The question is not mine, but belongs to Jesus and comes to us through the gospel according to Matthew. Of course, the NRSV renders it slightly differently: "Are you also still without understanding?" Somewhat predictably, I like the more blunt translation: "Are you so dull?"
Jesus, of course, was having a run in with the Pharisees and scribes over why his disciples weren't following their cleanliness rituals. In this case, the issue was hand-washing before eating. Jesus charges them with hypocrisy, using rules to circumvent responsibility. His one-liner: "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." Zing! Disciples scratch their heads and ask Jesus to break it down for them. Jesus verbally rolls his eyes, says that the things that are already inside a person are what defiles them (evil intentions, slander, etc.)...end of story. So much for the start of Matthew 15.
Now, I'm always uneasy with connections drawn between health and sin. When encountering a blind man, the disciples draw too much of a connection between the two, asking, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus says neither. The problem with health, like the problem with safety, is there is no upward limit. Can you reach a point when you are healthy? Can you reach a point when you're safe? Sure, there are degrees of less and more, but there isn't a telos to reach short of immortality. As one of my favorite people likes to say, "God intends to kill us all in the end." I think that's right. This, of course, leaves us in the arms of wisdom when we ask questions like: How much medical care should you throw at a person before their personhood is lost? If one can never be safe as such, how much money should we spend on national security? Nothing is probably not the answer, but these kind of concepts with no upper limit do quickly and easily give themselves over to excesses and pathologies which we might call sinful, or at least unwise. In the medieval conceptions of the seven deadly sins tradition, the sins are departures from a proper mean which in the end distracts one from God. Pride, then, can be over- or undervaluing oneself. Gluttony: the sin of the distracted person who spends too much time obsessing about food, potentially the eater, the gourmand, the health nut, the anorexic.
There are really two points I'm making here. First, not everything that might be labeled unhealthy should or could be avoided. If health is not something at which one can arrive, "less than optimal" is just part of life. Plus, like many other things, by way of example we could use acquiring information on a new car, each incremental gain comes at a higher cost. Sure, you could visit the plant and get the life stories of the people working on the line, but at some point more is not more. So I'd argue, it is with health. Second, some things - once weighed - are wrong even if you can't make a rule out of them, things we might term unwise. [Generally, I take this sort of determination to be more important in terms of moral reflection.]
I recently came across the video below in which Mark Bittman discusses what's wrong with what we eat. Now, I love Mark Bittman. I love his "The Minimalist w/ Mark Bittman" videos on NYTimes.com where he usually prepares a simple but inventive dish. In this fiery and funny talk, he weighs in on what's wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk. While I'd hesitate to make a doctrinaire moral injunction, I agree with what he's saying and think it is a moral issue.
Here are some things we can do to start:1) Grow some food. Benefits:
- Provides healthy food.
- Maintains a relationship with the earth which is not simply one of consumption, but observer and caretaker.
- Might even inspire you to compost.
2) Find and join a CSA. Benefits:
- Lots of locally grown, fresh produce.
- Supports smaller farms.
- You don't generally select what you'll receive since it depends on what is growing, so you have the opportunity to learn about how to prepare things you wouldn't normally buy at the grocer.
3) Take a cooking class. Benefits:
- More enthusiasm for cooking.
- Alternatively, find two recipes online and make them in the next week. [Here is the Food Network's seasonal produce guide.]
4) Keep a food diary for a week and then cut your meat consumption by half. If we're eating too much meat, let's find out how much.
5) No soda for a month. Benefits:
- Stronger bones.
- Less sugar (or if you drink diet soda, less sodium and odd chemicals).
- Less waste.
- More money to put towards one of the above.
While I don't want to say that something that is unhealthy is thereby sinful, given the evidence, how we eat may be profoundly unwise. Thus, even though Jesus said "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person...," well, maybe it is, if our heart cares not for the social, environmental, and physical ramifications.
Feed others, eat well.
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