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Summary: Why ask what Jesus would eat?
Review: "What would Jesus eat today" is one of the trademarks of the Christian Vegetarian Association (ChristianVeg.org). They should have copyrighted it! This is a good book, one of the best of its genre, but it should only whet your appetite about the question of what Jesus ate and why that matters today. The CVA is a great organization with plenty of resources on that topic. I would also put in a plug for my own book, Good Eating: Diet, the Bible, and the Proper Love of Animals (Brazos Press). I have a whole chapter in it on this topic, entitled "Why Jesus (probably) was not a (strict) vegetarian." My book provides the first really systematic and in-depth look at both the historical evidence concerning Jesus' diet and its theological implications for today. After all, food was an essential part of Jesus' ministry, and the ancient world was obsessed with food debates. In a world of scarce food resources, for example, gluttony was a major sin. What we need is not more recipes but a biblical theology of diet, one grounded in a careful appropriation of the biblical tradition. Go ahead and change your diet, but don't neglect to feed your mind as well with some substantial theological reflection.
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Summary: Loves and fishes for me!
Review: ... washed down with a drop of wine vinegar... lovely!
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Summary: It really does help you live longer!
Review: After following the advice in this book for many years, I felt like I would live forever, right up until the point that I was crucified.Fortunately, I came back three days later.
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Summary: how to eat the way Jesus would like for us to eat
Review: alsolutely captivating, wonderfully written, very educational backed up with scripture. As christians, we need to be educated on what Jesus would have us to eat. This book lays the plan for eating health and biblical.
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Summary: What if Charles Sheldon hadn't written In His Steps?
Review: Did you even know that is where the popular phrase "What Would Jesus Do?" came from? If that crucial and all-affecting question had not saturated our culture and become ubiquitous in the last 25 years, would you look more honestly at Dr. Colbert's lifestyle book? It really isn't a bad question to ask ourselves, even if the phrase has been over-marketed.
That said, my best friend bought this book at a sort of hippie-organic-granola store that she frequents. Its crazy title caught her eye, and she burst out laughing and everyone was staring at her. So she felt a little silly even carrying such a book to the cash register, but being the ever-seeking theologian and health nut that she is--and being insatiably curious--she bought it. I laughed too, when she told me about it, but asked her to bring it over so I could borrow it.
Being a 6th generation vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist and the daughter of a minister and a dietician, I know a few things about religion and health (although I confess my sweet tooth often causes my actions to contradict my knowledge). I was skeptical. I wanted to see if this guy knew what he was talking about. So did my tall, thin Swiss husband, a physician who thinks Americans could solve a lot of their health issues by losing weight permanently. (But then, he loves to splurge on imported stinky cheeses and fine beef sausages now and then). He thinks fad diets are one of the biggest parts of the problem. He always asserts that health is an attitude and a lifestyle. Being a skeptic who enjoys medical critique, he grabbed the book before I could get to it. I waited for him to soundly lambast and nitpick it.
He didn't. "This is an excellent book," he said, "The guy is right on--I bet he's an Adventist." We decided he wasn't because of his stance on wine. However, the information on wine was very well researched and documented, and he also suggested other ways of obtaining the benefits of wine without drinking alcohol.
I was inspired by this book because it made healthy choices seem so much more indulgent and appetizing than the other way. I am genuinely disgusted by some of my formerly favorite snack and processed foods after reading about the way they're made. And that's coming from a life-long vegetarian. On the other hand, I've always LOVED Mediterranean food (think Greek, Lebanese, Italian, Southern French, Moroccan...MMmmm). Also it's easy to read and understand for my non-medical brain at the same time as being "right on" medically, according to my husband.
I would also like to answer some of the critics.
1. Yes, the AVERAGE life expectancy in Bible times was only about 40 years. But do you know why? Infant deaths and deaths of mothers during childbirth were largely responsible. So were childhood illnesses that we now have immunizations for. If you lived to be 20 you had just as good of a chance of living to be 90 as you do today--if not better. Also, we do know that God reduced humanity's lifespan after the flood, from Genesis 6:3. But he reduced it to 120 years, not 40. Clearly, we still are not living up to our full potential of longevity!
2. Yes, while Christ was on earth, he fulfilled the law (but he didn't destroy it--see Matt. 5:17-19), and he made salvation available to all no matter what they eat. Duh. But still, that doesn't mean we should purposely break God's law, just because we won't go to hell for it. Why would he have written it if it wasn't good for us? And why, if we are trying to emulate Jesus would we not want to be as much like him as possible? I don't think Dr. Colbert is suggesting that our hope of eternity will be jeopardized by failing to eat healthfully. He is just showing us a lifestyle that will make our physical beings the best they can be. Incidentally, our minds and spirits are currently housed within our bodies, and information is channeled to and from them via physical processes and expressions. The Eucharist itself is an example of a physical process translating to an emotional and mystical experience. No researchers and few theologians would suggest that our physical actions have no bearing on our emotions and thoughts. Neither would God: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? ...You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20. Surely this admonition applies to our daily bread as well.
So buy the book already. If nothing else, it's likely to stimulate some very interesting and enlightening conversations.
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Summary: Impious and Absurd
Review: Dr. Colbert and Thomas Nelson have reached a new low. The Word of God become man did not need to eat (as He demonstrated in the desert before His temptation). He is and was a contranatural man, which is to say, while He was fully man He was also born of a virgin, capable of miracle and the forgiveness of sins, and rose from the dead. What Would Jesus Eat? Nothing by necessity. By writing a book about foods Christ is supposeed to have eaten, the inevitable conclusion of even pious believers is that He ate these foods out of what William James called "healthymindedness" ('Varieties of Religious Experience', 1900). This carnal mindedness (Romans 8:6) typifies American 'muscular Christianity' but it is a remarkable blasphemy even for American publishing to use the Christ as a celebrity endorsement for the food pyramid and a whole foods diet! Though I have eaten the diet Dr. Colbert recommends for nigh on twenty years and can be evangelical about it, God forbid we portray God the Word as a 'careful eater'! Beyond the blasphemy, it is also a historical error to suggest even by association or implication that a Nazarene would make food choices 'confirmed by nutritional science'. Read the Fathers of the Eastern Church from the first to the twentieth century, from St. Basil and St. Dorotheos to Bl. Nicolai Velimorovich, and you know that the Fathers speak and understand food in terms of their qualities and effect on the spiritual aspect of the person rather than physical quantities of nutrients for the body machine. Only a modern with a dualistic and mechanical conception of man, a naturalist body-centered anthropology, would think that the value of the Christ's food choices are "confirmed" by a scientism that holds that "food is fuel". Is the power and efficacy of Communion, the scandalous Body and Blood of Christ, in its nutritional components? This is the absurdity and impiety of Dr. Colbert's book because it offers no other food value, namely, a supernatural and contranatural value, alongside his naturalist and materialist conceptions. Christianity in the West no longer believes in the contranatural power of the Eucharist or that human beings can live without food. We have abandoned as well except in ghettos of traditional culture a supernatural calendar of fasting and feasting to prepare us for the contranatural food. Alone among world cultures (except those we have corrupted and dumbed down), we restrict eating to human desire and materialist conceptions (tastes great/less filling). Alas, Dr. Colbert does not point us away from this carnal mindedness towards a spiritually minded way of eating on the model and paradigms implicit to the Lord's Supper and the other revealed traditions of the world. One hopes that he will be judged for his good intentions as a physician and not for his impieties and further corruption and indoctrination of the faithful in a materialist mindset.
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Summary: What Jesus Would Eat?
Review: Dr. Colbert does a reasonable job in describing his own belief system on dieting. However, this book is not new information from the other books that Dr. Colbert has written. It also does not follow the biblical descriptions of food allowable in the New Testament. Dr. Colbert does not take into account the modern improvements of handling meats, poultry and fish of all types since Jesus walked on the earth. Most of the world's catfish and shrimp are now raised in ponds on farms being fed meal each day. These types of oversights weakens his book and his repeated message. I was wishing that it would have been more creative and offered something new other than fasting and eating bread without yeast.
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Summary: What would Jesus eat?
Review: Dr. Colbert needs to write something new and more current for todays readers. He looks great on TV but this book missed the mark and was incomplete in quoting the bible on foods eaten during Jesus's day. Maybe his next book will do better?
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Summary: Life expectancy 2000 years ago was only 30 years ...
Review: Having read segments of Dr. Colbert's work, I can't help but wonder why he would chose such a topic as "what would Jesus eat?" It appears that he has shamelessly lached on to a popular concept without any regard for the irony of it all. Although I have no real data to back up my position (not unlike Dr. Colbert's approach), I believe it is fairly well documented that people in the time of Christ had relatively short life expectancies. This therefore begs the question: if life was short and times were hard, what difference does it make what people ate 2000 years ago?
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Summary: Okay
Review: Having struggled with a weight problem for years now, I was overjoyed to see a book that would help me manage my weight the Lord's way. However, at times this book merely seemed to be cashing in on the What Would Jesus Do? phenomenon without actually caring about the reader. I must admit that I did lose 30 pounds while on this diet, but this may have been due to the fact that I was only allowed to eat fish and loaves of bread rather than to divine inspiration.
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