“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
I believe I have reached the age where I start to exhibit charmingly eccentric quirks. Well, maybe they’re not charming. I don’t know. In any case, I think I am getting more eccentric. I mutter aloud to the copy machine at work, I insist on using a wobbly old wooden lectern in class, and I eat the same thing almost every day for breakfast and lunch.
The breakfast and lunch thing started a few years ago when—uh oh—my cholesterol went up. Also my blood pressure. Maybe this had something to do with eating our way through the pandemic quarantine? Stress? Or just age. Anyway, I decided I needed to alter my diet. So these days, I eat almost no meat except some fish, I hardly eat eggs (a good thing for our wallet), I try to cut down on cheese (very hard: cheese is life), and I eat no-fat, no-sugar, no-dairy oatmeal for breakfast and totally virtuous bean soup for lunch. With an apple.
The soup is nothing but beans, veggie broth, and vegetables. OK, there’s a little salt. I say it’s virtuous not with pride but with a sigh. We’re talking Lenten sorts of virtue here. Is it a little boring? Yes. Is it really perfectly virtuous? Of course not. Nothing is. Come on, I’m a Calvinist, and we’re still talking about a food system full of injustices, etc. But the soup tastes pretty good, it’s better for me than a lot of other options, and I don’t really need lunch to be exciting.
Please understand that I’m not making diet changes—or talking about it—to show everyone how very virtuous I am. I have no illusions on that score. I’m eating bean soup in order not to die of heart disease.
So do I feel better now that I’m eating so very virtuously? Actually, yes I do. I’ve lost ten pounds, my cholesterol is better, blood pressure under control. But here’s the point: I have started to craaaaaaaaaave this food. I just got back from a few days of traveling for a speaking engagement, where I had to eat whatever was put before me, and I missed the bean soup. Isn’t that weird? It turns out that, with enough practice, one can develop cravings for virtuous food.
We all know that junk food is designed by teams of industrial food designers in order to respond to and then exacerbate our most fundamental human food cravings: fat, salt, sugar. That’s why we salivate madly when we pass a restaurant and smell the burgers a-sizzling, or when we see a pizza ad at half time and suddenly, and we’ve simply got to have pizza. But it turns out that one can lose those cravings and develop virtuous ones. (Sigh.)
If you have been suspecting an imminent turn to metaphor, here it comes: In our public life, have we been flooded with the equivalent of industry-designed junk food? Have we been fed a diet of grievance, self-interest, obsession with leisure and luxury, enmity, scape-goating, lies, and the thrill of domination? That was a rhetorical question. Of course we have, and we have developed the social equivalent of chronic heart disease and diabetes because of it. What’s more, even though this noxious brew is terrible for us, we have developed cravings for it. Not only is all of this ickiness clogging our cultural arteries, it is also filling us with toxins. We are sick.
If you have been suspecting an imminent turn to Aristotelian ethics, here it comes: habits get ingrained. Bad ones, but also good ones. So if we want to develop virtuous public character—so that we all crave it—we have to first grind through and practice the virtues, maybe with gritted teeth. After a while, virtue becomes habitual and more natural. After a while, virtue becomes public character. If all goes well. I would add: if we depend on the Spirit to sustain us.
That all sounds great, of course, but it’s so hard. What do we do with our current cravings for anti-virtue public-discourse junk food? I don’t know. Don’t feed the cravings, I guess. Somewhere, deep down, I think we are built to long for the Spirit-fruit virtues: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. I would add that we also long for integrity, honesty, and prophetic truth-telling, since we seem to be suffering from a deficiency there. I want to increase my longing for those things by practicing them together, making them habits. In fact, let’s toss in as many virtue ingredients as we like. Season with prayer. Try to make ingesting it all a daily practice.
Actually, shouldn’t faith communities be simmering up gigantic pots of virtue soup these days? Feeding each other with it, feeding our communities with it? I believe there is an important role for laws that protect the vulnerable from all kinds of abuses—oh, for those laws to work!—but to create public virtue, in which we want to practice the virtues, well, I think that only comes from compelling modeling. Maybe eventually, if we people of faith all work at creating batches of virtue soup, public cravings for virtue will increase.
This is getting cheesy, and I’m trying to cut down on dairy. So I’ll end by confessing that I still do crave potato chips, pizza, and chocolate. I still eat all those things sometimes, but only at dinner time (mostly). I like feeling better, and that helps me stay motivated. I really, really want to feel better. I want us all to feel better. In every way.
Here’s the recipe for the soup, in case you want to try it.
Nothing-But-Virtue Bean Soup
Start with the 15 Bean Soup packaged beans (found in the bean aisle at the grocery) and soak the beans overnight in a slow cooker. Throw away the little flavor packet. It’s gross. I have tried the 16 Bean Soup beans, and they’re not as good for this. Is it that 16th bean?
Drain the beans. Now add the rest:
5 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
2-3 celery stalks, chopped
2 c. chopped cabbage
2 14-oz cans diced tomatoes—I use Red Gold as they really do taste better
(in the summer, I use some tomatoes from my garden along with 1 can)
2 medium onions, chopped
4 c. veg broth (I make mine with low-sodium veg broth paste from a jar—it tastes better than boxed broth)
Stir it all up a bit. Cook on low for 8 hours. Stir once in a while.
To finish, add
Juice of half a lemon
Salt to taste
Lots of pepper
A couple teaspoons of turmeric
Makes… I don’t know. A bunch. I freeze most of it and thaw as needed.
Thanks to Jennifer Holberg for tolerating the bean-y, cabbage-y smell of this soup at work and challenging me to write a post about it.
10 Responses
Nice! Could I skip the celery? Yes, Christian communities modeling public virtue. It is a subtle improvement over “building the kingdom.”
“The church is church only when it is there for others. . . . The church must participate in the worldly tasks of life in the community – not dominating but helping and serving. It must tell people in every calling what a life in Christ is, what it means to ‘be there for others’. In particular, our church will have to confront the vices of hubris, the worship of power, envy, and illusionism as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak of moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment. . . . The church’s word gains weight and power not through concepts but by example.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Outline for a Book” (August 3, 1944)
Wow! Clearly, Dietrich was eating bean soup, too. Thanks for this, Dave.
I’m so happy to see this post about the beloved soup! It always looks (and I think smells) delicious. I love being charmingly eccentric together with you in our department. Thanks so much for sharing the recipe! And the nutritious wisdom, too.
All but the cabbage (said in theory–I will subject myself to trying it).
Can virtue soup stand alone? I think there is virtue in good bread and cheese, both staples not indulgences in my book. In moderation of course.
You know, I used to hate cabbage. I have made my peace with it now. Chopped and cooked down with other stuff, it’s pretty good. Yes to the bread and cheese on the side. Psalm 104: 14-15.
Preach it, sister.
For those who want some Aristotelian ethics combined with St. Paul’s fruit of the Spirit,
specifically on the topic of ecological virtue ethics, see my book:
Earthkeeping and Character: Exploring a Christian Ecological Virtue Ethic.
And don’t forget to pass the soup.
Steve Bouma-Prediger
I am inspired. To cook and put some more virtuous things in my body and mind. Thanks, Deb.
If that virtue soup can lower cholesterol and blood pressure and smell and taste good besides, wow – let’s set up a Calvin Soup Kitchen! And contrary to Jeff, I will even relish the cabbage!
(Now I have to find out if the Raybrook Nutritionist and Cook are readers of the Reformed Journal.)
Thanks, Deb!
I’ll have to try the bean soup. I love bean soup but the rest of the family doesn’t. Knowing I can freeze it means I can just make it for myself.
As for the issue with craving the wrong stuff, with food I have found that once I knew that it was the stuff I was eating that made me crave it, and I also had good suggestions of what to eat instead that would be satisfying, I was motivated to make the changes, and once I got away from the bad stuff the cravings went away. It was amazing, after decades of feeling trapped by cravings, to have them gone. A couple of times I gave in anyway at during the holidays and for a while got stuck again, though not as bad. Now I can easily get through holidays because I know that the good food I eat is much more satisfying (and it doesn’t have to be no fat or no sugar, as long as it’s good fats and not much added sugar). I really feel like I’m indulging myself with a lot of the stuff I eat, but I’m 50 pounds lighter than when I first cut out diet pop, which was a big part of what made me want sweet stuff (amazing how good plain yogurt tastes when my taste buds aren’t used to super sweet stuff).
I don’t think I’ve ever been as affected by the cravings for the “public-discourse junk food” as a lot of people, in part because I’m such an introvert and don’t interact with people as much as more extroverted people do, and in part because I simply refuse to do much with social media (I finally gave in and got a smart phone a few years ago when my husband wanted one to use as a hot spot for his tablet, but I refuse to use it for most of what other people use it for. It’s a playback device for audiobooks, a teaching device for foreign languages, and a reference device when I’m not near a full-size computer, plus an actual phone). But I would guess that the same principles should work as with food cravings – realize the danger to spiritual health from giving in to the cravings and see the healthy alternative in a community of people who are also committed to healthy communication and relationships. I suppose it also helps that I’m in my 60s and simply don’t feel the need to be like everyone else anymore. I’d rather live by the values I was taught when I was young, and I’d rather be out of step with people around me than be like them and be as unhappy as so many people seem to be.