More than Food for Thought

I read food blogs. Lots and lots of food blogs. I can’t help it – truly food is a wonderful thing. I am currently hankering over a cheesecake galette from the Smitten Kitchen as well as every healthy thing you can imagine from the Whole30 Instagram feed. Two polar opposites, but food is a long arm of personality (at least I think so), so it makes sense that these two opposites appeared on my plate (no pun intended).

As I was reading the Instagram posts that detail each new recipe for its followers, I noticed a lot of things. First, most of the commenters are women (my gender is always in a mad rush to be healthy), and second, I noticed this mantra that following the Whole30 will change your life.

This interested me. Change your life, eh? And it had me wondering. Can someone’s problems be so small and trite that changing a diet would instantly solve them all? Could you become completely different just be eating differently? The short and long answer to this is no. A firm no. There is no diet potent and powerful enough to impact you in such a way that it changes you completely from beginning to end. It just isn’t possible. Food is not that powerful. YES, it does evidently have some power, but only as a tool of entertainment or as a means of self-preservation. We all know that if you don’t eat, you’ll die. But in and of itself, food taken on a daily basis cannot change you. It can’t take away your mistakes and it can’t solve your problems. It can change your blood sugar to erase your temporary bad mood, but it isn’t able to change your thought process nor your personality.

And so I continued to read comment after comment. “The Whole30 will change your life!”, “I finally read all the testimonials and I too became convinced so now I’m trying this out!” “I’m so excited about doing the Whole30…I think it will make me into a new person!” And so forth and so on.

While I don’t doubt that going on a very strict diet that allows no sugar, grains or dairy of any kind will definitely revolutionize your health and change your outlook on some things, there’s no way it can change who you are. There’s no way it can take your life from going one way and do a 180 so it goes in the opposite direction.

Since this is the case the question bears asking: why are so many people obsessed with diets and convinced that going on one will change them completely? And alternately, why do so many of these people, when confronted with the knowledge of Jesus, completely reject it? As a society, why are we so eager to wholeheartedly believe in a diet or a type of lifestyle while completely forgoing the only thing that will lead us to the right place in eternity? I’ve seen so many people who were so eager to share the news about their diet and how it had changed their life…why aren’t Christians sharing the same testimonies about Jesus? Is it because He’s changed us and we forgot how we were, or is it because we really have not changed?

Something to think on certainly as this scenario applies to me (full confession: I have done a Whole30 but I actually did not think it was life-changing). This reliance on diets and a way of eating as making you “clean” (pun intended) cannot, for the Christian, substitute spiritual rightness and a spiritual way of living. We must have the fruits of the Spirit working in our lives as this is more important than eating fruits and vegetables (pun AGAIN, I wonder if the Lord used food in the Bible for a reason; I’m sure He did).