If you want to look at food purity laws in the Bible and state that they were all hygenic and that God was guiding the ignorant ancients with holy wisdom on how to eat right, do ahead. However, if they hadn’t figured out what made for good eating and what made you sick, they ancient people would have died out before the Bible could be written!

“Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)

Mark 7:18-19

No, the purity laws in the Bible are about two things. First in priority is idolatry; God wanted a holy people. Holy means separate and apart, dedicated to divine service. So that included avoiding those foods and foodways which were central and sacred to the idolatrous people around them.

The second is obedience. As a principle, it is crucial to adhere to the whole law, especially in matters which are otherwise trivial. What does it hurt but your pride and your appetite to put aside some foods? Nothing at all. But it does show to God and to others exactly how much you value God’s guidance.

For Gentile Christians, we have virtually no restrictions (thanks to the above verse) but what we do have is an even more urgent call to obedience. Jesus has saved even sinners like us. What else can we do but be holy, just as he said?

Ethan Kirl