How To Listen To Your Hunger
Hunger is the craving of satisfying sustenance. It is the appetite calling for contentment. The mind1 and tongue longing for the experience of tasteful fulfillment. Hunger is even witnessed when the body painfully screams for food needed for survival.
The imago dei—the image of God—is made for hunger. We are creatures made to hunger for food (Gen. 1:29). Hunger became deeply twisted deep within our hearts when sin affected the totality of our being (Gen. 3:1-24). From then on, hunger would become too elusive to finally quench. Yet, glimpses of good hunger are still seen in this fallen world like leftover crumbs from a bygone feast.
How To Listen To The Correct “Preaching” Of Hunger
Put metaphorically, hunger is a bodily evangelist. The question is: Are we listening to what it’s actually preaching?
Jesus reveals to us that our experience of hunger ought to be a billboard to us to bring us off the highway to hell into true happiness. Matthew 5:6 says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
In body and soul, our hunger is a faint echo of a messenger proclaiming to us that we long for a deeper satisfaction and filling. Again, Augustine’s classic quote is relevant: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
How To Reject The False “Preaching” Of Hunger
Hunger is similar to lust. Its pull is felt deep within. When it takes hold of us it is most difficult to escape. The desire turns sinful by taking its object of delight out of its God-ordained context.
Like lust, hunger covets satisfaction so much that it will seek to quench the longing by overindulgence. Again, like lust, our god becomes our bodily senses. As Paul pronounces judgment upon the unrepentant, Philippians 3:19 says, “Their god is their belly. And the glory in their shame.”
Hunger is like this blog post—I feel the inward pull to write something on the topic but lack the patience to slow down for better quality of content. Hunger is also like reading many blog posts—We want to quickly consume the material that will hopefully give us what we long for.
What’s The Lasting Satisfaction To Our Hunger?
The problem with hunger is that it always comes back around. Unless death comes our way.
Psalm 34:8 famously says, “Oh, taste and see that Yahweh is good!” This is a divine command to delight in the best kind of consumption. The command is Southern: “Y’all taste and see…” In other words, the delight in tasting is best experienced corporately rather than merely individually.
What do we do when we find a “hole-in-the-wall” gem of a restaurant? I remember finding numerous barbecue joints or cafes around New Orleans. My dad was the master of this. What would happen when we would leave the restaurant? We “evangelized” about it.2 We billboarded it to other hungry people on the highway.
The divine command to seek satisfaction in our Covenant Keeping God is also the call for us to bring others along with us. Heavenly hunger is to be satisfied alongside others seeking the same Bread.
What Are We To Taste?
John Calvin beautifully comments on this verse in Psalm 34:
In this verse the Psalmist indirectly reproves men for their dulness in not perceiving the goodness of God, which ought to be to them more than matter of simple knowledge. By the word taste he at once shows that they are without taste; and at the same time he assigns the reason of this to be, that they devour the gifts of God without relishing them, or through a vitiated loathing ungratefully conceal them. He, therefore, calls upon them to stir up their senses, and to bring a palate endued with some capacity of tasting, that God’s goodness may become known to them, or rather, be made manifest to them.3
This divinely enabled tasting comes from the Holy Spirit dwelling within and transforming us into new creations (2 Cor. 5:17). He re-creates our spiritual tastebuds so that what was once bitter now becomes sweet. And what was once sweet is now realized as being truly bitter.
When we are born again we enter into this blessed happiness. “Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” What should our hunger remind us of? The truest happiness that is not found in food but in Christ’s righteousness. Our craving for food should be like a waiter whetting our appetite for the special dish of the night. Our tasting of rich food should proclaim to our conscience that Christ is much more to be relished. Our palate that can sense the numerous different flavors should testify to us that Christ is much more rich in the layers of His redemption.
Hunger is an evangelist if we listen.
As we are psychosomatic unions—made up of both body and soul—our fleshly experiences do not leave our souls unaffected. Eating food is not merely a fleshly experience. Our souls can find a type of satisfaction in the consumption of food.
Not to insult anyone’s intelligence but I hope parts like this are being read in light of the metaphor. We’re not literally evangelizing about a restaurant. Unfortunately, like sinfully quenching hunger, we speed by things so quickly that we misread the obvious reading.
John Calvin and James Anderson, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 1 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 563.