1 Food Sin

We are so glad you picked up this book. Good for you for tackling a difficult and, perhaps, personal topic. We have great hope that the truths in this book will change your life for good. It sure has changed ours.

We both have struggled with food. We never got really big, but we would gain weight and then lose weight, and then gain weight again. We got older, and gaining got easier and losing got harder. We’ve felt guilty after eating, but we never had a solid definition about what was right or wrong when it came to eating. So, we would brush off our guilt. It’s easy to justify what we want to do when we aren’t convinced of what the sin is. It was that way with food sin for us.

Let me, Ginny, be a little more specific. I have struggled with food sin most of my adult life. I’ve thought, “Well, I really deserve to eat that now. No one should tell me what I can and can’t eat.” I’ve thought, “I’m old enough now, or I’ve birthed enough kids, I should be able to get fat.” I’ve snuck food. Mostly, I have said, “That sounds good now,” and I had no other mechanism to convince me of why I shouldn’t eat it. Many times I’d feel guilty and cry out to God for help, and he has helped so much. I am continually renewing my mind with

his help.

I, Nate, lost my 100 pounds or so, 10 or 15 pounds at a time. I’d gain it, be shocked at the scale or how my pants fit, and then lose it. Eventually, I wanted to dig deeper into what the Bible said about eating. Why was I riding this roller coaster? What made me put the weight on in the first place? Why was I taking all of those extra bites until it caught up to me?

Everyone comes to this place with a different story. We believe the solution is the same for all of us.

Our goal is to define food sin. If we let the Bible change our minds on what food is, and our hearts on why we should want it, we can lose weight and keep it off for life. That’s the diet we need. We need to put food in its place.

Food isn’t sin. It is good, just like all things God created. Food is first effective; it gives us energy to live well. Food tastes good, and it can be enjoyed. Food is a great way to bring people together. We all have to eat, and sitting down together is a good thing. The problem with food isn't food. The problem with food is us. We are the ones who have decided to think in strange (perverted) ways about food.

We can think the way God thinks about food, and when we do that, we will be able to achieve our weight loss goals. The right understanding of the Bible can take mastering food from the “impossible” or “very difficult” category to the “doable” or “this is what I truly want, and you won’t change my mind” category. This really works.

After I (Nate) gave my life over to Jesus, I can clearly remember being tempted to drink heavily. It was a weekend, and I was in a fraternity on a Big Ten campus where I went to school. I remember telling myself, "I know God has a better plan for my life." After months of telling myself the truth, the desires started to fade. Now, if someone were to ask, "Do you want to go get drunk?" I'd say incredulously, "No." When I told myself the truth, a lot of sins faded like that.

If you follow Jesus, remember back to your struggles with lust, hate, gossip, lying, desire for drunkenness, people pleasing, etc. Do you feel different today? If you can tell yourself the truth, you can make the food problem a lot easier to tackle, too. This book will tell you what to say to yourself about food sin.

No Other Diet Will Do

Do you want to look great? Do you have a few pounds to lose? What you need is to quit food sin. When you quit that, you will look your best and feel your best. It is about choosing an attitude toward food that pleases God.

Today, being overweight is a widespread health issue. There have been so many popular diets, so many fad diets. Occasionally, someone loses weight and keeps it off. For most, they end up needing another diet.

Others go for surgery or expensive medications to lose weight. Sometimes it lasts. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Amazon lists over 50,000 books under the category "Diet & Weight Loss." That’s probably more than 7 million pages, and all of them that neglect God’s purpose for food miss the mark. How many of those pages have you read?

The good news is that this book gets to the very heart of our relationship with food. This is not the same old diet book.

Diet books deal with the symptom – weight gain – and don’t deal with the problem – food sin. Now is your chance to study, understand, and overcome food sin. No other diet is the solution.

When it comes down to it, food sin is like almost every other sin. We don't have an eating problem. We have a love problem, loving God and loving others.

This is a good time to say, we are not that far behind you in discovering these biblical truths. This Bible study was all eye-opening and life-changing to us. Our discovery process was slow and required a lot of hard work. We hope to have made this a lot easier for you, and we look forward to walking the path with you.

Old Ideas of Gluttony

As we study the passages about food sin, we will define it correctly. The Puritans, Roman Catholics, and others have attempted to describe what is gluttonous. The lists look something like this:

1. Eating way too much. For example, if a person undoes his belt so he can eat more, it is gluttony.

2. Eating when it isn't meal time. In other words, snacking.

3. Looking forward to eating. Anticipating eating with an eager longing.

4. Eating or seeking to eat the most delicious food.

5. Eating or seeking to eat the most expensive food.

6. Eating only foods that you enjoy the most.

7. Eating the kind of food that makes you overweight.

8. Thinking too much about food, even if it is to diet. For example, bodybuilders and models think a lot about food.

We will see if any of these are supported by the Bible. Let's not be too fast to define food sin, though. Why? If it is our guiding principle, and we don't get it just right, we will be working in the wrong direction. We can't just say, “Oh, I know what food sin is.”

“Gluttony” is the Wrong Word

We have the word gluttony because northern Europeans were made to listen to religious teachings in Latin. Many of the listeners only understood words frequently repeated from the lectern. Because of that, the scholars transliterated the words into their languages. Some examples are pastor, sacrament, and gluttony. The Latin words in play here are gluttire, which means "to swallow," and gula, which means "throat."

It turns out that taking time to pick the right English word matters. To get around using the words gluttony or gluttonous and their assumed meanings, we will use the term food sin. We will be getting rid of food sin in our minds and thinking about food, life, and God in a new way. Our studies will result in clear discoveries of body-changing truth.

“Feast” is the Wrong Word

While we're at it, let’s tackle the word “feast” in the Bible. “Feast” sure sounds like the Israelites were gorging themselves.

In English, the verb feast means to eat large quantities of food, and the noun feast means the event where the eating of large amounts of food takes place. Is that what is communicated in the Hebrew? No.

One Hebrew word translated feast means an assembly of people. It isn't even about food. Another Hebrew word translated feast means to keep (as in a promise, the root of which is “terror”). Instead of eating a lot, it meant keeping a serious promise. Finally, when the translation mentions a specific event, like the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Hebrew is simpler. “Feast” isn't even there. It is simply “unleavened bread.”

If you have imagined that “feasts” were times of overeating that were approved by God, we don't think that is fair. “Feast” is the wrong word.

Let's Get Started

Eleven chapters of this book are Bible studies. We will look at one section of the Bible at a time to understand it. You might say, “Get me to the diet part!” The Bible studies are the diet part, and you will be amazed at how effective God’s word is at helping you succeed. The practical chapters at the end of this book are the Bible principles applied. In a sense, the whole book is a Bible study. Let the study influence your heart, mind, and body. If you line your mind up with the way God wants us to understand food, weight loss will be pretty easy, permanent, and spiritually fulfilling.

Here is our strategy: We will comment on all of the verses that seem to apply to food decisions that may indicate something like food sin. We will try not to miss any. Then, we will collect the conclusions from all of them. That will form the basis for talking about how to lose weight and keep it off.

Our goal is to help you be the healthiest, best-looking you. We will try to think of everything that might trip you up. We will try to give you new ways of thinking about things in detail, so you won't wonder if you will stay on the path. You will know there is no other path for you. How? Renewing the mind, or thinking about things the right way, will significantly change us. Struggles, if we have them, will dissipate.

Reflection Questions

1. “Food isn’t sin… The problem with food is us.” How does this perspective challenge common beliefs about dieting and overeating?

2. How might approaching dieting as a Bible study, rather than a set of rules or a fad diet, affect long-term success and spiritual growth?

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