Food Justice as God’s Justice

Vilmorin Andrieux / Olivia Wise

Thanks to writers like Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan, people are learning that eating is an agricultural act. Of course, it is also more than that: the moment any one of us takes a bite, we also chew into ecological, social, political, and economic realities as well. To consume a slice of bruschetta is to be in touch with the soils, farm fields, and sunshine that produce the grain that is ground into flour. It is to taste the skill and sweat of those who grow and pick the basil and tomato, and to wonder if farmers and farmworkers are being paid a just wage. It is to savor the cheese that began its life in the soil, made its way through plants and cows and goats, and now has been warmed into the flavors that delight our taste buds. And if one believes that life is a gift and a miracle, it is to taste God as the source of life’s animation and health. This means that eating is also, and ultimately, a deeply spiritual act.

Eating is so profound and all-encompassing because it takes us deeply and intimately into the world. I say “intimately” because with each bite we literally take the life and death of other beings into our bodies. This is both a wonderful and a terrifying thing. Eating brings us as near to another creature as is possible—so close that we become one flesh—while also bringing that creature’s life to an end. And it’s not just us. Everything that lives eats, which means that the whole world is a place of membership and intimacy, but also life and death. Which raises the question: How do we become worthy of receiving the life and death of the creatures that become our food? Or put a slightly different way, if eating is the embodied action of intimacy with other creatures, how do we stand before these creatures without shame? I ask this because one of the most helpful ways to talk about justice is to say that we are in just relation with others when we can stand before them without shame, knowing that in our action we have sought their well-being.

Today’s dominant, industrial mode of food production is saturated with shame. Soils are pummeled with poison, plants are genetically designed to be infertile, animals are brutalized in confinement operations, farmworkers are often consigned to slave-like work conditions, minorities and the poor are deprived of access to nutritious food, unhealthy food is served and promoted to children, and people around the world are being subjected to diets that put corporate profits ahead of social and ecological well-being. Do faith traditions have anything to say to this? I believe they do. Their responses are varied, and we have much to learn from them. In this short essay I will give one response— one that grows out of Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Intimacy with Creation

The Bible is not a manual for the soul’s escape to some heavenly realm. It is instead an extended meditation on God coming near to be with creatures in this world. God wants to be intimate with this world so that all life can participate in the love that God is and that sustains the universe. It all begins in a garden where God is presented as the Essential Gardener who holds soil so close as to kiss it and breathe into it the life that creates people, plants, and animals. The first human is an earthling, adam, from adamah (the Hebrew word for soil), who is charged with taking care of the garden. This is important because it signals that humans are called to join with God in the nurture of all creatures. Doing so, they can learn what creative love requires (practically speaking), and that all life is precious. They can discover that savoring life requires that people learn the skills of attention, care, and celebration. Gardening is the foundational human vocation that puts people in the flow of...