RE: Food
[NRO Staff  03/06 08:10 AM]

An e-mail:

Hi Rod & gang,

I just read the book today. Very compelling case. I'll bring this up because we're starting on "food week": the one place where you seem to allow yourself the most luxury as part of the crunchy-con sensibility is in food. You talk about microbrews and wine, for example. Through my Christian eyes, I read these things as luxuries. Yet you talk about sacramental living as though you experience holiness through the way you live.

My question is: how is it holy that you spend money on beer and wine (and other luxurious foods) that could be spent helping the poor? Aren't we to store up our treasures in heaven, where for eternity we'll feast with the Father? It's something I'm starting to agonize over as I try to live my own life more in line with how I read Christ's teachings. I don't buy beer and wine, but I do buy satellite TV, for example. And that's forty-two bucks a month that don't feed anyone. So how is buying better food than is necessary "experiencing the holy"?

And why is "the good life" limited to food? I can assure you, I can make a case that making my next car a BMW rather than a used Honda will contribute mightily to my experiencing beauty - the leather, the sound of the straight-6, the flick of the shifter - but I'll choose to stamp out my coveting because it costs so danged much. So why can I safely, morally buy luxury food?

I understand that you pay more in part for purely moral reasons - factory farming, etc. I'm talking here about foods you don't even need to buy at all, let alone organically. And I'm not advocating pleasureless, boring lives of misery. I'm just wondering why food seems to get special treatment.

Thanks for the book - I enjoyed it and while it was mostly confirmatory, there's value in that. (Encouragement is a spritual gift, after all.)

God bless,

Christian Mastilak