Praying Over Your Food In Thankfulness and For Protection and Blessing
In my latest article, I brought to your attention the ways in which our scientists, bureaucrats and the government in general are messing around and playing God with our meat supply. I am not at all interested in eating Frankenmeat, and the fact that the governing bodies seem to think that it's okay to place this meat product on store shelves without specific labelling to differentiate it from naturally bred and grown meat is beyond acceptable. But as I pointed out, this is all likely an effort to slowly introduce us to alternate meat sources without causing us to revolt against them.
At the end of that article I mentioned that there is something that you can do to protect yourself from these fake foods in situations where you may not have any control over what is served to you, be that at a friend's house or a restaurant. This solution is very simple, yet it is my belief that it is very effective too. This solution is to pray over your food before you eat it.
Praying over food before eating it has been a custom for Jews for millennia. According to Jewish tradition, failure to stop before eating in order to pray over the food "denies God the pleasure of providing an abundance of that food, in effect stealing from Him and from the people of Israel." (Haamek Davar) This practice can be traced back, at least in part, to the command of God as delivered through Moses, that "When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you" (Deuteronomy 8:10). This command was given to Israel before they entered the land of Canaan which the Lord was about to give to them. It was a land which they had not planted and developed, but they were about to take it over, and they were supposed to remember that is was God that provided them with the goodness and the bounty that they had not built. Jewish tradition actually holds that a prayer is supposed to be offered both before and after the meal.
This same practice of blessing our food before eating it has been followed by Christians from the early days of the church; Jesus Himself modelled this. In Matthew 14:19, as Jesus was about to feed the 5000, we read, "Ordering the people to sit down on the grass, He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food, and breaking the loaves He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds,". Some might argue that Jesus blessed it in order to multiply it; I suppose there could be some validity to that position, but Jesus was always working under the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the blessing over the food was not some magic incantation that somehow enacted that which could not otherwise have been accomplished, so do we really believe that the blessing was required for the multiplication? I don't hold to that.
I believe that Jesus blessed the food as an example to us. His entire life was an example to us in how we should live and act. Blessing the food before handing it out was simply an extension of the Jewish beliefs that I'm sure Jesus was taught by Mary and Joseph when He was a young boy, plus it is the fulfillment of God's command through Moses that we looked at earlier.
But I believe that there is more to blessing the food than simply being grateful to God for His provision and His goodness. I have come to believe that praying over the food sanctifies it and purifies it for us, and given what I recently wrote about how our food is being altered, this is likely becoming more and more important as we continue to approach the time of the end.
But there is more to this topic than the questionable ways in which our food is being grown; there is also the aspect that, as more and more Muslims are entering our western societies, the food manufacturers are taking steps to make their products more appealing to these potential customers. I don't believe that it has anything to do with honouring their religious beliefs; it has everything to do with honouring the wallets of the food buyers.
The problems arise, in particular, with the halal slaughtering practices of animals in order to make the meat acceptable to Muslims. If you are not aware, halal refers to the religious acceptability of the food products in reference to Muslim beliefs in the same way that kosher relates to Jewish practices around food. If any food is not halal, it is considered haram (unclean), and no Muslim should be partaking of that food out of concern for contaminating their body in the eyes of Allah.
Halal does not only refer to animal slaughter practices and the content of foods in reference to animal products; the halal label is actually showing up on all kinds of food products that one might not consider as potentially being haram. For example, bags of potato chips have been displaying halal logos for some time. There is nothing haram about potatoes but the oils in which the potato chips are fried must meet halal requirements. To my knowledge, this means that pork fat is not allowed, but beef tallow and likely at least some seed or vegetable oils are allowed.
Pancake syrup is another product that I have come across that has started displaying the halal logo. How this product can potentially violate halal rules, I have no idea. What I do know is that the pancake syrup that I grew up with started displaying the COR logo with a certain number under it, signifying that it was halal, and I suspect that the number indicates some further significance for Muslims which I do not understand. What I also know is that when the last bottle that I bought tasted and felt different than the syrup has every tasted before, I looked at the front of the bottle and, comparing it to the previous bottle, I noticed that the number with the COR logo was different. For whatever reason, the parent company decided to change the decades old recipe in order to gain what I imagine had to be a better COR certification to appeal to more Muslims, and in the process, they made the product undesirable to me, both for the pandering and for the change in the taste and texture.
But I want to return to the matter of halal slaughtering practices, as this should be of interest and at least something to note if one decides to not actually be concerned about this. There are certain standards that are required to be met for an animal to be considered to be halal through the slaughtering process.
(The next two paragraphs are somewhat graphic in the description of the killing process; if you are squeamish, you may want to skip these paragraphs, which I have typed in italics to help you identify them more easily. Please feel free to skip the italicized paragraphs. I feel that this information is important to share, but it does not change the nature of my arguments.)
I
actually have a moral issue with the actual process of killing the
animal according to halal practices, which I will now share with you. According to the Quran 5:3, it
is prohibited to consume animals that die before slaughter, but an
animal is to be killed by slitting it's throat in order to bleed it out.
(For clarity, slaughter refers to the actual killing of an animal to be
used for food, not specifically the processing of the flesh.) Slitting
the throat is common practice. In fact, Jewish regulations require the
same thing, and on the farm, this is how I was trained to kill an animal
that was destined to become food. The difference in what I was taught
and the ritual killing by both Muslims and Jews is that I will always
stun the animal first, typically by way of sudden trauma to the head,
while both religions prohibit stunning the animal. The reason that I
stun the animal is so that it does not realize what is going on and it
will not feel the pain of the blade, nor the feeling of bleeding out.
This is the most humane way of slaughtering an animal that I know of.
There
has been some contention in the food processing industry and with
Muslims about where the line is in regards to stunning. According to The Halal
Times [a], stunning the animal is acceptable if the stunning is
reversible. That is to say that using electricity to shock only the head
in order to stun the animal, a process that the animal should be able
to recover from, is acceptable, whereas using a captured bolt to shock
the brain is not reversible, and is therefore unacceptable. So there
have been compromises in the field of animal slaughter, but there are still animals
that are slaughtered without stunning them first; I find this practice
barbaric.
There is another issue that I have with the slaughtering practises required for Halal meat. According to the Halal Bureau of Canada [b], the "Slaughter must be performed by a practising Muslim familiar with halal procedures." Now, as a matter of practice, I don't really care about the nationality or the religion of whoever it is that is killing the animal that will provide me with the meat that I will eat. Typically, that should have no impact on the meat at all. It is the next part that begins to shine a different light on the subject though.
The reason why it must be a practising Muslim that kills the animal is that "The name of Allah (“Bismillah, Allahu Akbar”) must be pronounced at the time of slaughter" [b]. A non-Muslim cannot call on the name of Allah to bring his 'blessing' on the meat of the animal, and by proclaiming the name of Allah over the animal as it dies, this meat is now considered blessed by Allah. Essentially, this meat is prayed over by a Muslim, making it sacred for Muslims to eat, forbidden for Jews to eat, and questionable for other religions to eat.
To be specific, according to The Halal Times [a], the recitation of words over the animal is specifically to be "the recitation of tasmiyah", which is specifically intended "to invoke blessings and sanctify actions, particularly food" [c]. I would classify this action as causing any such handled food to be that which has been "sacrificed to idols" (1 Corinthians 8:1). I do not know if this same practice is engaged in with processed foods, but I would not be surprised to find out that this was the case.
The apostle Paul talks about this in his first letter to the Corinthian church. In 1 Corinthians 8:4-7a, Paul says, "Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. 5 For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, 6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. 7 However not all men have this knowledge;"
I will quote Paul further, from chapter 10 of the same book; "What do I mean then? That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons. 25 Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience’ sake; 26 for the earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains. 27 If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience’ sake. 28 But if anyone says to you, “This is meat sacrificed to idols,” do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for conscience’ sake; 29 I mean not your own conscience, but the other man’s; for why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience? 30 If I partake with thankfulness, why am I slandered concerning that for which I give thanks?
"31 Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. 32 Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God; 33 just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit but the profit of the many, so that they may be saved." (vs. 19-20, 25-33)
That is a lot of Scripture, but I wanted you to see it and not just hear my explanation of it. In these passages, Paul is telling us that any god other than the God that Christians serve is a demon, and is therefore of little consequence to us. He tells us that anything that is dedicated to a demon is of far less consequence than that which is dedicated to God; in fact, it is of no consequence at all. God is the Creator of all, including the fallen angels that comprise the demons, and Jesus defeated them all at the cross. However, there are those who do not have this knowledge and who can be lead astray or be otherwise burdened with guilt if they partake of things dedicated to demons, and we are to be cautious about leading a weaker believer into what they might consider to be sinful when they do not have the strength to decline partaking. If they act in conflict of their own conscience, they are sinning.
Furthermore, Paul tells us to "Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience’ sake; 26 for the earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains." "If I partake with thankfulness, why am I slandered concerning that for which I give thanks? 31 Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." And I will also add one more word from Paul as was written to Timothy; "For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; 5 for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer." (1 Timothy 4:4-5).
Taking all of these things together, I have come to the doctrine that I am about to share with you: Everything is from God; created and provided by Him for the good of those who love Him, and also for those who reject Him. If a man dedicates an animal that he has slaughtered, whether through a business or one of his own animals, or if a man blesses something that he offers to you in the name of some pagan god, that is to be of no consequence to you, because a demon cannot affect a Believer unless God allows it.
That being said, I believe that praying over that item and dedicating it to the One True God sanctifies it "by means of the word of God and prayer." It is through the thankful prayer of blessing over the foods that we eat that we can proclaim victory over the efforts of the devil to claim things that do not rightly belong to him. We can protect ourselves and our families from any potential spiritual ill effect that may be intended by the head of the pagan gods, Satan himself. But if you cannot come to a place of comfort with this teaching, then you should avoid and abstain from all things which you know to be dedicated to pagan gods.
I warn you though, do not be fooled into thinking that there is no power in the pagan religions. There is a definite danger to dabbling in the pagan arts and we as Believers should not play around with that. As Paul says, he does "not want you to become sharers in demons" (1 Corinthians 10:24b). This article refers quite specifically to the partaking of food; there are other dangers that need to be considered in the practising of pagan rituals or the possession of accursed things. I have touched on these things before, but maybe I will need to delve into them again.
I want to close this article by bringing to you again what Paul told Timothy in his first letter, as I quoted above; "For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; 5 for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer." So let's be sure to either begin to pray over our food if you have not been in the habit of doing so, or to continue to do so with the knowledge and understanding of what that prayer is actually accomplishing. It is not simply a ritual that we do for no reason, it is a form of spiritual worship and warfare that should not be taken lightly.
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