Thou Shall Not Eat the Hoopoe

You may eat all clean birds. But these are the ones that you shall not eat: the eagle, the bearded vulture . . . the hoopoe and the bat. Deuteronomy 14:11-18

In reading through the Old Testament, one encounters many rules that we don’t follow today. This is illustrated in today’s passage, in which Moses relayed God’s commands to the Israelites regarding dietary restrictions – animals they could eat and could not eat. The list seems quite arbitrary to me. They were allowed to eat sheep, deer, and cattle, but they were to avoid pigs, camels, and rabbits. Why? Why were some animals OK and some animals were forbidden? It may have been for their own health. Pigs carry Trichinella spiralis, which can be transmitted to humans through undercooked pork. Or, it may have been intended to distinguish the Israelites from the surrounding cultures where pork was offered to idols. Whatever the reason, the message is clear – Dietary rules (and all rules) were set by God and not by the Israelite’s appetite. Their stomachs may have told them that a hoopoe looked tasty, but God said no.

The New Testament relieves us of these dietary restrictions (Mark 7:18-19, 1 Corinthians 8) so that today, we feel free to eat bacon (thank the Creator). But the point still stands. God makes the rules. I don’t.

This is an ongoing life problem for me. I’d much prefer that I determine the rules that govern my life. I want to do whatever I want to do and when God forbids something that doesn’t make sense to me – or simply opposes my will – I attempt to find some reason to ignore him. I’m sure that some hungry Israelite once saw a hoopoe (apparently some kind of bird) and found God’s law to be overly restrictive. Surely God didn’t intend for me to go hungry when there’s a perfectly good hoopoe right there for me to eat. I do the same thing. When my feelings tell me one thing, but God tells me another, I attempt to justify my will, making myself out to be God.

In our egocentric culture, we’re tempted to embrace this philosophy. If I feel it, it must be right. Our morality is determined not by some higher standard, but rather by our individual emotions, preferences, and appetites. My problem though, is that my way led me to absolute misery and disaster. The challenge for me in recovery now is to daily recognize that I’m not God. I don’t determine that which is healthy for me. God does. Daily then, I must look to him, making my decisions based on his will, not based on my appetite, emotions, and preferences.