We've Got the Meats! (Some of them)

 

There are a lot of outdated laws given in the Old Testament. Don’t commit adultery? I mean, come on! What sort of a dinosaur society would have a law like this? Luckily, in our modern and enlightened age, this isn’t an issue, and we are free to run around and sleep with whomever we want, provided that they consent, of course. Paul addressed another set of laws in 1st Timothy dealing with food.

1 Timothy 4:3-5 NKJV forbidding to marry, [and commanding] to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 

4 For every creature of God [is] good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; 

5 for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. 

Here, Paul clearly says that God created all meats clean and to be eaten, including pork. Why would Paul even need to clarify this? You see, in the backward days of the Old Testament, the Jews had somehow gotten the idea that there were certain meats created unclean, such as pork. Thankfully, Paul completely clears up this confusion here and elsewhere, saving our bacon. 

So now, since all meats are clean and created for food, I’m going to go have a snack. 

A few moments later…

Well, it turns out Paul lied. After having my stomach pumped and almost dying, I have discovered an important detail. Not all meats are good—especially not poison dart frogs. Take my advice and never try those, no matter how much they look like little, colorful, gummy frogs. They might have been alright on their own, but the puffer fish, the stone fish, and the numerous poison insects pretty much finished the job, so now I’m a ghostwriter. 

Obviously, I didn’t actually eat any of these animals, but I think you get my point. Not all animals are good for food; some are more obvious than others because they will kill you if you try to eat them. So when Paul said that people were abstaining from foods (meat) which God created to be received with thanksgiving, what was he talking about? 

If we accept that Paul was inspired by God, then we must see his writing as building upon the Old Testament, not replacing it. When Paul said this about meat, clearly, there must have been a list of what meats God created to be received because He certainly didn’t create all of them for this purpose. The only such list that I know of is found in Leviticus 11, and it coincidentally eliminates all animals that would outright kill us just by eating them. What we discover, then, is that whether people acknowledge the Bible or not, everyone has a standard of clean and unclean animals, even if it is simply not eating what would kill them. However, many people have a list far larger than this, especially in America. This list extends to dogs, cats, rats, snakes, lizards, and many other animals because they are seen either as pets or as gross. 

We’ve got an awkward situation here. People arbitrarily place upon themselves restrictions regarding what animals they would or would not eat with no issue, but as soon as there are instructions from God, everyone has an issue and declares that God must have revoked these and made all meats good for food. He did not. First, because the Bible of Paul’s day was the Old Testament, he would have been a heretic for preaching anything that went against it, but even among those who actively searched the Old Testament daily¹, what he was saying was found to be the truth. Why? Obviously, because it was exactly in line with everything that the Old Testament said. This shouldn’t be such a shocking concept for us because the entire Bible has the same author, that is Christ. 

Second, if Paul was actually saying this, then we have a major issue since that would make him a liar. If it’s not obvious why this would create a problem for us, it will be in a second. If Paul was lying, he wasn’t inspired by God, which makes everything he wrote in the New Testament not the Word of God. 

Thus, we have two options. One, we accept that what God said was food in the Old Testament still holds true, or two, we take Paul as saying all meat was created to be food which means that he was lying. If we accept number one, we are still left with questions, though. Why was Paul addressing this in the first place? Well, there were some who were teaching to abstain from meat altogether, as we also see in Romans. They advocated that God commanded vegetarianism² and that all meat was wrong to eat. Paul was simply refuting this idea, along with the idea that marriage was wrong as well. What we have are two instances of people commanding things that God did not command, and what’s worse, these commands were rooted in pagan Greek culture. 

Well, that about sums it up. We have yet another set of laws that is not outdated and is still good for us to keep. The more we study, the more we find that what God gave as a command once upon a time still applies to us all for all time. 

¹Acts 17:11

²Romans 14:2