Soul Food

A year or so ago my wife, Karen, bought a Groupon for a meal at a soul food restaurant in Rochester – fried chicken and waffles, turnips with ham hocks, the works! For those of you unaccustomed to soul food, a ham hock is the lower segment of the pig that corresponds to the ankle or calf region. A hock is made tender from all the collagen that breaks down during cooking. Best of all, the whole thing is covered in skin, and as soul food lovers always say, The more skin the better! I should probably confess that I made a pig of myself on Lake Avenue.

My Jewish friends have never really gotten over their memories of Eve taking the forbidden fruit. Moses instituted dozens of clean and unclean food laws for the people to comply with in his day, and later the Pharisees added so many of their own laws and long-winded explanations, lawyers were needed to unravel the mishmash of dietary data for the average man and woman on the street.

When Jesus came along, he got on to these legal food warriors by saying, “Alas for you, scholars and Pharisees, hypocrites that you are! You pay tithes on mint, fennel, and caraway seed, and have neglected the weightier matters of the Law – justice, compassion, and good faith. These last you ought to have put into practice, without neglecting the first” (Matthew 23:23).

God has given us bodies capable of assimilating the food he provides for us to eat. They are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14) to ingest, digest, and convert into physical energy the huge variety of foods we enjoy every day.

But really there are two kinds of soul food – the kind of food I grew up with in Georgia, and the kind of food which comes out of my soul, like the goodwill and compassion I try to extend to others. It’s probably helpful to ask yourself: What sort of food am I giving out to others today? Does it help them see God more clearly? Does it ease the trouble they are in? Does it give them lasting sustenance? If the food we give is to be of lasting value, it must always be good – for, to paraphrase Stephen Grelley, we may not ‘pass this way again.’

Think about this: God has given us a spiritual diet chart of good and bad foods. In Mark 7, Jesus tells us that the foods we must avoid are: sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, haughtiness, and folly. “All these wicked things come from within, and do defile a person." In Galatians 5, Paul lists all the good foods: "love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindliness, generosity, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control."

What kind of diet are you on? Stick with the good foods, because the good ones are food for life!