Diet

Here is a silly biblical story that I made up to illustrate a point:

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Once upon a biblical time an Israelite was walking along the side of a mountain.  Higher up the mountain a rock came loose and started rolling toward the Israelite.  But the Israelite didn't notice because he was in deep in contemplation of God.  God saw this and didn't want the Israelite to be killed because of his dedication to God.  So God appeared in the sky over the Israelite and told him "jump".  The Israelite was shocked to see God and instead of jumping, he stood there in awe.  So God said to him "I command you to jump".  The Israelite jumped and the rock passed under him.  But the Israelite didn't see the rock because he was looking up to God in the sky when he jumped.  Having saved the Israelite, God disappeared from the sky.  The Israelite thought "God has commanded me to jump.  I must jump, not walk."  So the Israelite jumped back to his town instead of walking.  There he told everyone that he received a commandment from God to jump.  So all the Israelites began to jump instead of walk.  God looked at this with amusement, but He thought "What harm is there in the Israelites jumping?  It sets them apart from the decadent nations and does them no harm."  So God let them jump, and they have been jumping ever since.
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This story explains how I feel about biblical dietary law.  It seems to me that the dietary laws of the Bible were there for health reasons, that God was trying to protect the health of the Israelites.  These laws can be found in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14.  Leviticus 11 is the beginning of a long list of health rules, so the context seems clear.  Deuteronomy is a restatement of earlier rules, so the order of things is a bit jumbled.  The English translation of the dietary rules repeatedly gives as a reason "it is unclean for you".  My book on Orthodox Judaism which supports the traditional Jewish view claims that this is a mistranslation.  I don't know biblical Hebrew, so I can't judge.  But simply reading Leviticus 11 in context is convincing enough for me that the issue was health.  Another point is that the Bible never mentions a punishment for violating dietary law, and God never punished anyone for violating dietary law.  This also supports the idea that dietary law was a health code, not a moral commandment.

Science supports the idea that these dietary laws made sense.  Pork was often infected with parasites and shellfish went bad quickly which could cause serious illness.  But these issues have been solved in our time.  These foods are no longer "unclean" for us, so I eat them.  Does this mean that biblical dietary law should be ignored?  I don't think so.  The fact that the Hebrew Bible contained dietary and medical law should be taken to mean that God wants us to be healthy and to eat healthy food.  Today, instead of worrying about pork, we should be worry about all the unhealthy artificial foods in our diet.  In a sense, these should be considered "ungodly foods".  These are not foods that God ever intended for us to eat.

What I have written here reflects my opinion.  I respect those who believe that the specific biblical dietary laws still apply today, as long as they have the integrity to actually follow the laws that they believe in.  But to those people, I ask why did God command these laws?  I gave my reasoning, what is yours?