Pork, It's not for Dinner

The topic of whether it is OK for a follower of Yeshua to eat pork, or any other unclean animal, comes up from time to time. There are two verses in particular that usually come up in the discussion.


The first is from Mark, “Mar 7:15 CJB There is nothing outside a person which, by going into him, can make him unclean. Rather, it is the things that come out of a person which make a person unclean!"” Unfortunately, this verse is taken out of its context. The speaker, Yeshua, and those to whom he is speaking, are Jews, and this plays an important role in the discussion. The topic is whether eating food with unclean hands, that is, hands that have not been made ritually pure, make the food being eaten unclean. The answer is no. However, pork is unclean to begin with, and neither the speaker, nor those to whom he was speaking would have considered pork as food. Unclean food remains unclean, whether one ritually washes their hands or not.

The second verse that is usually brought up, is the one from Acts referring to the apostle Peter’s vision. “Act 10:10-16 CJB He began to feel hungry and wanted something to eat; but while they were preparing the meal, he fell into a trance (11) in which he saw heaven opened, and something that looked like a large sheet being lowered to the ground by its four corners. (12) In it were all kinds of four-footed animals, crawling creatures and wild birds. (13) Then a voice came to him, "Get up, Kefa, slaughter and eat!" (14) But Kefa said, "No, sir! Absolutely not! I have never eaten food that was unclean or treif." (15) The voice spoke to him a second time: "Stop treating as unclean what God has made clean." (16) This happened three times, and then the sheet was immediately taken back up into heaven.” Again, context is extremely important. The subject of the dream is not food, but of people. HaShem, blessed is He, was telling Peter that He had declared Gentiles to be clean. Up until that very point, Gentiles were considered to be unclean. What HaShem did was to take people, who had once been clean (people were created as pure and holy), and then had become defiled throough idolatry, and made them clean again. The pig, and other unclean animals were never clean to begin with, having always been unclean.

Pig, or any other unclean animal is still unclean. To get a better grasp of this, we need to look back into Torah to understand why this is. Leviticus 20:25 states, “Lev 20:25 CJB Therefore you are to distinguish between clean and unclean animals and between clean and unclean birds; do not make yourselves detestable with an animal, bird or reptile that I have set apart for you to regard as unclean.” HaShem created the pig and certain other animals as unclean, and as He calls them, detestable, and He instructs us that if we consume them, we ourselves become unclean and detestable. G-d is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and He is unchanging. He does not make mistakes that need to be corrected at a later point in time. He created pork unclean, and He told us that if we eat it, we become unclean, and that is as true today, as it was when He first instructed those He chose for Himself regarding this matter.

So, why did He do it? The answer is really a simple one. It is a matter of obedience. Do we listen to Him and the loving instructions that He has given us, or do we try to justify in our own mind doing something that He finds to be detestable, because it’s what we want to do? G-d is not arbitrary, and He never gave us arbitrary instructions; He gave them to us so that we could make a choice between accepting what He has told us, or rejecting it and doing what we want to do. I’ve pointed it out before, and I’ll point it out again; Yeshua tells us that he did not come to abolish Torah, and that “Mat 5:19 CJB So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.” So, do we obey and follow Torah, or do we disobey and follow the teachings and doctrines if men?  G-d left the choice up to us, and we are free to follow His instructions, or to follow our own heart.

Pork, it’s not for dinner.