Holy Envy

This weekend I was out for a beer with some friends, half of whom were Jewish, and somehow our meandering conversation struck on the topic of keeping kosher. Not just the avoidance of pork and other such options, but the cleaning of dishes and the care of the kitchen, and about how some friends had gotten married and set up a kosher household, though they had been living in non-kosher households through college and early adulthood. As I listened, I was struck with a case of what theologians call “holy envy” — that feeling one gets when someone else’s religion offers something lacking. In some cases, of course, holy envy is the precipitating factor that leads people to convert, to change religions. But in more situations, holy envy can be that inner spur that makes you dig deeper into your own religion, to look for resources that can strengthen your own practice. Barbara Brown Taylor writes beautifully about it here:  https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/my-holy-envy-other-faith-traditions

Well as I sat there talking and drinking I realized I had a case of holy envy. I asked myself how I felt about the fact that my religion didn’t affect my eating and drinking. And for a hot second I wanted to convert to Judaism, but I talked myself down, using the mountain metaphor I love. The mountain metaphor initially claims that all religions are just different paths up the same mountain, but to this we answer that the religions are actually paths up different peaks in the same mountain range. The view is similar but each one unique; and if you try to climb them all at once you will end up just hiking around the foothills and never getting to the stunning views of the heights. So instead of starting me on a new path, holy envy pushes me to find out what my religion does teach me about eating and drinking. And when I look into that, I don’t find much about what we should eat and drink – and much more about how we should eat and drink.

Jesus was known for eating and drinking with the wrong people – with sinners. He was known for eating and drinking with hungry people — particularly, sharing food with them. And a generation later, Paul condemned the church in Corinth, not for eating and drinking the wrong things, but for eating and drinking unequally. (1 Cor 11:17+) When you get together for a meal, he wrote, one of you remains hungry while another drinks to excess. Our best research into the situation on Paul’s hands suggests that the Corinthian meals were a kind of potluck – or, more exactly, a potluck only shared in small table groups, not shared equally for all. Paul wrote to persuade them that they needed to share fairly around the community, even if some were rich and some were poor – when they gathered as a church, they ought to have those distinctions erased.

I’m a vegetarian and have been for a long time, with a mix of motives, from health to climate care to respect for the lives of animals. You may not know that there is a short passage in Paul’s letter to Corinth about vegetarianism as well (1 Cor 8:1+) The issue at stake is that most meat, in Roman-occupied cities, was available at the pagan temples where it had been slaughtered in sacrifice to the gods. Paul himself believed it was fine to eat meat sacrificed to idols — because idols don’t really exist, he wrote — but at the same time he said, “if my eating meat causes scandal or a crisis of belief for a brother or sister who believes eating such meat is unchristian, then I’ll happily eat vegetables for the rest of my life, rather than cause them to stumble in the faith.”

I’ve never found myself in a situation just like this, but I think of this principle when I choose locally grown food for the sake of the farmer who is my neighbor. I also think of this when I practice “flexitarianism.” For example, one Christmas in Uganda, my host family gave me a huge plate of chicken and I, thoroughly lacking the language or the cultural skills to turn it down gracefully, did my best to eat it. I had a stomachache later, but the love and fellowship they offered was preserved — and that, I think, is what really mattered.

So, if I ask myself what my religion teaches about eating and drinking, I actually do hear a clear message: honor all people, even if they believe differently from you; make choices that do not cause others to suffer; share food with the hungry; and share table fellowship with all. This may not help me answer those questions about washing dishes or choosing a menu, but it helps me integrate my faith into my daily life in practical ways, which is, I think, what the holy envy was about in the first place.