The fallen versus redeemed pattern for consumption

Issue #152

Last time I talked about the connection between the first sin — which was a sin of consumption — and the temptations we experience in the modern world — which are very often temptations of consumption. Eve was tempted in two ways which are mirrored in the modern day:

Firstly, unearned knowledge — which in our case comes in the form of being able to look things up, and think we understand them, because we’ve seen a summary; even when we really don’t have a clue.

Secondly, unearned glory — which in our case often takes the form of likes, shares, subscribers and so on. At its most extreme end, unearned glory is just influencer culture, which is a kind of consumption that is itself devouring many today.

I saw a headline recently: Gen Z’s Main Career Aspiration Is to Be an Influencer. More than half would take the opportunity; also 61% trust influencers — illustrating the connection between glory and knowledge. People who receive glory must know what they’re talking about; they must be wise. More than half of our young people today are so deeply ensnared in the patterns of the world that they are eager to devour the tree of knowledge in ways that a couple of generations ago would have looked obviously insane.

But that is what happens when you consume the wrong thing. It consumes you in turn. Just as you go where you look, you become what you eat. Where we put our care, what we serve, what we consume — these really will change us. So we want to be sure that we are feeding on Christ, remembering Paul’s exhortation in Philippians to set our minds on whatsoever things are true, venerable, righteous, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and praiseworthy (Phil 4:8).

In other words, whatsoever things reflect Christ, these are what we should be consuming. Whatsoever things are true and good beautiful — because in consuming these in our daily liturgy, we feed on Christ himself.

The alternative, of course, is to fill ourselves with the creation, rather than the Creator. It is to feed upon ourselves, and upon others. Either we feed in and on the Spirit, or we feed in and on the flesh.

On this point, notice how Paul speaks of the danger of us consuming each other — and how he connects this with the works of the flesh, which he lists in a way that looks eerily like a description of the latest controversy on Twitter:

…Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; but if ye bite and devour each other, watch out that ye may not be consumed by each other. But I say: Walk ye in the Spirit, and the desire of the flesh ye shall not complete; for the flesh desireth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are opposed to each other, that what ye may will, these ye may not do; but if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under law. Now the works of the flesh are shown forth, which are: porneia, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, pharmakeia, hatred, strife, zealousies, wraths, rivalries, dissensions, factions, envyings, murders, drunkennesses, wild partyings, and such like, of which I tell you before, as I also said before, that those doing such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And the fruit of the Spirit is: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control — against such there is no law; and those who are the Anointed’s did crucify the flesh with its passions and desires; if we may live in the Spirit, in the Spirit also may we walk; let us not become vainglorious — provoking each other, envying each other. (Galatians 5:13–26)

“Hatred, strife, zealousies, wraths, rivalries, dissensions, factions, envyings” — these are what social media’s heat-seaking algorithms zero in on and inflame. Even drunkenness is significant, since I have likened social media to a drug; to a kind of strong drink that removes our inhibitions and activates our dopamine receptors.

Paul concludes with: “let us not become vainglorious” — in other words, let us not seek unearned glory — “provoking each other, envying each other.”

Good advice, but how shall we follow it?

Well, the logic is simple enough:

If modern life is tempting us with the tree of knowledge, with wrong sacramental consumption, then the antidote to that is right sacramental consumption. If we are going to understand how to safely consume content, we must understand how to safely consume anything — and that starts with the pattern Christ lays out.

The pattern of the Lord’s Supper

Since all of life is worship that culminates in communion, it follows that the pattern of communion must flow down into all of life.

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it; and he gave to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took a cup, and gave thanks, and gave to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:26–28)

The Lord’s Supper is many things, and one of those things is the reversal of the first sin. Adam and Eve ate wrongly of the sacramental tree, and they were cursed for it. Jesus instructs us in how to eat rightly of the sacramental tree — him crucified — and he blesses us for it.

This is obvious if you put the accounts side by side. Here is the pattern of the fall:

…she took of the fruit thereof, and ate; and she gave also unto her man with her, and he ate. And the eyes of the two of them were opened…

And here is the pattern of redemption:

Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it; and he gave to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.

In the pattern of Eve, we see her take the food, then eat, then give, and then they know what it means.

The pattern of the Lord’s supper is very similar, but also very different.

• Fallen consumption: Take, eat, give, know.

• Redeemed consumption: Take, bless, give, eat, know.

You see there is an extra element in the Lord’s supper — blessing — and then eating and giving are reversed into giving and eating.

There’s also breaking in the Lord’s supper, and that is significant also, but to simplify the basic pattern, I have bundled breaking and giving together — Jesus breaks the bread as a means of giving it out. Notice that Eve, the bride, takes the food in order to eat for herself first — and in doing so she breaks it in her own mouth — then she gives to her husband. Jesus, the bridegroom, takes the food in order to give to his bride first — and in doing that, he breaks it.

But more important still is what is missing from Eve’s eating.

She takes, she eats.

Jesus takes, and he gives thanks. That is what “bless” means here; some gospel writers describe the same scene by saying he gives thanks, and some seem to prefer saying he blesses; but it means the same thing. To bless the food is to dedicate it to God; or to celebrate it before God; or to call down God’s favor upon it. I chose one of the gospels that says bless, rather than thanks, because it helps to draw our attention to another contrast between the fall and the Lord’s Supper, which is the very thing that situates them opposite each other as the poles of redemptive history:

Adam eats and is cursed; Jesus blesses, and eats.

In the fall, they take and eat without blessing, and so God curses them instead. In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus takes and blesses before eating, and then goes on to make that blessing rebound to us in the cross by being cursed on our behalf.

In doing this, he establishes for us the pattern of what you might call sacramental or holy consumption. It flows out of the Lord’s supper into all of life, and so it is the liturgy we ought to follow whenever we consume anything.

Take, bless, give, eat.

But how do we apply this pattern in our consumption? Let me try to answer this by focusing on the key differences between Eve’s eating, and Christ’s: adding a blessing, and giving before we eat.

Bless

It is particularly the blessing which is emphasized in every eucharistic passage of the New Testament. By my count, there are ten eucharistic meals in the gospels — the various feeding miracles are patterned to resemble the Lord’s supper — and they all explicitly draw our attention to how Jesus takes bread and gives thanks before sharing it.

The Christian church has always understood this pattern to relate to all consumption — at least of food. Not just the Lord’s Supper. That is why we say grace. It is so natural to us as Christians to follow this pattern that it’s a habit every time we eat. This is right and good. But we need to go further, beyond “literal” eating, because eating is a symbol of all consumption — a symbol of taking anything into ourselves. Therefore, the pattern should apply any time we are engaged in any consumption. It applies to consuming “content”, but even to “consuming” work. Think of how Psalm 127 speaks:

If Yahweh buildeth not the house,
In vain have its builders laboured at it;
If Yahweh watcheth not a city,
In vain hath a watchman waked.
Vain it is for you who are rising early,
Who delay sitting, eating the bread of toil. (Ps 127:1–2)

Scripture speaks of toil as bread: as a thing we consume, and which consumes us in turn. Those who will not sleep because of vain work are “eating the bread of toil;” similarly, evildoers who cannot sleep unless they cause someone to fall are “eating the bread of wickedness” (Pr 4:17). Bread and work have always been intimately connected, whatever kind of work it is. Vain work. Wicked work. Good work. God tells Adam, “by the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” and Jesus instructs us to pray for daily bread — which is, of course, the substance of our work.

Understanding this turns out to be surprisingly important to understanding the Lord’s Supper itself. A good way to think about work is in terms of disintegration and reintegration. You disintegrate some part of the world, in order to reintegrate it with the world in a new way, in a new form. It’s a kind of creative destruction.

This is not some arbitrary philosophical definition of work — it is a reflection of God’s own process of dominion during the creation week. When God makes the earth, he follows the same pattern as the Lord’s Supper:

1. He takes hold of the creation (“The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water”);

2. He disintegrates and reintegrates it (dividing, combining, filling, forming, transforming — restructuring);

3. He gives what he has made to the stars, to the birds, to the fish, to animals, to man — depending on what it is and what day we are talking about;

4. Then at the end, he also discerns its meaning; he evaluates or judges: “and God saw that it was good.”

It is only on the sabbath that God blesses and “eats” the creation, because the sabbath is the day he sets aside for man to come to him and share communion with him. But you see how the basic pattern is quite clear in the text.

Well, because we are made in God’s image, we can’t help but work in the same way. So a forester takes hold of a tree, and then he disintegrates some of its fibers, in order to disintegrate the tree itself from the land — and then he disintegrates more fibers, in order to disintegrate the tree from itself — and then the tree is something new, something it wasn’t before, something that is now a useful form that can be reintegrated in new ways; as a house, for example. The man takes apart the tree so it can be put back together as a house. And in the process, of course, he disintegrates a lot of gasoline molecules, and unfortunately reintegrates many of them into his lungs as poisonous gases. Not every part of work is good in a fallen world.

Now, disintegrate is a useful word in many respects, but it’s also kinda hifalutin. What we mean is simply break down. The forester takes hold of the tree, and breaks it down, and then gives it to someone. Just like Jesus takes hold of the bread, breaks it down, and gives it to his disciples. Which means that Mr. Forester ought not to forget that extra step that the gospels go to such pains in emphasizing: the extra step that Jesus always takes of blessing before he breaks. Mr. Forester should take hold of the tree, then bless the work he has been given — and then break down that tree.

When we understand work this way, it gets easier to see the connection between doing work as a form of consumption, and absorbing content as a form of consumption — because content itself is work. You’re consuming someone’s work, and more mysteriously, it is also consuming you. You are consuming my work right now as you read this; and I am consuming in a different way, having worked to help you to consume. There is a strange and mysterious paradox involved in the pattern of eating, what you might call a chiasm of consumption, where you’re always somehow doing both: working inward, consuming, and working outward, being consumed.

Since we are always consuming, we are always going to be either following the pattern of Eve, or the pattern of Christ. I believe we ought to self-consciously follow the pattern of Christ, as that ensures we will never follow the pattern of Eve.

Btw, I said before that the word bless can be understood in various ways, which is (I think) why the gospel writers sometimes use it to describe how Jesus prays before the meal, rather than just saying he gave thanks. Blessing is broader than thanking, and encompasses more ideas, so it gives us a much larger “surface area” to work with in understanding how we should approach the things we consume. We should, of course, always give thanks for them: “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus unto you” (1 Th 5:18). But, another way to think of blessing is as dedicating to God. So if even work is something we consume, it makes sense that Proverbs tells us:

Commit thy works unto Yahweh,
And thy purposes shall be established. (Pr 16:3)

This is how God builds the house in Psalm 127. If we do not dedicate the work to him, he does not dedicate it to us, and we labor in vain. In other words, God blesses those who bless the work he gives them. Before we take hold of that work, we ought to bless it. We ought to receive it as a blessing, and return that blessing to God.

Give

Now this brings us to the question of giving. The second difference between Jesus and Eve is that Eve takes, eats, then gives; while Jesus takes, gives, then eats.

We can understand this pattern in very limited situations, like sharing food, or maybe even sharing a movie. But what does it mean more generally? What if you’re watching YouTube by yourself? What if you’re browsing Facebook? What if you’re online shopping for a new appliance? These are all forms of consumption — but what does it mean to be giving before consuming in cases like this?

Seeing the connection between blessing and giving helps to answer this question. The fact that Jesus blesses the food, and the fact that he gives before he eats — these are not separate facts. They are intimately connected. He gives for the same reason he blesses: self-sacrifice.

Jesus does not offer himself to us without first offering himself to God. In fact, he offers himself to us because he offers himself first to God. There are two great commandments, and they are alike — but the first really does come before the second. You shall love the Lord your God with everything you are and everything you have; and then — it could only be then — you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Not everything you consume is going to be an explicit act of love for your neighbor — although now you see how buying an appliance for your home actually can be an example of giving. But everything we consume must be an explicit act of love for God, and for ourselves. And we can only know we are loving ourselves rightly if we are first loving God.

In other words, when we take something, we must be taking it for the right purpose. We can either be putting ourselves first, or putting God first. This is fundamental, and it is why we bless before we break. If we cannot receive the thing as a blessing, and return that blessing to God, then we are not taking hold of it in the right spirit — in a spirit of self-sacrifice, a spirit of giving.

Can you imagine Adam and Eve giving thanks to God for the fruit before they rebelliously ate it? It makes no sense, does it? Imagine them picking the fruit and going to find him to thank him for it before eating it in front of him in defiance of his explicit command not to do that.

It’s just an absurd image.

But that is what we do every time we consume something that we shouldn’t.

The easiest, the simplest, the best test for whether we are acting defiantly and presumptuously in our consumption, is simply to develop a habit of blessing before we “eat.” Instead of saying grace only before meals, we should say grace continually.

Every time we consume something, we should be automatically thanking God, and dedicating what we’re doing to him, and asking his blessing upon it.

If you start to develop that habit, I guarantee that your consumption habits will change. I have been working at doing this in my own life for some time, and let me warn you, maybe I am especially stubborn or stupid or unholy or something, but it’s really, really hard. I just continually forget. Like a bad sheep, I continually go astray after my own way. I literally have blessing everything I do as one of the items I track in my daily journal — and most days I’m sad to say I cannot put a mark down next to it. But, I am trying. And when I remember, I notice it changes my behavior. There are lots of things you don’t really think about doing, until you have to bless them. There are lots of things you rationalize doing, until you have to bless them. There are lots of things you convince yourself are kind of good, and therefore worthwhile…until you have to bless them. Simply having to stop and bless what you’re doing cuts through all the justifications and qualifications that we like to do in our heads — and exposes our hearts directly to God’s judgment.

• “I’ll just blought and watch YouTube for a few minutes…oh…that’s going to be quite hard to bring to God and gratefully dedicate to him…I don’t think he’ll be very pleased with that.”

• “I’m going to relax by watching this comedy where some of the funniest bits are blasphemous jokes…let’s pray.”

• “I’m going to scroll through Facebook with no real purpose just hoping for something to jump out and catch my interest…”

• “I’m going to take a passing dog by the ears and inflame this argument between two people I don’t know because I know the right answer…”

• “I’m going to eat this thing that’s bad for me and will make me fat but tastes delicious, because I’m bored.”

I use the final example to draw your attention to another important idea: When you’re bored you eat. Or to make it clearer, when you’re bored, you mindlessly consume. Boredom is actually spiritual hunger, and we often fail to properly identify it as such, and we fail to properly feed ourselves when it happens. Instead of seeking to feed the spirit through Christ, through good things, we seek to feed the flesh through all kinds of bad things, whether literal food or not.

Christ calls us to be holy consumers. But because it is so hard, he graciously gives us a pattern of life to follow, so that we may test and know what is his true and perfect will: In everything we do, when we take hold of it, we should first bless it. If we cultivate this pattern as a habit of life, as a natural part of our daily liturgy, we will never go far wrong.

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Notable:

I appeared recently on the Sword & Staff Revenant podcast. Naturally I made many customarily opinionated remarks, sure to offend someone in every corner of Christendom. Watch it here:

Or listen on iTunes or Spotify.

We talk about…

• What the world is in John 3:16, and why it matters for the “modern gospel”

• Why the sons of God in Genesis 6 can be both sons of Seth and angels

• Why the physical world imaging spiritual patterns matters for the gospel

• Elemental spirits and the oddly unconstant speed of light (with a little morphic resonance thrown in for good measure)

• Heavenly versus hellish patterns

Here’s a “money quote” that Coleman picked out as a teaser:

You think of the gospel as a message about how you’re a sinner, and Jesus has paid the penalty for those sins, and therefore you can be made right with him. And by reducing it down to the individual level, you have essentially ceded all the ground around the individual to the powers that want it.

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Michael explains why you shouldn’t be attending a church that hasn’t repented of locking down, requiring masks or vaxes, etc:

Moving On from the Pandemic Era

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Thanks to basic consumer tech and LLMs, you can now do sci-fi quality social espionage and engineering:

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An excellent piece on the Augsburg Interim and Magdeburg Confession, arguing that we live under an unwritten, but analogous religious consensus, that churches are required to follow:

The American Interim

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These two pieces from Kryptos tie in well with what I’ve been writing lately about the nature of how technology affects us, and the renewal of our minds:

18. The Christian Ghetto: Auron MacIntyre - Why Internet Community Is Not Real Community

82. Propaganda: It's Not What You Think

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An excellent piece from Rich Lusk, correcting a common error in Stephen-Wolfe-style Christian Nationalism:

The Preferences and Duties of Love in the Biblical Tradition

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A reversal on a classic atheistic objection, showing how it actually turns back to prove Christianity:

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Modern worship is defective. “This is the heart of true worship: not entertainment, but encounter; not consumption, but consecration; not passivity, but participation in the victory of Christ.”

Every Voice an Ascension Offering

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That’s enough for now. Until next month…

Bnonn