It’s not every day you see a vegetarian defending a man’s right to eat bacon, yet this very thing happened a while back when I saw a legalist attack my friend’s PETA meme.
PETA has a billboard that reads “All animals want to live... Where do you draw the line?” Between the two sentences, there is a line of animals, starting with various cats and dogs, then a rabbit, a horse, chicken, cow, pig, ox and finally a duck. Underneath them is a scale pointing from the cat towards the duck, and the scale says “pet ➡️ food”. In order to mock vegetarians, as carnivores are prone to do, several people made response memes in which they draw a literal line, typically between the horse and the chicken, with the words “right here”.
One of my friends shared one such meme, and a legalistic Christian suggested that the book of Leviticus (the portion of the Old Testament dealing with the dietary laws for pre-Christian Israel) is the best place to go to find the lines. He, like many Christians today, believes Old Testament law is still applicable today. I jumped in and corrected him, pointing out several places in the New Testament that give explicit and implicit permission to eat all kinds of meat, and that actually, forbidding certain foods is called the “doctrine of devils” (1 Timothy 4:1-5). But this legalist had an answer for all of them.
The good thing about having a Bible is that, when correctly read, you have everything you need to discover sound doctrine. The disadvantage is that when it is approached with bias, anything can be read into it, and it doesn’t speak. It doesn’t say “the libertarian is right” or “the legalist is wrong”. It merely says its piece and leaves the reader free to believe it or reject it.
But wait, what if I'm the one who was trying to force the unbiblical view into the Bible? Is it not possible that I was the one misreading the Bible? The answer to that goes back to the plain reading of the text. Psalm 119:130 says that the word of God is supposed to give understanding to the simple. The Bible, therefore, could be viewed as a glorified version of “Christianity for Dummies”. That, of course, doesn’t mean it will always be super easy to read and understand, but what it does mean is that it is quite straightforward in its interpretation. There are no asterisks or footnotes (in the originals, but obviously modern Bibles do have them). Every verse, taken in its correct context, is sufficient, and needs nothing to be added or taken away. So, when Romans 14:2 says “For one believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables”, the phrase “all things” need not be reinterpreted as "all things, minus those forbidden by Levitical law". When 1 Timothy 4:4-5 says “For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer”, the phrase "every creature" need not exclude pigs, and “nothing is to be refused” can be allowed to mean nothing is to be refused. Effectively, the way to determine who has the more Biblical view is to ask who adds to the text or takes away from it. A straightforward reading of the relevant passages, in their correct context, is the best and only way to ensure you have sound doctrine.