As I have been writing on “creation and food,” and the whole ag-econ system that gets food on our plates, some may assume that I want to be nothing more than a shill for the status quo. However, this assumption would go clean contrary to quite a number of things I have written about it, including the paragraphs to follow.
Nothing written here should be taken as though I would be against any food production system that would result if all taxpayer subsidies were removed, and the regulative oversight of the nannystate were banished to the other side of Ganymede. I believe that a free people should be free to grow, harvest, sell, truck, shelve, freeze, process, buy, cook, or savor whatever they please, just so long as they do it on their own dime.
But in the meantime, the corporate food system is heavily regulated and subsidized by the state. The system is dislocated, and the dislocations all make their way down to us. Doing something about this would be great, but most of what is suggested or put forward is not really doing something. The economic system we are up against cannot be successfully attacked from this end economically.
The world’s system can be attacked “from this end” by means of Word and sacrament, Christian community, prayer and psalms. They have no countermeasures for that. But they cannot be successfully dismantled by generating a fad that will just give Cargill something new to sell to us. It doesn’t make sense to move from one end of the pool to the other because you are tired of being wet. Whether you buy at WalMart or Whole Foods, your money goes to a big corporation, and often the same one.
When the Church gets its act together, such that our influence moves into the economic stream in a transformative way, it will have an economic effect — which is quite different from having a political effect with economics as the means. Real transformation will result in a stream of money that stops going to the crony capitalists. But food fads just increase their opportunities, and their profits, by increasing the gullibility of the food-buying public. What does “fresh” mean? It means what the feds say it means. What does “organic” mean? It means what the feds say it means. What does “all-natural” mean? It means what the feds say it means, and this naturally results in absurdities.
So there are three basic themes that I want to return to again and again in these posts.
First, my fundamental spiritual concern is the self-righteousness that is endemic to just about every food cause I ever heard of. The only food cause I am interested in is the bread-and-wine cause called the Church. Those who “get into” their food with any demeanor other than pervasive gratitude for whatever is set before them are falling into an ancient trap. Food scolds rarely see themselves as food scolds, but that’s the way the temptation works. When they can see it, they aren’t scolds anymore.
Second, there are fundamental economic concerns about our food production system concerning which the Church, when she grows up to the task, will have something to say. And in that day, this is what the Church will have to say about ordinary food — the food that is blessed by the bread and wine, without being taken up into it. In this area, we have only one law concerning ordinary food — thou shalt not steal it. That’s it. The current system is objectionable because of the stealing involved, and not in the eating and drinking per se. If bandits have made off with your money, we wouldn’t think to pass regulations on how and where they could spend it.
And last, if we concern ourselves to obey the plain teaching of the Bible, the other things that need to be taken care of will take care of themselves. Love one another. Stop stealing. Stop feeling superior. Stop scolding. Stop gorging. Stop fussing. Love one another.