Issues of diet

Here's a text that, looking back now, should have seemed quite problematic to me:

Mark 7:18-19: And He [Jesus] said to them, "Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, 19because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?" (Thus He declared all foods clean.) (NASB)

The parenthetical statement is actually part of the Biblical text! I didn't add it! Check it out for yourself!

I read through the entire New Testament when I was still a full believer in all 27 (now 28) fundamental SDA beliefs. Somehow this verse didn't really strike me. I think that it was around the time of my reading through the New Testament that I began to relax some of my strongly held SDA-specific beliefs. But, as I remained a believer in the inspiration of Ellen G White (EGW) I should have had a major problem with this verse. It's quite obvious that the verse not only allows for the consumption of meat, but of formerly unclean meats as well. Don't deny it and don't make up excuses; intellectual honesty is critical!

While I can still muster the SDA mindset, I'll try to provide an example excuse that I might have offered myself:
OK, I can accept that Jesus declared all foods clean, but back then they had neither the "health message" [i.e., in this context, EGW's proclamations of what we should and should not eat] or a good knowledge of medicine. When Mrs. White received the "health message" we learned that to eat meat, especially unclean meat, was to risk deleterious health effects--and thereby desecrate the temple of the Holy Spirit [i.e., our bodies]. So now we know that eating meat (especially unclean meat) not only desecrates the temple of the Holy Spirit, but that it ignores the counsel of the Lord's messenger [EGW].

(Ugh... I think I need a bath now! I think I may have gotten my first taste of the feeling C.S. Lewis referred to when he mentioned that he didn't take pleasure in writing The Screwtape Letters because of the mindset that he had to adopt to do it. Of course, I'm nothing next to Lewis.)

In practice, this kind of excuse is much more verbose so that it does a better job of transitioning from the beginning (truth) to the end (error). But you get the idea. Do you see what a person who offers himself this kind of excuse is doing? He takes a clear declaration from scripture and twists it around to entrench in his mind a (preconceived) concept that is in direct contradiction to the Bible!


Paul talks quite a bit about issues of food (see Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 8 and 10, Colossians 2), and all of his counsel completely agrees with Jesus and Mark... but not EGW.