Food Is Good (June 15, 2003)

I've thought about food a lot lately. Last week I watched The Pianist, which has heart-wrenching scenes of starving Jews in World War II trying to get food. A man licks soup off the street. A family divides a caramel cube six ways. The fugitive pianist finds treasure in a bombed-out house - an unopened can of pickled cucumbers. Later his face registers ecstasy as he dips his finger in some fruit jam and savors the sweetest taste he has had in years.

I have never been hungry except by choice. I have never been empty, but more than once I have been too full - like at the Chinese wedding feast I went to on Saturday. Oh my goodness. When I came home I regaled my family with a course-by-course description of the single greatest meal I have ever eaten. (I thought we were done at the shark's fin soup, and was stunned to learn that we were only a third of the way through the courses!) It was a genuine sensual delight for a food-lover like me.

Listen! Give thanks, give thanks, give thanks. Cultivate an appreciation for your bounty. Here in America in the 21st century we live at the pinnacle of world food luxury. I don't feel guilty about that, but for heaven's sake I believe we should be content and thankful. At the wedding feast I had a conversation with a woman who lamented her daughter's snobbish dismissal of any restaurant food that was not super-expensive. I sympathized with the mother. I remember what a major treat it was when I was a kid and we got to go to McDonald's. Mmmm, Big Mac. Glory.

The Bible says, "Having food and clothing, let us be content" (1 Timothy 6:8). The kind of food St. Paul was talking about in that passage was just bread, a simple starch that would keep a person from starving. Having so much more food than that (and as for clothes, our closets are stuffed!) I think we ought to be super-content. Thank God for food. Don't complain, and don't let your kids complain. Rent The Pianist, and let the horrors you see there rebuke any ingratitude for the delights of food you daily enjoy.