Eating Away from Sin
Yeshua answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Mathew 4:4)
There are many theological debates that have been held since Christ came to earth over two thousand years ago. Every one of them deserves attention and comprehension that only comes from Yahweh to understand. One of those many debates is being contested three times a day for believers around the world: what are we allowed to eat? The first five books of the Bible present a series of regulations as to what the Israelites could and could not eat. All the while, there are verses that seem to present the contrary, saying that all people can eat all things. Where does Yahweh stand on this?
Presenting what can and cannot be eaten is primordial in this debate. To make a brief summary of it, Leviticus 11 bans the eating of the following animals:
Those that chew cud or have a split hoof but not both (ex: camels, rabbits, pigs)
Sea creatures that do not have fins and scales (ex: crustaceans)
Birds that eat flesh or carrion (ex: crows, raptors and sea gulls)
Most winged insects except those that swarm and jump
Earlier on, God also tells Noah not to drink any blood of any animal (Genesis 9:4). There are also verses that prohibit the eating of any meat that has been strangled (Acts 15:20) and of eating a kid goat in its mother’s milk (Exodus 34:26). Essentially, there are a few restrictions, many of which don’t affect a lot of the general population in Western Civilisation. To not eat these things meant that you were sanctified and holy, for as the common expression says: you are what you eat.
On the other side, there are arguments that say that Yahweh allows for the eating of such things. Two popular examples are that of Noah and Peter. For Noah, He tells him that “every moving that lives shall be food for you” (Genesis 9:3). Any biblical scholar can be quick to dismiss the verse, due to the fact that this is in the period where the flood had just happened and food was scarce. All of this could explain why God told him specifically that this was permissible.
The second example would be the example of Peter. In Acts 10:9 - 16, Yahweh presents a vision to Peter, presenting him animals to eat. Peter replies that he has never eaten unclean animals, for God to respond later on by saying “Rise, Peter; kill and eat [...] do not call unclean what I have called clean.” The vision was directly correlated to what He had intended for Peter to do: to proselytize to other nations (Acts 9:17 - 48). These lost children of Israel needed to be spoken to, even though they were deemed unclean by the Jews who were living in Israel.
The debate is an ongoing one, based on one's personal belief. What you decide to do should be driven by your faith and by extensive prayer. One does not want to fall to the traps of the enemy because they did not pray. Salvation is something that one works for by themselves (Philippians 2:12-13), forcing each of us to dig deep and find what does Yahweh have planned for us and what He wants us to do.