Village Shepherd

The government has finally woken up to the fact that the health of our children in this country is threatened by their food. For two generations, since World War II, food has become increasingly processed and the era of the fast food meal is well and truly with us.

At the time, rather than increase taxes, the government looked for a way to reduce the cost of school meals. One way was to farm out school meals to private companies, then to allow even small children to choose their own food at school. Since most children prefer fast food and given the choice will opt for chips and beefburgers, crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks, the results were predictable.

And now, twenty years or so later, we're reaping what we have sown. We have a huge and increasing obesity problem which is likely to cost the Health service millions of pounds and we have many children whose behaviour is out of control, with all sorts of conditions which we'd never heard of twenty years ago.

But there were plenty of experiments in the sixties and seventies which clearly linked certain types of food, such as sugar, caffeine and some food colourings, with poor behaviour and poor concentration. One such experiment changed a prison diet from poor quality, sugar-rich, processed food to good quality non-processed food with no added sugar and the results were startling. The level of violence within the prison dropped dramatically and even the level of petty theft diminished.

It sounds trite to say it, but in a very real sense we are what we eat. If we eat food high in sugar, caffeine and refined carbohydrates, we will get a sudden burst of energy but it will be quickly followed by tiredness and lethargy. We may find ourselves irritable for no reason and we may find we have difficulty concentrating.

One way in which this trend is counteracted in our present culture is through Health Farms or Health Clubs or Alternative Medicine Clinics, which have sprung up everywhere. But they can be vastly expensive and so are taken up by those who can afford it, while those who can't afford it continue to eat food high in refined carbohydrates because it's generally cheaper.

But that's not the whole story. It's more complex than simply a question of financial cost. Sugary products seem to have a slightly addicitive quality, as anyone who loves chocloate will know! Dieting is big business because so few are able to stick to diets for very long. Those who do stick to them and achieve their ideal weight, very often balloon up again as soon as they come off the diet. Diet gurus talk in vain about "changing your life-style" and "changing the way you view food" and "changing your food habits." It's OK for a while, but most of us return to eating the chocolate and the refined carbohydrates because we just can't help ourselves. Then we add a whole load of guilt onto our dieatry problems because we know exactly what we ought to eat, but don't do it.

All of which brings us to Isaiah! Chapters 40-55 of Isaiah, sometimes called the Deutero-Isaiah, are generally attributed to an anonymous poet who prophesied toward the end of the Babylonian exile. He uses the analogy of good food and good wine, to coming to God. In wonderfully poetic words he says, "Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live."

It all sounds so magnificent and so simple. You don't need money for this incredible feast, you just need to come and enjoy it.

But just like food, somehow it isn't quite so simple. We're slightly addicted to the wrong sort of food, which affects our behaviour and our thoughts and although we may go on a "God diet" of good food which nourishes us, most of us revert back the minute we come off the "God diet."

Isaiah knows this and goes on to urge us to repentance, "Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Human beings had proved themselves incapable of sticking to the nourishing "God diet" throughout history. Whatever God did, human beings constantly behaved badly. However much love God poured upon human beings, they always reverted to the bad old ways. And they proved themselves incapable of sticking to God's ways for a further 400 years after the time of Isaiah.

But then God sent a properly qualified "God dietician" to help. He sent his Son, Jesus, to show human beings how they could stick to the right God diet and to prove to them that the right nourishment led to much happier, healthier lives where people were able to behave properly and to have good thoughts.

After Jesus, God sent his Spirit into human hearts, so that there would always be help on hand when human beings were tempted to stray from the path of wholeness and nourishment. Going to a kind of holy "Weight Watchers" in the form of church once a week, is a great help. But we also have the "Weight Watcher leader" within us, part of our being through his Spirit.

Sticking to a diet is never easy, even when we know it's for our good and for the good of our health and even knowing that we shall feel and behave much better as a result of the diet. Sticking to God's ways is never easy, even when we know it's for our good and for the good of our spiritual health and even knowing that we shall feel and behave much better as a result.

But Isaiah was right. God has prepared for us a table groaning under the weight of the best possible food, a feast for our hearts and souls and minds and bodies. It's ours for free. It will make us happy and healthy and able to behave as we wish to behave and to think as we wish to think. All we have to do is to sit and eat and be aware when we stray from the path of wholeness and nourishment, so that we can soon get back on again.

And if we do that in this life, the feast in the life to come will be unimaginable.