There is an almost throw-away scene in C. S. Lewis’s science fiction novel Voyage to Venus that I’ve been thinking about a fair bit lately. The hero of the story, an interplanetary traveler named Dr. Ransom, journeys to Venus where he discovers a pristine, unfallen paradise, completely untouched by any sin. The story itself is fascinating, chock full of metaphysical speculations about what might have been had humans never fallen from grace, and what the life was like that we lost when we lost paradise.
The scene I’m thinking about is especially interesting, though, because early on in his sojourn on Venus, Ransom grows hungry (naturally) and seeks to sate his appetite with one of the many alien fruits that grow on the planet. The fruit he selects for his first extra-terrestrial meal is a round, yellow fruit that looked, from the description, something like a cross between a melon and an orange. Here is how Lewis describes that first taste of this new fruit.
The rind was smooth and firm and seemed impossible to tear open. Then by accident one of his fingers punctured it and went through into coldness. After a moment’s hesitation he put the little aperture to his lips. He had meant to extract the smallest, experimental sip, but the first taste put his caution all to flight. It was, of course, a taste, just as his thirst and hunger had been thirst and hunger. But then it was so different from every other taste that it seemed mere pedantry to call it a taste at all. It was like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men, out of all reckoning, beyond all covenant. For one draught of this on earth wars would be fought and nations betrayed. It could not be classified. He could never tell us, when he came back to the world of men, whether it was sharp or sweet, savoury or voluptuous, creamy or piercing. “Not like that” was all he could ever say to such inquiries.Lewis will go on to describe the other fruits of Venus with just as much eloquence. Everything Ransom puts into his mouth, it seems, was designed especially and specifically to delight the eater, and every meal on the planet seems to result in the discovery of a “totally new genus of pleasures.”
Lewis is almost embarrassingly effusive in his desire to dwell on the good things to eat that Ransom finds in paradise, but there is something going on here that any serious spirituality of food must address: the simple fact that food brings delight.
In paradise, of course, the delights of food are paradisaical, but even on this side of the fall, food still has this ability to give great pleasure in the eating of it. Few Christian discussions of food that I have read squarely acknowledge this. Christians tend to dwell on the sin of gluttony, the wisdom of moderation, the importance of feeding those who don’t have, and so on. These things are of crucial importance, and I hope to address them in turn through this series, but they are not the best place to start in our biblical exploration of the spirituality of food. The best place to start, I think, is in the beginning; and in the beginning we see that food was created especially to give human beings pleasure.
This is implied in places like Psalm 104:14, which describes the Lord “bringing forth food from the earth, wine that gladdens human hearts, oil to make their faces shine and bread that strengthens their hearts.” It’s implied more subtly in the way Song of Solomon uses the pleasures of food as a metaphor for sexual pleasure. It’s stated explicitly in Genesis 2:9, when it says that in Eden, God caused to grow from the ground “every tree that is pleasing to the eye and good for food.”
As far as the biblical witness is concerned, God intended for us to take great pleasure from the simple act of eating good things.
The word “simple” and “good” perhaps needs underlining in our modern era. In his book Salt Sugar Fat, Michael Moss argues that in North America, all our prepackaged foods have been carefully concocted by the modern food industry, with a finely engineered ratio of sugar, fat, and salt, designed especially to stimulate a specific response in the pleasure centers of our brains and so make us want more. In other words, most of the foods in the supermarket are made, not to give us pleasure, but to get us hooked. Michael Moss calls salt, sugar, and fat the “holy trinity” of the industrial food complex.
In a similar vein, Michael Pollan argues that in order to feed the needs of the modern food industry, modern agriculture relies almost predominantly on the “big three” crops: corn, wheat and soy. The mass production of these three, he suggests, has led to the loss of all kinds of biodiversity in our agriculture, as whole species of foods are cast aside because they are simply not profitable.
You can explore these arguments and weigh them for yourself. My point here is just that, instead of experiencing the wide array of gastronomical pleasures that the Creator invented for his children to enjoy, most modern North Americans eat a diet consisting predominantly of foods synthesized from, raised on, or laced with salt, sugar, fat, corn, wheat, and soy.
It’s a pretty paste-pudding diet when you hold it up to the veritable cornucopia of good things to eat—the rainbow of colours, the myriad of smells, the tangs, the savors, the textures, the tastes—that God dreamed up for us to enjoy. From avocados to zucchinis, from bananas to broccoli, passion fruit, dragon fruit, grapefruit and kumquats, we see the wonderful imagination, and the infinite joy of the Creator on display. And from a biblical perspective, we would say that God actually made the earth so variegated in its bounty like this because he wanted his creatures to have no end of causes for delight, and no end of reasons to thank him.
There is a place in the book of Romans where Paul says that from a theological perspective, “God’s invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” In other words, Christians can learn things about the character of God—what God is really like—by looking at the things he has made. Paul would say, and I would agree with him, that until the Spirit of God opens our eyes to it we are unable accurately to read the witness that God has left in the creation. True enough. But for the Christian, the man or woman whose eyes have been opened by the Spirit to the truth that there really is a Creator behind it all, the creation speaks volumes about what that Creator is like.
And when it comes to all the thousands of good things to eat that the Creator has made, the creation tells us that whatever else is true about him, God takes great delight in taking delight. That is to say: he loves to see his creatures experience the joy of sensory pleasure. He is, as C. S. Lewis said it in another place (though somewhat tongue in cheek), he is a hedonist at heart. And he made lemons so sour so that we could have the fun of crinkling our noses when we ate them; he made maple syrup so sweet for the sheer pleasure it gives us to savor it.
There is, of course, a flip-side to this coin, and it’s not for nothing that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. But that post can wait for another day. For today, just remember what the Apostle Paul said, when he told Timothy that “everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4); and with that reminder, take the time at dinner tonight to take delight in the sweet, the salty, the sour, the bitter, the tang, the texture, the sting, the soothe and the savor of whatever good thing the Lord puts on your table for you to enjoy.
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