Christian Living

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GOD AND BILL MAHER IN AGREEMENT?

On Real Time With Bill Maher, the week of 10/4 through 10/11, 2009, Bill Maher had a brief interview with Lisa Jackson, the newly appointed head of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).  Over the course of the discussion, which ranged from hybrid cars to cracking down on Cow Farmers, Bill Maher and Lisa Jackson made the following exchange:

Bill: Now what about water?  I mean, I read in the paper frequently that the water in this country is making people very sick.  Because what they flush down the toilet - their diet pills, and their birth control pills, and hormones, and you know, all the things Michael Jackson was taking... No, seriously, prescription drugs - our water supply is not good.

Lisa: Yeah, increasingly we know that trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, among other synthetic/organic chemicals are showing up in our water, because they're not treated by the systems that we (the EPA) set up to treat water in this country.  We SHOULD be concerned that we don't know enough about clean water.... water is a concern for us.

Bill: I mean, ultimately it's because we're just such a dirty society, isn't it?  I mean, I remember one of the first issues we did on my old show in 1993, POLITICALLY INCORRECT, was "America Causes Cancer" - which, you know, people were like, "Oh, how can you say that?!".... but isn't that the truth, I mean, America causes Cancer - our way of life, the way we live, how dirty we are, the drugs we take, the food we eat, the chemicals we ingest - it's just a cancerous country.

Lisa: ..... We know it, but we're always playing "catch up".  We're cleaning up, we're not preventing.  We have 80,000 chemicals in this country put into commerce.

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So let's assess what Bill said.  In a nutshell, if I may paraphrase, he said that our behavior is killing us.  Our behavior as far as chemical and pharmaceutical abuse, dietary consumption, waste and pollution.  Hmmm... I think I've heard this somewhere before.

From the beginning (or at least from the writings of Leviticus - the best Scriptures to reference being Lev. 11 & Deut. 14) God provided us with food guidelines.  Basically, we are not to eat 1) blood; 2) Animal fat; 3) scavengers; 4) Carnivores 5) Insects other than those of the Locust family; 6) Reptiles. There are other specific exemptions such as the duck (webbed feet), or the Catfish (fish must have fin AND SCALE)

Many Christians would argue that Christ removed the Old Testament Laws, and therefore we need no longer concern ourselves with these guidelines.  I, however, am fairly certain that Christ's death and resurrection did not change the biochemistry of our makeup, nor did it change our physiological reactions to the biochemical makeup of other plants and animals.

In other words, take the Pokeweed Berry, for instance: “The Pokeweed contains traces of phytolaccatoxin and phytolaccigenin which are toxic for mammals.  

Consumption of pokeweed berries may lead to headaches, diarrhea and severe abdominal pain. If consumed in large quantities, these berries can lead to complications such as quickening of heartbeats and a feeling of giddiness or seizures, eventually leading to coma or death.”

My guess is (of course, I am only guessing here) that Pokeweed Berries were as poisonous before Christ, as they are after Him.  Therefore, what wasn't good for us then, isn't good for us now.

If our diets are unhealthy, our immune systems, as well as other systems in our bodies are not properly supplied with the fuel they need, and would naturally work at less than peak performance.

So, in short, the food we ingest in large quantity is most often not the foods we were instructed to ingest roughly 3520 years ago.

But we shouldn't stop there.  There's another plausible variable in effect here.  The agricultural laws of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy speak of how we should harvest our food and treat the land upon which we grow it.  

Exodus 23:10 - And six years you shall sow your land, and shall gather in the fruits thereof: 11 But the seventh year, you shall let it rest and lie still; that the poor of your people may eat: and what they leave, the beasts of the field shall eat.  In like manner you shall deal with your vineyard, and with your olive yard.

Because of our refusal to allow the land to rest every seventh year, we gather less and less nutrients from more and more food because the soil is never allowed time to rejuvenate. Because of this, though we eat plenty of food, we get very little nutrients from the food we eat. 

The less the land has to work with, the less it produces, and so we have, as a society, implemented chemicals to synthetically supplement the ground for what it lacks. Unfortunately, though we accomplish the growth of food, it is not adequate food for proper sustenance and healthy living. 

Is our body any different than the land we farm? Do we not supplement with chemicals (i.e. pharmaceuticals and chemical compounds) to compensate for the nutrients that we aren’t getting through solid, disciplined dietary means? And do we not need more and more compensation the more we veer from what naturally keeps us healthy?

It is therefore my belief that though many times throughout the day we are seemingly full, our bodies still "hunger

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