Eating pork

In several occasions I've come across to people asking, if the Bible say that you shall not eat pork, why is it accepted among most Christians?

In honor to the truth, it's not a question I had thought of when I was starting in my faith. I would say that a vast majority of Christians do not even give it a thought. And perhaps many of those who give it a thought may have a wrong idea. One common answer is saying that we are under the covenant of grace and as such we don't need to follow these requirements. However, I want to explore and explain a more thorough answer.

Studying the Bible, and in specific in the Torah, one can find many commandments. Among those it was listed a number of foods that would make one person ceremonially unclean, defiled. The word in hebrew is transliterated Tame. It was said that when the one person would eat unclean food, this person was defiled.

In Matthew chapter 15 is related the following story

1 Then Pharisees and scribes came from Jerusalem to Jesus and asked, 2 “Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they don’t wash their hands when they eat! ” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break God’s commandment because of your tradition? 4 For God said: Honor your father and your mother; and, The one who speaks evil of father or mother must be put to death.  5 But you say, ‘Whoever tells his father or mother, “Whatever benefit you might have received from me is a gift committed to the temple” — 6 he does not have to honor his father.’ In this way, you have revoked God’s word because of your tradition. 7 Hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied correctly about you when he said: 8 These people honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. 9 They worship Me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commands of men.” 10 Summoning the crowd, He told them, “Listen and understand: 11 It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” 12 Then the disciples came up and told Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard this statement? ”  13 He replied, “Every plant that My heavenly Father didn’t plant will be uprooted.  14 Leave them alone! They are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit.” 15 Then Peter replied to Him, “Explain this parable to us.”  16 “Are even you still lacking in understanding? ” He asked. 17 “Don’t you realize that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is eliminated? 18 But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and this defiles a man. 19 For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies.  20 These are the things that defile a man, but eating with unwashed hands does not defile a man.”

The main issues the Pharisees were highlighting was that they had a believe that unclean hands would make clean food unclean. That was a misunderstanding of the law. People had made a group of rules, fence around the Torah, aiming to prevent people to mistakenly break the rule. They thought that if you had for example come inadvertently to unclean things during the day, your hands were unclean Therefore it would be transmitted that uncleanliness to the food you eat, even if you ate clean food. However, the most important verse is the explanation given by Jesus In verses 19 and 20:

Matthew 15: 19 For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. 20 These are the things that defile a man, but eating with unwashed hands does not defile a man

And this is the point I want to bring across. I am convinced that I can control what I eat. I can do efforts to control what I do. But controlling what I think it is really difficult. God knows our thoughts, and He knows many our thoughts are not something to be proud of. Evil thoughts defile men. So though eating pork could be a dilemma, the bigger issue is how to control our thoughts. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says one thing which is absolutely key to understand the Bible:

Ecclesiastes 7: 20 There is certainly no righteous man on the earth who does good and never sins.

God knows that if He had to judge us for what we do and think, we would be completely lost. And we are. We do break God's heart too many more times in what we think than in what we do. On our own, we are not Holy or Righteous. We should be worried for what we eat and what we think. This should point us to the desperate need for redemption. All the laws God gave us were pointers to let us know that we should be in desperation for salvation. And His Salvation has one Name:

YESHUA HAMASHIACH, JESUS CHRIST, THE LORD AND THE SAVIOR. He is available for you and I, he knocks on the door Of your heart. Only God can change your heart and only Him can give you Salvation...