No Neutrality:Food

Daniel 1:5 The king appointed for them a daily ration from the king’s choice food and from the wine which he drank, and appointed that they should be educated three years, at the end of which they were to enter the king’s personal service.

There is no such thing as neutrality. Eating and Drinking are not a neutral things. King Nebuchadnezzar knew that food was not a neutral thing. His ploy was to give lavishly to his new conquered people so that they would be enticed to leave behind their own identity and instead identify wholly with the Babylonians.

King Nebuchadnezzar gave of his food and drink portion. A king of a great nation gets a large provision of food. 1 Kings 4: 22-23 describe King Solomon’s daily portion as thirty measures of fine flour, and threescore measures of meal, Ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and an hundred sheep, beside harts, and roebucks, and fallowdeer, and fatted fowl. That is a ton of food. He would use it to wine and dine other national leaders, local magistrates, and even his enemies. The White House has 5 full time chefs and a host of other staff who prepare meals daily and can serve up to 140 people dinner and 1000 people with hors d’oeuvres. The Whitehouse has its own homebrew of beer and four to six table wines with every meal.

One can only imagine how much food the King of Babylon would have prepared for his courts each day. This was an issue of national pride. You can't have your King and his court skating by on crumbs. Nebudchazzer ordered that these young men would be given from his portion to be intoxicated with all the delicacies that could be affored to them. Then of course they would forget their own nation. John Calvin wrote in his commentary: "For we know that wherever there is any cunning in the world, it reigns especially in kings palaces! So Nebuchadnezzar, when he perceived he was dealing with an obstinate people, (and we know the Jews to have been of a hard and unsubdued spirit,) wished to acquire servants spontaneously obedient, and thus endeavored to soften them with luxuries. This was the reason why he provided for them an allotment of his own meat and drink;” Even though they were but captives forced into slavery, they would be given meat and drink to cause them to forget their bonds. The King was not giving to them food from his portion out of the goodness of his heart. No, it was so that they would see themselves as Chaldeans rather than Jews and then they would begin to love their chains.
Eating and drinking were not neutral and are still not today. Now, we are not under the ceremonial law anymore in the New Covenant. The laws forbidding shellfish and pork have found their completion with the coming of Christ. They were intended for the people in the Old Covenant to remind them of their need to be separate unto the Lord. This was to mark them out. It was also to remind them of how even the smallest sin makes them unclean. Jesus Christ explained that it is not what goes in that makes one unclean but what comes out. With the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the New Covenant, the gospel goes forth to all nations. The dietary restrictions that marked off the nation of Israel from the other nations has been removed because now the covenant has expanded to all nations.
This does not mean, however, that eating and drinking are now neutral. And when I say this, I am not saying that there is an official diet of Sovereign King Church. There is no commandment for Christians to eat non-gmo organic free-range vegan gluten-free essential-oiled kale chips no matter how many mommy blogs are out there say otherwise. You can eat Doritos in a Christian manner and you can eat the healthiest meal on the planet in an ungodly manner.

1 Corinthians 10:31 says Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
The manner we eat, the purposes for why we eat and drink all matter. Now listen, I am not putting down healthy eating. A Christian should care for their body and treat it well. There are all kinds of healthy foods and diets that a Christian may partake in and it may be wise do so. People make idols out of food in many different ways. You don’t have to be insanely obese for you to be eating and drinking to the glory of an idol. If the reason you must have all the organic healthy stuff is for any reason other than to prepare your body to serve the Lord, than you are eating idolatry. Mothers, what is your motivation in all the healthy food? Is it to help your family worship God or is it so that you can keep with the competition online. Is it so that you can be better than all the mothers who give their kids less than the best?
Are you eating out of faith or out of fear? Are you eating out of thanksgiving or with grumbling? Children, do you grumble about what your mothers put on the plates before you. Philippians 2 says 14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, Children, that includes eating. If you are a child of God you may not grumble whether you get your favorite meal or less than favorite. Eat and Drink to the glory of God.