Disliking Food

This week, I called to visit my relatives of Wiltshire. I was asked a few days before my arrival which foods I did not like. Here is the list which I dutifully provided:

Dislikes:

Offal

Tripe

Liver

Celery

Likes:

Lardy Cake

My aunt kindly provided none of the first list, but ample of the second.

Having read an abridged version of the Rev Francis Kilvert’s diaries this summer, I have developed a taste for clerical journaling. I moved onto The Diary of a Country Parson, by the Revd James Woodforde, covering the years 1760 to 1802. Not an overtly spiritual man, nor, I think, an evangelical, he still provides a snapshot of life as an English clergyman in the reign of King George III. He, too, lists many of the items he ate, and certainly the number of wine bottles he emptied. On February 17th, 1763, for instance, he ‘dined upon ‘roasted Tongue and Udder’.

On January 3rd, 1764, he visited Babcary to take a service whereat he ‘dined upon a Sheep’s Heart that I carried there in my Pocket’.

If I thought my list of disliked foods pleasingly small, Parson Woodforde’s was smaller still, for he apparently could eat anything, being a man of iron constitution.

Perhaps there are spiritual principles which we shun, like certain foods. How many reject the Bible’s teaching on hell or sexuality, because they do not accord with their taste? I would retch at the thought of carrying a sheep's heart in my pocket, much less eating it for lunch, but it doubtless did the parson some good, that cold, January afternoon. If there is something in the Bible that you find distasteful, have you considered the possibility that it might still be good and proper, and that your intellectual preferences might be subjective and warped?