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. ²⁸ But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience— ²⁹ I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience? ³⁰ If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? ³¹ So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:23-31, ESV)

I. Application in America:

This and passages like in it Paul's letters are sometimes invoked when one is considering issues like drinking alcohol for Christians. The Bible condemns drunkenness and a drunken lifestyle, but does not call alcoholic consumption itself a sin, yet there are Christians with such a strong tradition of abstinence from all alcohol that their conscience does not permit them to drink at all. In their case, then, abstaining is right and proper, and violating their conscience to drink would be sin. (Though a careful study of scripture might lead them to see that there is nothing inherently sinful about it, and if they changed their mind based not on pressure from other believers but on the testimony of scripture, then drinking would no longer be sinful for them) 

Paul both condemns their placing that rule on others (many pastors seem to totally ignore this passage), and also condemns attempting to persuade someone to violate their conscience. In other words, the one who does not drink alcohol cannot condemn the one who does (though he can exhort him to avoid drunkenness if that danger exists), but the one who drinks can't try to persuade the one who doesn't drink to have a drink with him, in violation of his conscience, and might best avoid drinking in front of him altogether. Paul is happy to give up a freedom out of concern for someone, yet strong in his condemnation of those who would take away the freedom altogether.

Now in America we would less frequently cite 1 Cor 8, and more commonly go to Romans 14 (which mentions both eating and drinking, and drinking wine). This is because the question of things having been sacrificed to idols is not really a pertinent one to us. Those passages can even make the Bible feel further away and less applicable to us today. (As I keep reminding people, that is not because the Bible is weird, but because we are weird, in terms of how all people throughout history and around the world have lived/live now.)

Gotquestions has a good article on the topic of meat/food sacrificed to idols, which in some ways underlines my point:

"One of the struggles in the early church concerned meat which had been sacrificed to idols. Debates over what to eat might seem strange to most of us in modern society, but to the first-century believers, it was a subject of great consequence. As the apostles dealt with the issue, they gave instructions on several broader topics with application for today..."

Americans often feel they have to get pretty abstract when looking for applications of scriptural teaching, because the culture in America is so different. It's hard to imagine a direct application of the passage about meat sacrificed to idols, and any attempt to cleverly figure out a cultural parallel is probably going to be a stretch at best. We can see the general lesson Paul is getting at, however, and that's good enough for us.

In Taiwan today, however, the passage can be applied a little more directly...

II. Application in Taiwan:

Table of food and spirit money laid out for ancestral spirits in my neighborhood a few days ago

In Taiwan, in AD2015 just as much as AD15, there is a direct and immediate application.

Idols are still worshipped, not abstract ones like wealth or popularity, but actual statues and figurines. Part of this worship involves placing food before them, often fruit and bowls of rice, but sometimes chickens, pigs, whole prepared meals and other things as well. (rituals differ in different sects, traditions, and places)

Similar tables, set out last week in front of a nearby Starbucks and bank

An additional form of idolatry is the worship/appeasement of ancestral spirits. Especially right now during Ghost Month in Taiwan, one can see tables loaded with snacks, incense, and spirit money (which gets burned later, in a ritual meant to send it into the spirit world so ancestors will have better status there too), laid out as an offering to spirits, to ask them not to bother the store, business performance, employees, or owners.

No one wants to waste all the snacks, so usually they all get divided up among the employees later, who take them home to their families and eat them.

Now imagine my surprise one day upon returning home to my apartment to find a couple little bags of what look like trash sitting in the hallway outside my door. A closer investigation revealed they were not trash, but actually snacks and a couple of drinks (tea and soda).

Some really Taiwanese snacks, plus Heysong Sarsaparilla and tea

Within a few seconds I guessed what had happened. It is not only businesses, but apartment buildings as well that will put out offering tables. I had in fact noticed a poster several days earlier on our bulletin board downstairs which notified residents that the offering would happen at a certain day and time, for anyone who wanted to attend the ceremony. (Because of the layout of our building and the road downstairs, they can't just leave the tables out all day) Seeing the snacks, I realized that it was in fact the day the bulletin had mentioned, and so it seemed one of my neighbors had thought of me and brought me back some of the snacks from the offering.

My initial reaction was to feel good that they had remembered me. (I moved in recently and have only recently met my neighbors and had one or two elevator conversations with them) Then, I pondered whether to eat the snacks or not.

It was sort of a funny surprise to realize that I had encountered a problem for which I could apply Paul's writings not only conceptually but very literally. Because I now live in a culture that stretches back to biblical times, the examples drawn from that cultural background suddenly were directly relevant to me.

So I looked up what Paul had said about eating offerings to idols, and again felt impressed when I realized I was now living in the world he was talking about. It was like stepping back in time, except I had really just left the West and entered the wider world, where many places haven't broken with the past on their way to the present.


III. To Eat, or Not to Eat?

Now I had to figure out whether I was going to eat the snacks or throw them away. Like the question about eating blood*, it's not something I take lightly or ignore as merely an issue for those times. Because while we may not see it in America, we still live in the world described in the Bible. God's rules don't simply vanish into the aether over the centuries, either He specifically released us from following them or we still have to.

(*- It's a common ingredient in food here, and I do eat it along with my Taiwanese friends, but only after deciding that it was not wrong as a Gentile Christian for me to do so, after a careful study of scripture and conversations/debates with a couple of Messianic Jewish friends) 

But it seems in this case, I had stumbled on a problem that first-century believers also faced, and therefore I had direct guidelines from Paul on how to deal with this:

1. (1 Cor 8:4-6) Paul clearly says that an idol is nothing of itself. While it's easy to see that idolatry is a short road to entanglement in evil spiritual influence (in Taiwan you can literally observe this), the idol itself is not a real god, and believers recognize that it is not a true god, nor participate in idolatry simply because the food has at one point been physically been located in front of it. (or in my case, on a table on display)

2. (Romans 14) Paul says that despite having freedom, we should not harm the spiritual life of fellow believers by causing them to violate their conscience. In this case no Taiwanese believers were present. If they had been, depending on who it was, it would probably be right to refrain from eating, knowing that it was a deep cultural issue for them, because of their former ways. (1 Cor 8:7) On the other hand, they might explain they too had cast off idolatry, demonstrated their allegiance to Christ through baptism, and regarded the food as nothing special, in which case this wouldn't specifically be a reason not to eat it, but an occasion to rejoice in our freedom in Christ and eat with thanks.

3. (1 Cor 10:27-29) Paul says that we can simply eat food that might have been sacrificed to idols without questions of conscience, but if someone informs us it was offered to idols, we should refrain from eating, not for our own sake but for theirs. In this case, it was exactly like verse 27. The food was simply left outside my door, without even a note saying where it came from or who had left it there. They also have no idea what I did with it, merely that it was gone if they ever came back and checked, since one can't leave bags of snacks sitting out in the hallway. On the other hand, had they knocked on my door while I was home and informed me that it had been offered in the "bai bai" (word in Taiwan for traditional rituals), and asked if, since they knew I was a Christian, I was able to eat it, a strong case can be made based on those verses that I would need to politely decline.

4. (1 Cor 10:30-31) Finally, Paul says that if our conscience is not bothered, we can eat (or drink), with thanks and giving glory to God. This is what I decided to do. Finding that, based on the other passages, I was not forbidden to eat in general, did not have the religious/cultural background that made it a matter of conscience for me, and would not be offending the conscience of anyone else, whether believers or nonbelievers, I ate the snacks with thanks, and appreciative that my neighbors had thought about me. My prayer is that one day they will know the true God, and rather than snacks from offering tables eaten separately, we might eat and drink Christ's Communion together and rejoice in the knowledge of the Lord who alone is worthy to receive the praise they had formerly been offering to idols and spirits.