Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. – Daniel 1:12

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 19, 2017) Daniel 1

Recently there seems to have been many celebrities and even well-known Christians who have advocated the health benefits of a vegetarian style diet. Christians have often based this belief on the Book of Daniel. These plans usually use the name of Daniel as part of the diet and often promote the diet as being a biblically based diet guaranteed to improve health and weight loss. And there is no doubt that these plans do both of those things, but what isn’t so clear is that these diet plans are biblically mandated.

The idea that they are biblical programs stems from this passage. The problem with saying that this vegetarian diet is biblically mandated is that it takes the passage out of context. There is no place in this passage where Daniel announces that the vegetarian lifestyle (or even that a vegetarian purge or detox) is part of God’s plan. The problem was that there was no suitable kosher meat available to be eaten. The meat that would have been given to Daniel and his friends came from the king’s table, and the meat would have already been offered as a sacrifice to the gods of Babylon. For this reasons, the meat would not be appropriate for consumption by an orthodox follower of God. But it also would not have been prepared in such a way as to have all of the blood content of the meat removed, a process that usually involved salting the meat to pull the moisture out of it. This process is what makes the meat kosher. And it was this lack of suitable meat that contributes to Daniel’s decision to follow a vegetarian diet, not a belief in the health benefits of vegetarianism.

In fact, the story of Daniel actually promotes an opposite lifestyle. There is a belief in the story that it was a meat diet that was required for health. This understanding that meat was a necessary component in a healthy diet is the basis for the reaction of the handler of the Hebrew men. He was responsible for their health, and according to what was understood at the time, that health demanded a diet with a high meat content.

The miracle of the story is that not only did the vegetarian diet work but that it worked in a relatively short period. But we can’t miss that the moral of the story is not about a particular diet, it is about the four men’s willingness to place their trust in God and do the unusual. The resultant health of the men was never attributed to the diet, but rather to the God that the men served. Because Daniel and his friends trusted in God and kept God’s laws, they passed the test. And that confidence was the only reason that they had passed the test.

This radical trust is one of the major themes of Daniel. If we are willing to trust, then good things will happen. Life has never been about the physical realities that surround us. Life is about trusting in the God who created our physical realities. No one else will do.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Daniel 2