Pastor of Largest Church in US says “Eat Kosher”

In August 2006, Joel Osteen gave a sermon series entitled “Healthy Living,” in which he instructed his congregation of over 40,000 members not to eat pork or shellfish.

“Let’s talk a moment about pork, ham, bacon, pepperoni. These are some of the things that the Scripture tells us we should not eat.”

A video of this teaching resurfaced recently on YouTube and has recently generated a lot of buzz.

Osteen’s rationale for this teaching is that pork and shellfish are unhealthy for humans to eat, which is why God prohibited them. Ultimately, the reason for avoiding them is not simply obedience to God’s command, but for our own physical well being.

This thought process sidesteps the objections of traditional Christian law-vs.-grace doctrine, but ultimately misses the point of kosher law.

It seems to be borne out by modern knowledge that clean animals tend to be more healthy that unclean animals. However, the Bible never claims that this is the case or offers it as rationale for kosher eating. In fact, it does not offer any specific rationale, except for elevating the level of holiness of Israel.

See what I wrote about the reasons for kosher laws in my Biblical Kosher site.

Until the scientific facts that Osteen cites were discovered, there would have been no rationale for avoiding pork at all, it seems. But modern scientific knowledge seems to be showing that it would have been to the advantage of previous generations to avoid unclean animals. But the only reason they would have had to do so was obedience, not health. Do you get what I’m saying?

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of generations before modern science. We don’t know that pigs are unhealthy. All we know is that God said not to eat them. If we obey, we benefit physically without even knowing it. If we disobey, we reap the consequences, again with no knowledge.

Suppose scientists came out with a definitive statement that farm-raised pork has no negative health effects. Does that mean pork  is back on the table again? Or does it simply put us back in the middle ages where pork was still harmful but people didn’t realize it?

Furthermore, could there possibly be a positive or negative impact of eating unclean animals beyond health? We know from Leviticus 11 that it affects holiness and ritual purity. Could there be other negative spiritual side effects? The Bible doesn’t say there are, but then again, it doesn’t mention health concerns either.

But consider the implications of these parallel passages in the Gospels. (I have indicated key words of specific interest in bold.)

Matthew 8:28-34	Luke 8:26-37
And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way.	Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs.
And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”	When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.”
	For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him. He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss.
Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. And the demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.” And he said to them, “Go.”	Now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them permission.
So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters.	Then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.
The herdsmen fled, and going into the city they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon-possessed men.	When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country.
And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their region.	Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. And those who had seen it told them how the demon-possessed man had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned.

Some questions on these passages:

Why were the demon-possessed men so drawn to the tombs? What is it about tombs that makes demons more comfortable?
Why did the demons beg to be sent into the pigs? Why not into another animal or object?

The Gospels also sometimes refer to demons as “unclean spirits,” which seems related to the term in Rabbinic literature ruach hatum’ah. Tombs, containing dead bodies, are ritually unclean (Numbers 19:16). Pigs are also ritually unclean. Demons seem to be at home in that environment.

Now this is pure speculation, but is it possible that eating unclean animals may have a detrimental effect on our spiritual well-being, an effect that cannot be detected scientifically or may have no physical manifestation whatsoever? The Bible does not say so, but it certainly may be true.

Nonetheless, our motive for keeping kosher should be simple: God said so. No other rationale is needed.

Meat and Milk in Mishpatim

Our parashah (Mishpatim) says “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” (Exodus 23:19). Judaism interprets this as a complete separation of meat and dairy. Is this justified? Read the section about separation of meat and dairy on my Biblical Kosher site.

A Shabbos Coffee Breakthrough?

Having coffee on Shabbos morning is a challenge for people who observe according to halachah. Turning on a coffee maker on Shabbos is prohibited. Even setting a timer so that it starts brewing on Shabbos is prohibited. Nor are we able to use a French press with already heated water, except perhaps on Yom Tov if we did it properly. So what is someone to do?

Instant coffee is the most common solution. But now that gourmet coffee has become the norm, let’s just say those Folgers Crystals ads where they switched the coffee would not fly in our day and age. Instant coffee is gross.

So a second option would be brewing the coffee before Shabbos, and then leaving it on the heat all night so that it is still hot in the morning. But overcooked coffee is also gross. Don’t get me wrong, I like a super-strong, super-dark roast, but over-brewing is entirely different and tastes horrible. There are some people who like it that way, but those people are insane.

The third choice is something I actually used for a while. Get a really high quality thermos. Something not too large, just big enough to hold the coffee you will need. Have a coffee maker that brews the coffee very hot. In the last few minutes before Shabbos, boil a kettle of water. When the water is boiling rapidly, pour it into the thermos. Wait several minutes for the hot water to heat the thermos thoroughly. Brew the coffee, and the moment that it finishes, dump out the water from the thermos and immediately fill the thermos with coffee. Seal it up, wrap it in a blanket, and place it somewhere warm. You may very well still have hot coffee after twelve hours or more. But while this is far better than coffee that was actually cooked for twelve hours, and it is even better than re-heated coffee (which is not an option anyway), it is still not great. I think it is because over time the oils separate, giving the coffee a stale sour flavor.

A fourth possibility is iced coffee. I like iced coffee in the afternoon, but it just doesn’t do it for me in the morning.

The fifth option is what we are currently doing. We make cold press during the week. To make cold press, you combine a pound of coffee with nine cups of water and let it steep for 12-20 hours. After straining out the grounds, you are left with about six cups of coffee concentrate that stays fresh for a remarkably long time. That coffee concentrate is about three times normal strength, so you can combine it with two parts water before serving. While cold press is awesome in iced coffee, you can combine it with hot water for a cup of hot coffee called a toddy. Cold press has an incredibly smooth, non-bitter flavor that some people love and others don’t care for. To me, I prefer a regular hot brewed cup of coffee, but a hot toddy is nice for a second choice.

Here is where the breakthrough comes in: Starbucks has shockingly announced a new product: their own brand of instant coffee. As I said before, instant coffee is gross. But Starbucks has a reputation to uphold. If they succeed in making delicious instant coffee, this could change Shabbos as we know it. If they fail, they are making a huge mistake that could ruin their brand. They call it Starbucks VIA Ready Brew, and from what I understand, it is certified kosher like most of their other products. It is not incredibly economical, since a 12 pack retails for $9.95, which comes to 83 cents a cup. But it is actually more economical than the cold press option, and I am willing to pay more for good coffee on Shabbos. Starbucks claims that it is entirely different from all other instant coffees, because they use some new manufacturing technique. We’ll see. Their online store says it becomes available March 3.

(Via OhGizmo!)

Right to left in Gmail

OK, I finally figured out how to get the right-to-left button in Gmail. I thought I would post the solution here to save someone else trouble, perhaps.

The issue is that sometimes I want to compose a message in English, and sometimes I want to compose it in Hebrew. Hebrew is written and read right-to-left, so paragraphs need to start on the right side, and punctuation needs to go on the left. If a form on a web page is not anticipating that, it may not handle the Hebrew correctly. 

You can’t just hit the align-right button, since that just sets it as a left-to-right ordered paragraph that is just lined up on the right. Punctuation still ends up on the wrong side. You need to specify whether the paragraph is a right-to-left or left-to-right. And for people who are multi-lingual, it may not be the same in every message or even every paragraph in a message.

At first, people were solving this by using hacks and add-ons that tweaked Gmail to support right-to-left. But eventually, Gmail added this feature on their own.

But as I looked into it, it appeared that the only way to access this option was to set my Gmail display language to Hebrew. (This option is the very first one listed when you hit “Settings.”) When I switched it to Hebrew, buttons appeared along with the other formatting options that allowed me to choose right-to-left or left-to-right paragraphs.

That was all well and good, but I like to use Chrome for my Gmail, and I have a few Labs features enabled, which made everything go crazy. In Chrome, Gmail for whatever reason did not display entirely in Hebrew unless I went into the Chrome settings and set the Chrome interface language as Hebrew as well! Even then, the Labs features threw off the alignment of some of the boxes on the page and made it unusable.

I was frustrated for a while, wondering why someone couldn’t have English as their display language but still have the option of inserting right-to-left paragraphs. I kind of figured most English speakers wouldn’t know what to do with those buttons or what was possessing their computer after they pressed them, which would cause a service nightmare for Google.

But then I found the option. Now that I know about it, it is pretty obvious. When you go into Settings to change the display language, there is a link next to the language drop-down that says “Show all language options.” If you click that, it will allow you to enable the right-to-left editing support, even if you keep English as your display language.

Straining at Gnats on Tu Bishvat

I had a nice Tu Bishvat this year. I was going to get together with some friends’ families for a big get together, but some of my kids were a little sick, so it didn’t seem like a good idea to bring them out. So I went to the store and got as many fruits as we could find and had a little seder of our own. The kids had a blast. We had kumquats, papayas, starfruit… they were so excited to try all the different and unique kinds. I like having adventurous kids.

Of course, we had to have figs, since they’re one of the sheva minim. In Wisconsin, dried figs are our only option. I especially like figs because they’re one of the few fruits that I can eat without having a minor allergic reaction.

Worms, of course, are not kosher. They also share my appreciation for figs. That’s why halachah requires that we split open the figs and check for bugs before eating. And guess what? Lo and behold, there was a worm in one of our figs. There was no way to tell from the outside. I would have taken a picture but the camera batteries were dead. It made me think about all the worms I must have eaten before I learned or cared about bug-checking!

Our master Yeshua made brief reference to bug-checking when he criticized some hypocrites for neglecting weighty commandments (Matthew 23:23–24). Note that in his metaphor, he did not condemn them for “straining at gnats,” but for “swallowing camels.” After all, he said that “[The weightier matters] you ought to have done, without neglecting the [minor details].”

Notice how our master used kashrut as a metaphor for justice, mercy, and faithfulness. That says a lot about the importance of keeping kosher, doesn’t it?

Biblical Kosher

There is a whole lot of misinformation among Messianics regarding kashrut. They look at the heaps of halachot that exist in Judaism: the shechting, the separate dishes, the blow torching, the toiveling, and it seems overwhelming and absurd. They don’t see the connection between practical kashrut as observed today and the food laws in the Bible. So they chalk it all up as made-up garbage.

So Messianics like these invented the term “biblical kosher.” This usually is intended to refer to a dietary standard based solely on the biblical text, without the interference of rabbinic interpretations or stringencies.

Now it is perfectly reasonable to make a distinction between biblical and rabbinic requirements. That distinction is important in Judaism. Biblical commands are called “de’oraita,” and rabbinic commands are called “derabbanan.” And if someone is looking for a place to start in any area of observance, by all means, start with the biblical commandments!

But what people don’t realize is how much of what they perceive as “rabbinic” actually arises from the biblical text. The Bible says a lot more about kosher than “don’t eat pork and shellfish.”

So I put together a study that explores what the Bible really says about kosher eating. It is totally free and accessible here: Biblical Kosher. Please read this study and tell me what you think. Also, feel free to review it on your own blog.