Family Ethics: Practices for Christians

Chapter Five: The Practice of Eating: Love, Justice, and Mercy

C H A P T E R F I V E The Practice of Eating Love, Justice, and Mercy In this chapter I continue to consider specific practices that mark family life and ask how families might shape those practices in accord with the theological framework outlined in the first three chapters of this book. The first choice of a practice was somewhat easy, for sex is probably the practice that most distinguishes Christian marriage, even if it is rarely examined and virtually never advocated as a crucial part of the Christian moral life for married persons. Choosing additional family practices was difficult, as there are so many possibilities. However, because I contend that the ordinary daily life deserves more attention, I leave aside issues that traditionally occupy theologians concerned with family. As I argue that in the Christian tradition families are called to be socially concerned, I consider only practices with potential to serve the good of families themselves and the good of others. In order to avoid constructing an overly ideal ethic as the best of Catholic theology and literature counsel, I strive to acknowledge human imperfection and focus on small efforts toward solidarity. Eating, the focus of this chapter, is perhaps the most common and necessary family practice. While individuals in families can and do eat in a variety of ways, when families gather over meals, those meals are formative. In coming together to eat, a family recognizes bonds they share, shapes its members ’ characters, and sends them forth to be certain kinds of people. This is true whether families intend it or not. Around a table, a family becomes more of who it is—faithful or jaded, contentious or loving, open or closed, or something in between. I argue that a good eating practice can both contribute to the growth of family members as a Christian community and function as a way for them to live out their commitment to the common good. On my way to discussing good eating, I analyze current eating practices of American families and turn to the Christian tradition for wisdom about eating, focusing on Jesus’s meals in the gospels and the liturgical practice of Eucharist. Reading the tradition on food yields two seemingly competing values: Christian identity and inclusivity or compassion. For Christians, a good eating practice must balance these two values. It must be marked by mercy, even as it is oriented to love and justice. Family Meals in the Twenty-first Century In Sharing Food: Christian Practices for Enjoyment, Christian ethicist L. Shannon Jung urges readers to work toward “a deeply satisfying way to eat” centered on shared meals.1 In the last two decades most adults have been made aware of the importance of family meals for the good of their families . In doctors’ offices, television commercials, and school-sponsored mailings , they have been warned of the dire consequences of not sitting down to dinner with their children and encouraged to take advantage of the benefits of doing so. A recent Time magazine cover story brings together a plethora of studies showing that the more often a family eats together, the less likely children are to drink, smoke, take drugs, be overweight, have eating disorders, get depressed, or consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay sex, avoid drugs, eat healthy food, have a good vocabulary, and use good manners.2 Many parents have heard the message. According to a 2005 longitudinal study by the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, the percentage of adolescents eating with families increased 23 percent between 1998 and 2005.3 This improvement is laudable. Family Meals in the Twenty-first Century 129 Still, only about 55 percent of twelve-year-olds and 26 percent of seventeen -year-olds report that they regularly eat meals with their families.4 Because more women are in the workforce, professionals are more likely to work late, working-class adults hold service jobs that require more evening hours than the factory jobs their parents may have held, children and teens engage in more extracurricular activities, and few families have an adult at home who is free to make a meal each day, sitting down to a home-cooked meal has become much more difficult. Thus even many of those who know the benefits of family meals find themselves unable to make them a priority...