The Doorpost: Unbiblical dietary advice undermines trust in God’s Word
By Ray King · Jul 24, 2013
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.
1 Timothy 4:1
For the past two weeks, we have been considering some passages of Scripture that apply to diet. Romans 14 makes it clear that diet is a “disputable matter” where there is no right or wrong regarding what we eat or drink. But the passage above makes it clear that some dietary advice can be a real threat to our faith. How can this be?
Satan’s method has, from the beginning, been to cast doubt on the reliability, truthfulness and sufficiency of God’s Word. If he can get us to question the dependability of God’s Word in an area that really is not that important to the Kingdom of God (Romans 14:17), the groundwork is laid to undermine our trust in God in other areas. That is why we need to think rightly in this area.
The teachings designed to undermine our confidence in God and in His Word will not usually be obvious. They will probably look and sound very good. “And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15).
We are tempted to say, “What can it hurt?” when we hear various kinds of dietary advice. We usually don’t even test the ideas to see if they really are consistent with the complete teaching of God’s Word. Therein lies the danger.
When dietary advice tells us that “scientific studies” show that a food is bad for us, even though God’s Word says that it is His good gift to us, we are under attack. When someone uses selected verses to tell us what God wants us to eat, while ignoring or explaining away passages that say something different, we should be on our guard.
The primary danger of unbiblical dietary advice is that it undermines our trust in God’s Word. But it doesn’t stop there. If we follow dietary advice that disagrees with the Word of God, it will not help our health either. In fact, it will actually do us harm.