Food Poisoning and our Worldview

Last week, our squad experienced the first wave of the infamous international stomach issues. I’ll spare you the details of 13 girls in the mountains of Ecuador running to the bathrooms and  carsick bus rides to the nearest pharmacy. 

I had been told by friends, leaders and doctors that this kind of thing was almost inevitable, our North American stomachs were not accustomed the bacteria in the water and food here. 

As I was laying down in my squeaky bunk bed, trying to combat the nausea, I remembered a conversation I had with our host, Mabe, as we were preparing dinner one night.

She explained to me how most of the fruits and vegetables that are grown here, tend to be more organic and “dirty” containing much more bacteria than US produce. She then went on to tell me a story of how a very similar thing happened to her when she visited the United States. She would be nauseous and ill whenever she would eat from fast food places or even just regular food places. She described how just like our stomaches weren’t used to the bacteria in Ecuador, her stomach hadn’t been used to all the chemicals in the United States. 

I found it interesting how my connotation of international food poisoning was only applicable in other countries but never the vice versa. 

Because it has been the only thing I’ve known, I was blind to the possibility of OUR food affecting others. 

Just like the bacteria was bad for us, the chemicals were bad for them. 

Bacteria isn’t wrong and chemicals aren’t right, it’s only our worldview. 

This concept of truth being dependent on solely what we know reminds me of our own Christian hypocrisy. 

In a recent novel I just finished, a character is explaining a block in Christian evangelism, it describes, “The question isn’t so much whether we’re right but whether we’re good. And it strikes me that goodness, not just rightness, is what Jesus said the real issue was” (A New Kind of Christian, Brian D. McLaren)

I’ve noticed that many times, Christianity can follow a kind of Eurocentric worldview, that associates Western European practices of Christianity as right and all others as wrong. 

I’ve also noticed that God is so much larger than any cultural normality and worldview. 

Sometimes I feel as though we are fighting the same battle that Paul was protesting against almost 2,000 years ago in the book of Galatians. Paul was writing to the people of Galatia who were believers in Jesus, however there became a great quarrel with the debate of traditions between the Jews and the Gentiles. Although both Jews and Gentiles were worshipping Jesus, the Jews left as though the Gentiles were sinful for not following the old Jewish customs. Paul then goes to explain that, under Christ, our differences of culture, tradition and worldview don’t debunk the family of God.

Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” 

Bacteria versus chemicals, culture versus tradition, it’s all the same in the kingdom of God. 

Thank you Jesus, for sharing your heart through the adventures of food poisoning.