mmmmmm... sacrilegious delicious...
Posted on 03/17/2009 6:57:11 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Did you know that Joel Osteen is kicking it old school now? And by old school, I mean Old Testament. Straight outta Hebron!
The new-agey motivational speaker preacher at Lakewood Church took a bizarrely old-fashioned approach recently when he advised his congregation against eating both pork and seafood, saying that "...for our health's sake, we have to be willing to make some changes."
He further explained his newfound nutritional path to salvation with deeply theological phrases like "back in the Bible days" and "this is kinda gross" before launching into a detailed diatribe about the inherent filth and evil associated with porcine digestive tracts.
He appealed to his followers, "I know some of you love pork chops. You love ham and cheese sandwiches. I grew up on all that. I love...bacon." (The marked pause makes me think Joel doesn't really love bacon.) But that they should follow the example set by his family -- who now eats turkey bacon -- and give up pork "to honor God."
He goes on to declare that his congregation should also avoid shellfish: "Shrimp, crabs, clams, oysters, lobsters..." because they eat the "excreetment [sic]" of other animals.
One can only assume that someone inadvertently left a Bible in the men's room at Lakewood, opened to Leviticus, and Joel -- since he hadn't brought his copy of The Six Figure Speaker with him that day -- read it to pass the time.
And having little to no theological education -- by his own admission -- nor context within which to understand the Old Testament's strictly-defined dietary laws, Joel interpreted the Bible's weird front pages that no one ever reads to mean that pork and seafood should be off-limits to Christians. Because, clearly, other Biblical scholars have been mistaken about this for years.
Good work, Joel! I look forward to your next sermon, wherein you discuss the segregation of women into red tents during their scary menstrual cycle each month. In the meantime, I'll be eating a SCCOLBLT. That's a shrimp-crab-clam-oyster-lobster-bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich, Philistine.
I agree. Not eating pork or shellfish is for health and your own choice. I haven’t eaten pork in years. I do occasionally eat shellfish but prefer finned fish.
By all means, yes, let’s stone a policeman and fireman to death for cutting a traffic victim out of a burning car to save their life — on the SABBATH!!!
Anyone who has read the Bible immediately thought of that passage.
Osteen’s true colors are beginning to show.
Do these people even read the Bible?
Matthew 15:11 (New International Version)
11What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.' "
They might be thinking of "What Would Jesus Eat?" There's a book and a cookbook. The author says pretty much the same thing as Joel. He doesn't say that we're still bound by the Old Testament rules and cannot eat those foods. Just that there were reasons for those old dietary laws, they weren't arbitrary, and there really are good health reasons to abide by them. It was interesting, actually.
Peter’s vision was actually representative of three “unclean” men who were coming to visit him and whom he would have ordinarily not associated with (as a devout Jew), so the sheet was lowered three times in his dream to represent these three men.
Getting back under the Jewish law (which didn’t apply to Gentiles anyway) is not for me and any time I feel any compunction about that, I read Hebrews again.
Having said that, just from a common sense approach, there ARE animals that aren’t so good for us to be eating just from a health perspective, and I guess that’s why God told his people those meats weren’t good for food. In Jordan Rubin’s book, “The Maker’s Diet”, he explains the nitty gritty about the hog that will give you pause as well as on the scavenger shellfish and fish. We don’t eat much pork at all as it causes my husband to have gout. I do like a well-cooked slice of bacon once in a great while, though. Having been raised on bacon (cooked to a burned crisp), it would be very hard for me to NEVER have any of it again.
Remember, if you’re going to undertake to keep the LAW about this or that, then you better from that day forth and forever keep the WHOLE LAW because if you break one slight one of them, you are then guilty of breaking the whole thing (a considerable lot of them). Hint: You can’t do it; that’s why Christ had to die for us.
YAY! More for ME!
Yummy bacon...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....
Woo-hoo! I love that passage. Pass the crab legs!
All foods were considered clean in the days of Noah, and that the only foods considered unclean were those that Israel was directed to avoid for the purposes of separating them from other nations.
Gen 9:3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.
Lev 20:24 But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I [am] the LORD your God, which have separated you from [other] people. Lev 20:25 Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. Lev 20:26 And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD [am] holy, and have severed you from [other] people, that ye should be mine.
For myself, I love bacon. Joel is entitled to his opinion as are we all. There is no need to resent his income, et cetera.
If one listened to all the various dietary critics, I think several good foods would come off the list. It might be a good idea to prefer free range chicken and grass fed beef, but they cost more. There is a lot of disagreement on diet. Some experts recommend eggs; some recommend that you avoid eggs. Some insist eggs be cooked; others recommend raw eggs. There is disagreement on milk, on soy, and so on. Some favor more carbohydrates, some fewer. I recommend people listen to the arguments (to the extent that they want to invest the time) and decide for themselves, without insisting that others agree.
I have some old laws for you to try out.
Thinking about that stoning false prophets thing?
Me too.
Nicely stated. Thank you.
Honestly, my first thought was his wife’s big hair not being covered in church, however, there are a lot of fun laws in the OT..
In the meantime, I'll be eating a SCCOLBLT. That's a shrimp-crab-clam-oyster-lobster-bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich, Philistine.
< homer>MMmmm. Seabugs. Tasty, delicious seabugs. Drooooollllll.< /homer>.
Wikipedia on "Cockroach of the Sea"
I saw the clip of Joel's nutrition advice a bit ago, pointed to by an FR post, IIRC. No context, so I have no idea at all how he got on that.
Adkins unfriendly. Too much bread.
Never, ever, ever put trust in a preacher who wears a permanent.
And yes, who doesn’t like Joel as a person.
He is way off the wall on this, theologically.
Very carefully separate the front edge of the sausage layer from the bacon weave and begin rolling backwards. You want to include all layers EXCEPT the bacon weave in your roll. Try and keep the sausage as tight as possible and be sure to release any air pockets that may have formed. Once the sausage is fully rolled up, pinch together the seams and ends to seal all of the bacon goodness inside.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.