WE CHOOSE THE FOOD WE EAT
There are several scriptures that discuss food sacrificed or offered to idols. These are very difficult scriptures to understand in these modern times because we do not have physical idols to which material offerings of any kind are made. Nevertheless, if we subscribe to the truth that all scriptures have value for training in righteousness, we must contend with the difficulties to discover what value these scriptures have for us. And since we know that the Bible is full of mysteries told in parables, we must dig beneath the literal text to get to those hidden meanings.

As we explained above, symbolic food may be good spiritual food or evil spiritual food. Beginning with those facts, we can quickly come to the conclusion that food sacrificed to idols is evil and not good. That part is the easy part. The next discoveries are much harder.

Not surprisingly, we get our first and best clues from the creation story in Genesis 2:8-17 where we find the principle that food is either good or evil:

And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Reading carefully, we find that every tree (including the tree of knowledge of good and evil) in the garden is both pleasant to the sight and good for food. This awareness challenges our understanding of God as a good God who wants the best for his children. But there it is, two trees, both attractive and good for food. It is hard to accept, but we must accept that this was the proposition for Adam and Eve and that it is the proposition everyone since them have faced. The proposition, of course, is that we have free will to choose what we may eat.

Such a choice would be easy to make, of course, if the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil looked ugly and tasted foul. But the scripture says that all the trees were pleasant in appearance and good for food. Lacking anything visually distinctive to steer them from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, all Adam and Eve had to go on was what God said about it in Genesis 2:17:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die .

What we have here is a proposition in which God tests Adam and Eve to see if they will trust him and obey his commandment. They were living in paradise (i.e. the Promised Land) as New Covenant disciples who had abundant spiritual lives — as long as they did not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Their consequence for eating of that tree was spiritual death — not physical death.

We see in this story the seductive power of religion. Even though Adam and Eve had it all in terms of their relationship with God, they lost it all when they choose to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This story is a caution about the need to always listen carefully to God’s spoken voice.

STUDY TIP: See this link for understanding of trees of knowledge of good and evil, and this link for understanding of trees of life.