Our Complicated Relationship with Eating and Drinking
As the holiday season approaches, most people begin to anticipate the culinary experience of feasting. Thanksgiving turkeys or Christmas hams, pies and frosted cookies, sparkling ciders, and holiday cocktails—they’re all part of our tradition of feasting with those we love during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.
But while feasting is a good and joyous occasion, for most Americans, it is rarely balanced with the biblical counterweight of fasting and typically tends toward gluttony and overconsumption that turns the beauty of a feast into another good thing tainted by sin. 
This article by John Hubbard on Desiring God examines the idol of food and drink and our oftentimes complicated relationship with our appetites. He argues that our struggle with food goes back to the very beginning when Eve chose to eat something she had been forbidden to eat. Our perilous relationship ever since has led to extremes in both directions—restriction to the point of rejecting God’s good gift of food as well as extreme overconsumption. “Since Eden, man has wanted the last ounce out of life, as though beyond God’s ‘enough’ lay ecstasy, not nausea.”
But perhaps the way we eat is simply another place of discipleship. After all, our Savior came eating and drinking, feasting and fasting, and ultimately teaching us how to bridle our appetites rather than be controlled by them. Jesus modeled for us the ability to keep our attention and desire fixed on the Father so that he might freely fast and joyfully feast for the glory of His master.
Christian Union disciples university students and professionals in major cities to pursue redemption and Christ-centeredness in every area of their lives—even in the ways we eat and drink. In a culture obsessed with food, believers who treasure Jesus more than any earthly delight stand out. Christian Union is discipling the next generation of Christians to lead our nation into joyful obedience to the only one who truly satisfies.
Read the full article here.
