Bread, Food, Wine and Oil

CLEAN AND UNCLEAN FOOD
The books of the Law of Moses have much to say about clean and unclean food. The New Testament has little to say about clean and unclean food except that all foods are clean for those who are pure and that it is permissible to eat any food. These seemingly contradictory scriptures pose a problem for understanding to Old/First Covenant religionists, but are clear to New Covenant disciples.

God uses the symbolism of some foods being clean and others unclean to point out the difference between good and evil. People who do not know the difference will fall for temptations to eat unclean food. They do not know the difference because they do not listen to God’s voice.  True prophets, angels, messiahs, high priests, witnesses, and warriors listen to God’s voice so they are not tempted to participate in evil. Their job is to warn religious people that religion is evil food, call them out of religion and teach them how to hear God’s spoken voice.

A good way to describe the difference between clean and unclean is to compare Old/First Covenant with the New Covenant and to compare worldly wisdom with Godly wisdom. Old/First Covenant religionists consider what the Old/First Testament says literally. That is why many Jews and Messianic Christians try to observe dietary laws. New Covenant disciples, however, have Godly wisdom that interprets the law of Moses symbolically and do not observe dietary laws. New Covenant disciples know that the kingdom of God is not a matter of what they eat and drink (i.e. religious regulations), but a matter of having the law written on their hearts. Therefore, they do not follow religious rules and traditions of any kind — including prohibitions against eating certain kinds of food.

The main thing to understand about Biblical references to clean and unclean things is that God is only concerned with spiritual food — natural foods. As he does with all other Bible symbolism, God introduces a spiritual principle with a natural object (e.g. food, fruit, animals, birds, fish, bugs, etc.) with which people are familiar. And the spiritual principle he is always trying to make is this:

This principle is summarized neatly and concisely in God’s command to Adam and Eve regarding the two trees. They were free to eat fruit from the tree of life, but warned that they would die if they ate fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. god says the same thing in scriptures about clean and unclean food. 

Knowing what to eat (i.e. God’s voice) and what not to eat (the words of false prophets and religion) is the basic story of the Bible. When people eat God’s voice (i.e. hear it and consume it in their hearts), they are rewarded with spiritual life. When people listen to false prophets and participate in the religion that false prophets teach and promote, they earn the wage of sin: spiritual death. These are the life or death consequences of choosing to listen to God’s voice or not.

STUDY TIP: See Death, Resurrection and New Life, and Two Deaths for discussion on these life or death consequences. Also see this link, this link and this link for discussion on the rewards of hearing God’s spoken voice.

One way that God represents the choice to listen to his voice or not is in scriptures about clean and unclean foods. It is necessary, therefore, to understand the spiritual meaning of these scriptures. People who try to understand and obey the literal meanings will disobey the spiritual meaning. That is why spending time on the spiritual meaning is so necessary.

God knows full well how the life and death consequences of listening to his voice affect people. That is why he warns them to be very discerning about the kind of food (i.e. teaching) that they take into their hearts and minds.

In general, unclean food is any religious activity that feeds the soul of religious people. To understand this, we must first understand that the Biblical concept of “feeding” is not about eating natural food. Rather, Biblical feeding and eating exists in the following truths:

  • Involvement in religious thinking and religious activity makes religious people feel like they are connected with God. They think that the good feelings they get in their bodies while worshiping, singing, and speaking in tongues are feelings generated by God for their personal pleasure to let them know that they are connecting with him. This thinking is all wrong. It is fake faith. What they feel is the same kind of fleshly response that people get when they sing the Star Spangled Banner in a large group gathering.  The truth is that they are only connecting with other people by joining with them in religious activity. The cues for all of the religious things that they do come directly from other people — not from God. Someone says let us pray and they pray. Someone says let us sing and they sing. Someone says stand up or sit down and they stand up or sit down. Someone says worship God at a certain time in a certain location and they worship at a certain time in a certain location.
  • Religious people believe that they show trust in God by being faithful members of a religious community and by following religious rules. The truth is that their security exists in being part of a religious community. The truth is that their religious activity shows that they trust the teachings, rules and regulations of the religious community to direct and control their religious life — not God.
  • Religion makes people feel good, satisfied, proud and fulfilled while practicing rituals, singing songs, praying, enjoying fellowship, eating natural food (i.e. fellowship), and listening to Biblical teaching in a community setting. The truth is that these are all soulish activities that activate human emotions and create a general feeling of well-being. The Bible calls all of these religious activities “flesh” because they all involve using the physical body in some way. They are not spiritual activities because spiritual activity cannot be seen or heard with natural eyes or ears. Because these soulish activities do make people feel good, satisfied, proud and fulfilled, people make a habit of doing them repeatedly and regularly. In Biblical terms, they feed their souls on regular religious activity just like they feed their physical bodies on natural food.
  • Religious people believe that they must belong to and participate in the activities of a religious community (i.e. institution) to feel good, satisfied, proud and fulfilled about their relationship with God. This is the substance of their soulish life. The truth is that their soulish life — not their spiritual life — is based on the opportunities offered to them by man-made, human institutions, based on false doctrines — not by God. It does not occur to religious people that they can feel, good, satisfied, proud and fulfilled only through faith in a God that they cannot see without being part of a religious community. The truth is that they feed their souls and create internal security for themselves by joining themselves to man-made religious institutions. This is not the same as trusting a God whom they cannot see with natural eyes, whom the cannot see with natural ears, and who cannot be touched.
  • Religion offers opportunities for people to be loved, accepted and even honored by others who share their religious beliefs. Religious people have a difficult time living without all of these soulish benefits that religion provides. Thus they are willing to work, follow religious rules and pay tithes for the love, acceptance and honor they receive from their religious community. The truth is that religious people value the praise, love and acceptance of their religious cohorts more than they value the love that is available to them from God who has no religious rules, requires no work, and requires no money from them. Thus it can be said that religious people feed their need for love, acceptance and honor through their membership in a religious community.
  • Religion makes people feel good, satisfied, proud and fulfilled when they meditate on their faithfulness to follow religious rules and regulations. Whatever confidence they have about their relationship with God is based on two factors: 1) Their assessment of how well they do in following those rules and regulations. 2) The praise — positive or negative — they receive from their religious cohorts about their faithfulness to follow religious rules and regulations. The truth is that their security is based on the opinions and judgements other people make about their conformance to man-made rules and regulations. The truth is that they trust men more than they trust God. For that reason they become people-pleasers.
  • Religious people are deceived into believing that the good feelings they have while doing religious things alone, or especially with others, are spiritual feelings. The truth is, however, that the feelings they have are soulish — not spiritual. Physical manifestations of the flesh (e.g. tingling excitement, trembling, shaking, tears, extreme happiness or physical joy, compulsion to jump, compulsion to clap hands, compulsion to raise and wave hands, etc.) are evidence of the soul being activated by communal religious activity. They are not evidence of connection with God. Being physical and observable, they cannot be spiritual because spiritual things cannot be observed.

We find this kind of food introduced in the Garden of Eden where food that feeds the soul is identified as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil which seemed to be good to eat. Such trees are found in the Garden along with the Tree of Life. Religion provides food that seems good to eat but is actually evil, soulish food.

The reason religion is so strong and pervasive around the world (i.e. the garden) is that it seems good. It seems good and logical because it is based on the literal words of the Bible. The reasoning goes like this: If it is in the Bible, it must be good because the Bible is God’s word. This is wrong thinking, of course, because God’s written word and God’s spoken word are not the same.

Both trees are attractive and appear to be good for food and people are free to choose to eat from any tree — even the tree that produces the forbidden fruit. But, if they eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (i.e. false prophets and religion), they will die spiritually (i.e. be separated from God) for lack of the good spiritual food that comes by hearing the spoken word of God which gives them spiritual life. It is critically important, therefore, to know the difference between the two kinds of trees. One is clean and all the others are unclean.

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