I finished two books yesterday, very different but both informative and interesting in their own way: Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Peter Enns) and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (Michael Pollan). A week or two ago, I finished another book by Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In a way, the two Pollan books go together…but first let’s talk about Enns’ book.
Inspiration and Incarnation has been a slightly controversial book in Evangelical and Reformed circles (at least among academics) because it calls into question some assumptions about the doctrine of inspiration of scripture. Basically, it asks three questions: 1) why, if the Bible is the Word of God, does the Old Testament resemble other Ancient Near Eastern literature?, 2) why, if the Bible is the Word of God, does the OT at times contradict itself?, and 3) why, if the Bible is the Word of God, do the NT authors handle the OT in such strange ways. Enns’ basic point throughout the book is that we hold assumptions that are really off-base and that these need to be corrected. For example, why do we insist that for the Bible to be God’s word it has to look entirely different from other literature written around the same time? The probable answer to this question is that we believe that Bible should be unique. But to combat such an assumption (and given the evidence available to us, it is a faulty assumption), Enns offers an analogy: the Bible is God’s incarnate word, just as Jesus is God incarnate as a human person. And so the Bible, God’s word, takes on forms which would have been familiar to the ancient readers, forms that they would have understood, forms which speak to them in their time and make sense of their world for them…even if that means that we in the 21st century have to do a bit of work to make them relevant to our situation. Now, I’ve heard many objections to such arguments, objections which try to hold onto the idea of the Bible being totally and utterly unique…but the more time I spend studying the Bible in its original languages and studying its literary-historical setting, the more I find that I have to question my assumptions. I (and Peter Enns as well) firmly believe that the Bible is the word of God, but I also believe that God has given me the intellectual capacity to view evidence and process that evidence in a logical and rational manner; I don’t believe that I should have to suspend intellectual honesty to believe in God or in Christian doctrine. And so, as I read a book like I&I and when I study the Bible and its context, I have to be willing to let that inform my beliefs about them; I cannot start with doctrine or dogma and simply look for evidence that supports that belief while ignoring evidence that speaks against it. I’m not one to say that science and rationality should rule all, but when there are simple facts (like that there are other ancient flood narratives or that Kings and Chronicles have very different things to say about certain Israelite rulers), I believe that we must ask the hard questions so that we can move closer to God’s truth…otherwise we end up excommunicating Galileo.
Michael Pollan’s books are very different subject matter. They talk about food. And more specifically our food systems. The Omnivore’s Dilemma traces four different “food chains” in an effort to understand where and how our food is produced and the effects that this has on our bodies, our communities, our economy, our environment, our world, and our lives. It’s a story of who we are as a people group and the problems inherent in an out-of-sight, out-of mind food system. It suggests that things are messed up and that we are destroying ourselves and screwing with everybody else on the planet, too. I would summarize the basic point as that the more industrialized the food system becomes, the worse off everything becomes—from our health to the environment to our relationships amongst our communities. Maybe it’s an overly idyllic vision that he sets forward, but I think it’s something worth working for, because as he shows in the second book, In Defense of Food, our health depends on it. 
IDOF is more of a pseudo-scientific book on the effects of this industrialized food culture, which treats food as a source of nutrients instead of as something to be enjoyed for its own sake, on our health. We live with this broken system where worthless, empty calories (i.e. corn) are made incredibly cheap through government subsidies and inserted into every product that we consume. While the foods that are actually good for us (fruits and vegetables) are much more expensive because they lack the subsidies. And so the only ones that can really afford to eat the healthier foods are the (relatively) wealthy while the less-well-off are left to a diet that makes them less healthy (and unable to afford health care?…but that’s another whole debate).
Ultimately, this problem is what I’ve been trying to work out in my own life over the past couple of years: how do I eat well responsibly, not just as a luxury, so as to make a statement about the state of our national food system? I don’t eat meat because I think that system (at least at the industrial level) is the worst part of the food system…but up here in Alaska, that becomes more of a luxury because the produce is so much more expensive. I try to eat mostly local and in season foods (again, a bit difficult and becoming more so as we get to winter up here in Alaska). I try to eat mostly more organic (luxury?). But most of all, I’m trying to go back to basic, simple, non-processed, whole foods. Maybe I’m not doing a whole lot of good with my tiny efforts, but maybe there’s also a lot of other folks out there…in fact, I know there are because I was living with a bunch of them until a couple of months ago in a city that encourages a lot of this sort of stuff. We all had some different opinions on how to work it all out (I was the only vegetarian), but there was at least some effort there.
Anyway, I’d recommend any of those books. I&I requires you to wade through a lot of examples, but perhaps worth the effort. Pollan’s books are pretty easy reads, but I’d recommend looking at both of them…the second feeds off the first. Live well friends.
