Contradictory Habits
Although I know that it is dangerous to generalize too much from attire and demeanor, it seems a safe bet that most of the clientele in this unabashedly hip enclave doesn't have much of a cultural problem with the rest of the sixties legacy of sexual license and the freedom to experiment with various, well … let us say, non-food substances.
But this sixties outlook seems at odds with itself. The presumably liberated shoppers are quite concerned with the purity of what they eat as shown by their shopping habits. Yet, according to the sexual philosophy of liberalism, they are probably not overly concerned with whom they physically unite in the most intimate and intrusive way possible. Likewise, in this neo-sixties outlook, there is no “hang up” about experimenting with non-food substances that are clearly harmful to both body and mind. The contradiction seems inescapable: pure vegetables and greens, impure acts and substances.
Is it just a matter that, like all of us, this hip clientele is just a mixture of good and bad mired at times in confusion? Is the concern for healthy eating merely an isolated island of sanity in an otherwise immoral lifestyle? Or is there a deeper connection between the serious concern for healthy food and the indifference to unhealthy unions and substances? A social science researcher armed with a clipboard could possibly find the answer. Yet, maybe not, given that any revealing answer by those surveyed would require self-reflection about an issue that is likely to be dismissed beforehand as irrelevant.
Remember the Pharisees
If the shoppers do in fact view their strong interest in eating healthy products as consistent with promiscuity and substance abuse, what kind of reasoning makes it seem consistent in their eyes? My own guess takes me back to the Gospels, and, of all people, the much-maligned Pharisees. Like the health food store clientele, the Pharisees were not devils. In fact, they were laymen committed to a rigorous and idealistic following of the Law. Their project was noble. And surely we can grant that most of us have some noble aspirations, however confused the implementation of those aspirations may be at certain points in our lives.
In Matthew, Jesus gives the famous response to the accusation of the Pharisees and scribes that His disciples violated the tradition of the elders by not washing their hands when they ate:
[Not] what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man…. Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and so passes on? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man. (Matthew 15:11, 17-20, Revised Standard Version)
While as Christians we are called to take reasonable care of our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit, the teaching of Christ points to a higher priority — how we actively use our bodies. Out of the heart emerge the evil thoughts that issue in the bodily actions condemned by Jesus: murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. As John Paul II's theology of the body teaches us, the reference to false witness and slander is not just a reference to that small but mighty member, the tongue (James 3:5), but can also be a reference to the language spoken by our bodies as a whole, especially in sexual acts.
No Body/Soul Dualism
The Christian emphasis is on our bodily actions, not so much on how “clean” or pure our food is. The reason is that anyone can wash their hands as the elders did. Anyone can shop for organic food. The heart makes the crucial difference, and the bodily actions that emerge from the heart.
So, in the end, why take care of the body? Christians should take care of the body because it is inseparably expressive of our hearts and souls. Yet, there remains an element of detachment about the body: the Christian priority is on what we do with the body from the heart, and not so much with the strict physical condition of the body as separate from the heart or soul.
The nostalgic child of the sixties has things backwards. The true children of the sixties, like the Pharisees, view what they eat as defiling the body — or as they would say “toxic” — rather than focusing on their use of the same body. This backwards view is what seems to make the pursuit of pure eating superficially consistent with impure acts. Even odder, some of these purists for food quality overlook the toxic effects of certain mind-bending, non-food substances. There is a dualism of mind and body lurking in this contradictory behavior. It is as if we nurse the body as a mere instrument so that it can be available for whatever a confused mind capriciously requires in the way of a transient “high.” The classic Christian view refuses to settle for such a separation between the body and the soul. The body is not just a tool for the soul or the heart: the body, the soul, and the heart together are the whole person. They rise or fall together.
If the cultural ambience at the hip health food store is taken seriously, then my guess is that, surprise of surprises, the obsession with organic food may be a modern version of the Pharisaical excesses condemned by Jesus. You will see advertisements for “detoxifying” products at the co-op, but the most important toxicity is ignored. Today's culturally convenient identification of religious traditionalists with the Pharisees, to whatever extent it is correct, may be too limited — Pharisees, it seems, can be found even in very non-traditional places.
© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange
Oswald Sobrino’s daily columns can be found at the Catholic Analysis website. He is a graduate lay student at Detroit’s Sacred Heart Major Seminary. He recently published Unpopular Catholic Truths, a collection of apologetic essays, available on the internet at Virtualbookworm.com, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble.
