Broken Bread Quotes

“The body is nothing to spend your life on. “You are what you eat” may be true on a very cold, chemical level, but it is not true on any other. Food is not the material that you’ll be bringing with you into the next place. Like the foolish man who tore barns down to build bigger ones, all the food you ever worshiped and served will one day be an abandoned tower. Every organ you’ve ever given careful and sustained attention to will one day stop working.”
― Tilly Dillehay, Broken Bread: How to Stop Using Food and Fear to Fill Spiritual Hunger

“We’re not machines, and food has more purposes than to fuel our mechanical bodies. When we turn our kitchens into labs and attempt to live as machines without tastes, we’ll find ourselves going against the grain of the way we were made, as well as thumbing our nose at the substances God made in such varied abundance.”
― Tilly Dillehay, Broken Bread: How to Stop Using Food and Fear to Fill Spiritual Hunger

“I mean that when I'm having a bad food day, the problem seems to be not too close an association with my food, but that I'm disconnected completely from it. What I don't seem to do on a bad food day is cook, or even sit down at a table and eat. I'm in the car, or on the couch, or standing up in front of ther pantry or something. There's no thanksgiving; there's little pleasure. For me to cook a meal means that I have to spend time on it, think about someone besides myself, and then sit down, give thanks, and treat food like food.”
― Tilly Dillehay, Broken Bread: How to Stop Using Food and Fear to Fill Spiritual Hunger

“1. You are responsible for what you know, but you can’t know everything. In general, our tendency today is to take too much responsibility for things that are outside our control (i.e., the precise sourcing of every product that enters our homes), and too little responsibility for things that we’re very much responsible for (i.e., our hearts, our tongues, etc.). So, if you release some of that low-grade guilt you might carry over all the stuff you should be doing that you can’t do, the stuff you should be reading about that you can’t read about, it may free you up to take responsibility for what you know (i.e., your duty to love and serve your neighbor and do it joyfully).”
― Tilly Dillehay, Broken Bread: How to Stop Using Food and Fear to Fill Spiritual Hunger

“Maybe we don’t know much about food. Maybe we do. Maybe we are a cheerful follower of the newest final word on nutrition, or maybe we are cheerfully feeding our children out of the frozen meal section at Save-A-Lot. But whatever we eat, we are largely dependent on other people for our ingredients and our information. We may feel that we’re taking charge of our destinies by following a low-inflammation diet, but we are getting our ideas from fallible people. We may feel like we’re cultivated and discriminating consumers who only go for the best, but we are probably just choosing items that have been chosen for us—that the great machine of food industry picked out via consumer trials 15 months ago. And there’s no problem with this. It’s just that we shouldn’t forget it.”
― Tilly Dillehay, Broken Bread: How to Stop Using Food and Fear to Fill Spiritual Hunger

“The table fellowship of the church is at stake here in these small things. Our witness outside the church is at stake. Whether we are guests or hosts, we should be known as gracious people who are quick to bend in deference to others. One of the most pleasurable and effective tools we have for connecting with believers and unbelievers—fellowship over food—is endangered when we allow ourselves to become fussy eaters. We can’t focus on the ministry that takes place around the table—ministry to individuals with needs that extend far beyond fear of sugar—when we’re intent on flourishing the word Paleo to anyone who will listen. Food snobbery isn’t just a silly social gaffe. It’s an indulgence of the flesh that may have far-reaching consequences to the spiritual lives of ourselves and others.”
― Tilly Dillehay, Broken Bread: How to Stop Using Food and Fear to Fill Spiritual Hunger

“Jesus ushered in a new era for Israelite ceremonial law, fulfilling and updating it to reflect the inauguration of his kingdom. Among his many clarifying, life-giving statements, Jesus made this statement about food and sin: Nothing can defile you by going into your mouth. Sin, from inside the heart, is what defiles you.”
― Tilly Dillehay, Broken Bread: How to Stop Using Food and Fear to Fill Spiritual Hunger

“Once you understand the value of something good, it changes the way you consume that thing.”
― Tilly Dillehay, Broken Bread: How to Stop Using Food and Fear to Fill Spiritual Hunger