What is the spiritual significance of food? Physical food is but a shadow. It points â to the real food. Eggs, bread, meat, butter, sauerkraut, turkey, apple pie, wine, and chicken curry are a foretaste of spiritual nourishment. Thatâs why in so many cultures, taking food has become a sacred ritual.
Tea ceremonies, birthday meals, feasts, festivals â people have always sensed that unless you eat spiritually WHILE you eat physically, you do not really eat. You may feel full, but you remain famished. To eat only physical food is idolatry â separating the image from the reality it foreshadows.
What does it foreshadow?
It foreshadows spiritual food hidden behind every physical phenomenon. Everything â not just food â can become spiritual nourishment if we glimpse the reality behind appearances. Anything in the physical realm can nourish us spiritually.
For example, when you are deeply engaged in something meaningful â like creating, playing, or helping someone â you rarely feel hunger even if you havenât eaten. Why? What is your âfoodâ when there is no food? Real nourishment is concealed behind EVERYTHING in the physical realm if we only penetrate the phenomena with our spiritual vision.
Curiously, the Greek word for idol, ξ៴δĎΝον (eidĹlon), meaning image, likeness, apparition, or phantom, comes from ÎľáźśÎ´ÎżĎ (eidos), meaning form, shape, appearance, or idea â the same root Plato used when speaking of Forms or Ideas, the invisible essences of things.
Eidos â Idea â is derived from the root verb ξ៴δĎ (eidĹ), âto see.â Literally, eidĹlon means âa visible form.â An idol is anything visible we refuse to see through â to perceive the Idea, the invisible essence behind phenomena. When our vision is arrested at the level of the âvisible form,â it is anti-vision. We are blind.
We never truly see unless we see through. Unless we eidĹ (see) the Eidos (Idea) behind the form, we perceive only the eidĹlon, the idol, an empty image. But when we eidĹ (see) the Eidos (Idea) behind the visible form, we truly see. EidĹlon becomes an icon. Idols can be redeemed if we see through them.
To see an Idea is to get nourished â with food from above. Thatâs why Jesus said to his disciples after they brought Him bread:
âI have food to eat that you donât know about.â â John 4:32
He had just talked to the woman at the well and saw through what was really happening in the spiritual realm AS THEY TALKED. Thatâs why he didnât feel hungry. The disciples thought someone had brought Him food, but He had just feasted on the heavenly banquet.
Every time we glimpse Meaning and engage with it, we get nourished. We are not hungry. We have food others donât know about. We are fed from above. We are not trapped by shapes and apparitions, nor deceived by phantoms. We pursue Eidos â Idea â and participate in the Feast that is unfolding even now.
What is the truth behind optical illusions? âMy Wife and My Mother-in-Lawâ is a well-known optical illusion that presents two different images in one. It was created by the British cartoonist W.E. Hill in 1915. The drawing cleverly shifts between two perspectives: you can either see a young lady looking away or an older woman with a large nose and chin.
The paradox of all optical illusions is that the viewerâs mind cannot see two images simultaneously. It has to switch. This presents a huge philosophical conundrum â if people can look at the same thing but see two different pictures, how can we tell if thereâs an objective reality? It all depends on what you focus on.
The âahaâ moment comes when we discover the two pictures. Of course, we canât see them simultaneously, but we can switch between them. The very act of switching seems magical in and of itself â after all, we see that every line in every image is exactly in its place. Yet, the brain cannot perceive two things simultaneously â no matter how much we try.
So, what is objective reality? Can I look at something and definitively say, âThis isâŚâ? Unless I question how I see before I decide what I see, I donât really see. The âhow I seeâ always precedes âwhat I see.â Unless I question my semantics and see how I see, I will be under the illusion of seeing. As Jesus said, âThough seeing, they do not see.â
If I absolutize my way of seeing â my semantics â I will create an idol. I will say, âThereâs nothing else to see here besides what I see.â The absolutization of one perspective is the end of true seeing. It is semantic idolatry. An idol always arrests our gaze and does not let us see beyond.
The opposite of semantic idolatry is semantic transcendence. The moment I realize there are at least two pictures to see, I stop absolutizing my own. I start switching between the two. But I donât absolutize the second one either. Both are but shadows of reality, not reality itself.
When I realize that the âreal switchingâ is not between the two pictures (or two cultural semantics) but between shadows and Truth, I start seeing. My eyes open. Itâs not just a young lady or just an old woman. These are but shadows of reality. They are symbols that must be transcended. When I realize that my way of seeing is symbolic, I realize that all the symbols are real inasmuch as I see through them, not at them.
âGod is the coincidence of opposites.â Nicholas of Cusa
In God, all contradictions converge and are reconciled. Now we see partially, as in a mirror. Then, we will see face to face. In God, we see two (or more) pictures at the same time without having to switch between them because we see with the heart, not the mind. The heart perceives an old woman in every young lady and a young lady in every old woman. It doesnât mistake a symbol for reality. It transcends the shadows and becomes sane.
âThe ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic⌠He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland⌠If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.â G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
In God, we see two things simultaneously. The mind cannot grasp the Whole â it has to switch. The heart can. Mystical vision is stereoscopic. It allows me to see the Whole without sacrificing either part. The moment I see God, I start seeing The Face behind every face.
Has communism ever been successful? When I talk about what it was like to live under socialism, I sometimes get this reaction from people in the West: âBut the USSR didnât hold a monopoly on socialism. There are many examples of it being successful.â
I asked: âCan you name some?â One person answered, âMany indigenous communities were socialist in nature. And I have been part of spontaneous communities that had everything in common. It was very successful.â
Unfortunately, we didnât continue this discussion, but later I realized that this answer revealed a deep misunderstanding of the nature of everything ending in â-ism.â Thereâs a world of difference between âsocialâ and âsocialism.â Thereâs an unbridgeable gap between community and communism. Just like thereâs an unbridgeable gap between capital and capitalism.
Things like social justice are good. Taking care of the ill and elderly is good. Taking care of widows and orphans is good. But socialism is vastly different. When we add âismâ to âsocialâ we turn morality into God. Being âmoralâ becomes the highest priority. It becomes the all-important thing. It becomes an idol.
Community is good. Community is the essence of spiritual life. The Lordâs Supper is called âCommunion.â Yet, when we add âismâ at the end, we change its nature. Communism is the worship of the collective. Collective good becomes the highest good. The collective becomes God⌠or rather an idol.
The nature of idols is paradoxical. They promise a lot but deliver… well, they donât deliver at all. Was there social justice in the socialist USSR? Deep sigh⌠No. Did the worship of the collective create healthy communities? Deep sigh⌠No. The âism-basedâ idols produce the opposite of what they promise. The irony of all âismsâ is that they deprive us of the very thing they promise to deliver.
Thatâs why Augustine called sin âdisordered love.â What we should love first, we love second; what we should love second, we love first. By loving a good thing in the wrong order we make a good thing into a bad thing.
Why is this âorder of loveâ so important? Because of the nature of the human heart revealed in the Decalogue. The first four of the Ten Commandments have nothing to do with morality. The remaining six have everything to do with morality. The first four are about our relationship with the Divine. The remaining six are about what we do (or donât do).
In other words, when the first four are first, the last six will be second. When the last six become first, the first four will never be followed â as well as the last six ones. True action never starts with action. It starts with our connection to the Source of all action.
When our connection to the Source is primary, all good things remain good. When good things take the first place, they become bad things because they donât proceed from the Source. We live in a world of disordered love. Disordered love always leads to âisms.â Isms are inevitable when we put action first.
