Should We Pray Before Meals?

Commentary

Growing up, praying before meals was routine. Kids would never so much as sneak a morsel before Dad or Mom prayed. As we got older, Dad would call on one of us to pray, which was scary at first because we had no set text in my home. We had to think of things so we copied what our parents said. Regardless of the other content, we always thanked God for the food.

Now, as kids, there came a point when a certain incredulity set in. Why are we thanking God when we know for sure that Mom made the dinner? She made it from items she bought from the store. That store got the food from trucks who brought it. Presumably, we can go back one step further and find processing plants, farmers, fertilizer makers, industrial makers of plows and tractors, and so on.

How does God fit into this structure of production?

It’s a rather interesting question and one worth tackling.

Before going there, does anyone else agree with me that even aside from the rationale, there is a certain aesthetic beauty of the ritual of praying before eating? It creates a pause in conversation, an opportunity for an expression of humility, a moment in which we grant that someone is watching over us and blessing us. It sets up a situation that calls for manners and decorum. It serves as a subtle reminder to kids to behave properly. Adults too!

The prayer marks the time between regular life and conversation and the beginning of something sacred associated with the sharing of a meal together. It introduces into mealtime an element of liturgy, a calling for heaven to come down just briefly and bring the gathered into special communion together. It might not make every meal a time for worship—that’s not the point—but rather serves as a kind of marker.

When it is not there—praying in restaurants is widely seen as gauche—one certainly notices. In my experience, even when eating with friends in private spaces, there seems to be a brief moment before the meal begins where everyone is just slightly waiting for some sign of some significance to happen. Even now, with fewer people praying than ever, something in our cultural bones seems to long for it.

When the prayer does not happen, it seems always to be conspicuously if inchoately missing. I’m curious if you feel this way or if this is just a remnant of my upbringing. I suspect that my sense is shared rather widely. We would all like some means of bringing it back but often we are very shy about doing this even among close friends.

These days, we are all inclined to friend circles with a great deal of religious diversity. It’s a terrible time to push one’s own particular belief set with a prayer before the meal. My tradition is Christian but if I’m eating with Muslims, Jews, Taoists, or any one of the thousands of faith traditions, to say nothing of atheists, I feel like I’m either pushing my faith or perhaps disregarding theirs and it all becomes rather complicated, too much so. It is easier just to say “Bon appétit” and be done with it.

Still, the moment seems to call for something. For a while, I tried praying in Latin like monks of old because then it feels like a tradition rather than a belief and hence passable. But then I realized that this just comes across like insufferable pretension. Obviously. Sorry, my mistake.

Some possible options might be a toast to good food and good friends. At least that option provides an element of ceremony. Another option would be to quiet people down and the host say something like “We’re grateful for the food and the company. Please enjoy.”

It’s fine and better than nothing. Still, it is missing something. That something is prayer. If you are doing an interfaith dinner, it might be an option to simply bow one’s head and say “Dear God, we are grateful for the food and the company. Bless us all. Amen.”

Would such shock people today? Perhaps but it might also inspire. It does not come across as preachy or invasive. It is just a gentle way of invoking an eternal sense of things, a recognition of powers beyond our own, and a humble sense of gratitude and wish for good things to come our way. It seems like even in our highly secular and even atheistic times, this approach could pass and add something special to an evening.

Aside from the absolute necessity of prayer, is there any other reason to be thanking God for the food? Yes, and I will explain using a miracle I recently witnessed. Ok, it’s not a notable one. Indeed it is the most common one of all. But it still strikes me as a miracle.

The story is this. A friend was absolutely determined to grow tomatoes this year from seeds. I saw these seeds. They were just tiny seeds in a marked package. You can look at them and not see anything tomato-like about them at all. It seems actually wildly implausible that they would become anything.

She planted them in dirt in a pot. Sure enough in a week or two, there were little sprigs poking up. That alone struck me as kind of amazing but it was just the beginning. In a short period of time, these tiny seeds grew into large plants, six inches then twelve and then two feet high and crawling everywhere. And there were little balls growing on the branches and these balls turned red. Then there were 20 tomatoes ready to eat.

I’m sorry if you find this story tedious or ridiculous—I’m not from an agricultural background—but I simply cannot shake the sense that this is miraculous. What started as a tiny bead became actual food simply with some soil, water, and letting nature do its thing. Is it such a stretch to believe that there is a creative force out there, a transcendent hand, who set up such a thrilling process to unfold with remarkable predictability, a process that sustains the whole of humanity?

You can look at this and explain it all away with a single word: evolution. Call it what you want. And certainly, yes, it is a fine thing to observe that that which has survived the roil, toil, and exigencies of life on earth has managed to do so by displacing that which did not make the cut. It is also not implausible to believe that all life forms adapt toward this survival based on time and environment.

All that said, it seems like a rather unimaginative way to think if it is to the exclusion of every other consideration. In fact, it seems like a real stretch, one that seems intended to drain every amount of mystery out of what is truly a mind-blowing display of beauty and order all around us, blessing us daily.

Reducing all beauty and majesty of natural growth to genetics, hormones, photosynthesis, and soil chemistry is just pointlessly deflating. There is nothing wrong in pausing to contemplate the mysteries of it all. We need not forever trap ourselves in indecorous rationalism for fear of spreading superstition.

In any case, scientific explanation and a sense of awe are not mutually exclusive; the fact that the universe contains such reliable, elegant mechanisms that turn sunlight, water, and minerals into edible energy remains striking, stunning, awe-inspiring.

If we think about these miracles, food surely sits at the top of the list. It comes from the soil, pleases our senses, calls forth our own creative spirit, and nourishes our bodies to let us live another day and achieve great things.

Does God have a hand in this? I find nothing implausible, much less offensive, about observing the possible truth of such an assertion. What’s more, surely no harm comes from doing so. There is a reason our ancestors as far back in time as one can see did this. It cultivates a gracious spirit, provides a daily reminder of what matters, and perhaps inspires us with a sense of obligation to something and someone outside our own selfish concerns.

Our times are characterized by a loss of social ritual and this is nudging everyone into a de facto atheism. These rituals embody truths that we don’t entirely grasp with our rational brains. They carry forward inchoate information through the generations, materially meaningful desiderata that keep the world and our internal lives functioning in ways we do not and cannot entirely understand. A prayer before meals seems like a great place to start toward reconstructing what we have lost.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.