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Pork, the Other White…what did I just put in my mouth?
By Marc | March 18, 2008
From my earliest memories to until my mid-teens, my family had been involved in the meat packing industry. My father, and then my stepfather, worked for the same man in Doniphan, Nebraska, butchering livestock and cutting and preparing the meat. Then, when I was seven, we moved to eastern Nebraska; a few months later we then went out to the western end of the state where my mom and stepdad bought a small packing plant until they went out of business when I was sixteen..
I helped my parents out around the place and saw every part of the process from the farmers and ranchers bringing in their live animals to their picking up the finished product of nicely wrapped steaks, roasts, ground beef, sausages, bacon, and many other meaty delicacies. We mainly did cattle, a few hogs, once or twice a goat or sheep, and buffalo (bison) was a rare sight that was always a huge event.
We never had the animals in our pens for more than a few days, so there was no getting attached to them, but they were always treated well and slaughtered as humanely and quickly as possible for our little operation.
Since my parents ran the place, meat was always available for almost every single meal. They would buy a head of cattle or a hog at auction and do their own processing, so it was very economical. And since the animals came from ranchers in the area, we never had to question what we were eating or if it was safe.
Julie and I have changed our diets to a much healthier way (as we have posted earlier), in many ways a more biblical way. Part of that is abstaining from eating “unclean” animals such as pork and shellfish.
The inhumane practices that occur in some of the larger processing operations and the hormones injected into livestock are enough for anyone to go vegan, which is why we go organic and natural as much as we can, but this post won’t go into that. Maybe some other time when I want to scare people. I just want to go into the laws set up in the Bible pertaining to not eating certain animals.
When I try to look at history as a whole, I wonder how Christians came from the foundations of Judaism (with strict dietary laws) to our ability to eat whatever kind of meat without asking what’s in it. Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 specified which animals were and weren’t suitable for human consumption.
The way I see it, Christians find a loophole in this series of laws by a few ways.
They can say, “Well, Jesus did away with all the Old Testament laws.” Actually, he didn’t.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 5:17-19 NIV
Jesus lived by the Law, but wanted to get rid of the rampant legalism and hypocrisy in interpreting the Law.
They can also say, “You know, there was that thing with Peter, where God made all the animals safe to eat.” Acts 10:9-16 tells of Peter’s vision of all sorts of animals, clean and unclean, that he has told to kill and eat. But the very next events reveal what the vision was really about. It wasn’t even about food or animals, it was about Jews and Gentiles. It was revealed that any man could follow Christ and no man was “common” or “unclean”. Read the whole story here.
There are other New Testament places people will point to also (Romans 14, Colossians 2:16, Mark 7:18-19). People could also simply plead ignorance or indifference.
But why did God set aside certain animals to be left uneaten in the first place? Well, most of them eat things that are already dead – vultures, coyotes, dogs, cats, hyenas, most insects.
Some, like our friend the pig, have the privilege of being nature’s garbage disposals. They will eat practically anything. They will eat grain, but also things like dead chickens, rotten fruits and vegetables, old cooking grease and oils, and excrement. You name it, if it’s a carbon-based substance, it will probably go into its mouth.
For the same reason, shellfish and non-scaled fish are considered unclean. Catfish, oysters, lobsters, and such do the job of filtering the bad stuff out of oceans, lakes and ponds.
And all this nasty stuff they are consuming becomes a part of their bodies, their meat.
There are also the threats of toxoplasmosis, trichinellosis, and cysticerosis from eating or handling pork that hasn’t been cooked long enough. Or maybe even the cholera outbreak of 1986 in Louisiana from tainted shellfish.
At the time the Laws were being passed down to the people, or re-passed down to the exiles from Egypt, there was more than likely a lot of questions as to why they were so specific or didn’t make much sense. I think that only after you see what happens when the guidelines aren’t followed, you realize why they were there in the first place.
Only in recent years have we been able to see the bad health effects of pork and such, so what else don’t we fully understand that we’ve been instructed to follow?
I’m not here to preach against what you may enjoy eating. Who am I to decide for you? I myself enjoy ham, bacon, bratwurst (mmmm brats), and the occasional braunschwager “stump”. We just won’t have them in our normal diet.
There are times that we will have to eat the occasional ham or ribs, such as when we are guests at someone else’s meal. We could set immovable lines for us to follow, but its best for us to follow Aristotle’s axiom: “Everything in Moderation”.
If you want to find out more, please read this: What Does the Bible Teach About Clean and Unclean Meats?
Good eating, but please try to find out what your food is eating also.
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