The Serpent Beguiled Me and I Ate: A Heavenly Diet for Saints and Sinners

By Edward Dumke

Ever since Adam and Eve first cheated on their diet humanity has been plagued with the problem of weight control. Now in this delightfully uplifting book Edward J Dumke offers a refreshing solution to this age-old dilemma with a workable diet strategy.

Based on medically sound advice, faith, hope and self control, "the Serpent Beguiled Me and I Ate" begins by delivering us from temptation with "The Seven Lessons", an enlightening exploration of the use of food in the Bible and how it affects our eating habits today. Then with whit and divine common sense, the volume provides "The Ten Commandments of Good Nutrition"---Reverend Dumke's own covenant of careful consumption (with an Eleventh Commandment for chocolate sinners!)

"Reverend Dumke's book is a unique and definitive contribution to diet, nutrition and total health"

-Seymour m Farber, Vice Chancellor Emeritus,

University of California Medical Center

"The Serpent Beguiled Me and I Ate" is a sane spiritual exercise. The book's recipe shrewdly blends honesty, self examination, fact, practicality, humor and Bible lore and more than a dash of sound theology."

-Bishop Frederick Borsch

"This book is a delight. the author has called upon a rich resource of biblical quotations to inform and entertain as he shows us much in a fresh light about Hebrew and Christian awareness of food and drink."

-Reverend Robert Cooper, Professor of Christian Ethics

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685706036

Book preview

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The Serpent Beguiled Me and I Ate

A Heavenly Diet for Saints and Sinners

Edward Dumke

ISBN 978-1-68570-602-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68570-603-6 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Edward Dumke

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

All scriptural quotations are taken from the Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.

The 1983 Height and Weight Tables, prepared by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, are reprinted with permission of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Foreword by Robert L. Hampton III, MD

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

Awareness

Past Failures

Responsibility

Reasons to Lose

Beginning

Your Inner Resistance Factors

Your External Resistance Factors

Confirmations

Declarations

A Summary

Goals

Visualization

A Strategy of Structure

The Daily Weigh-In

Counting Calories

Recording What, Why, and How

Recording What, Why, and How

The Ten Commandments of Good Nutrition

Personal Nutrition Requirements

Favorite Foods

Menu Planner

Planning How, Where, and When

Planning for the Pitfalls

Art Diets

Color Consciousness

Touchstone Dieting

The Singing Teakettle

Achieving Balance

Achieving Flexibility

Exercises for Spirit, Stress, and Humor

What Do You Want?

Meditation Aids

Time Chart

Spending Time

Achieving Time Balance

Creating a Fast

Food Rituals

Laughter and Joy

Making Your Diet a Game

Stress

Daily Thoughts

Etiquette

An Ethical Etiquette

Handling the Holidays

Restaurants

Creating a Vacation

Exercise

Activity Level

Benefits

Creating Your Program

Exercise Commitment

Exercise Goals

Exercise Schedule

Favorite Recipes

About the Author

For My Godchildren:

Cristy

Theodore

James

Gillian

Katherine

Simon

Also:

Michael and Molly

Foreword by Robert L. Hampton III, MD

When Ted asked me to write this introduction, I had just finished a chapter for an eating disorder textbook that will hopefully become a medical benchmark in the field. My primary area of interest has been the psychiatric aspect of anorexia nervosa and bulimia. While these disorders contribute significantly to pain, suffering, and death on the national level, they pale compared to the health problems of obesity.

America is the fattest country in the world. The numbers are staggering. The National Center for Health Statistics has shown that 18.6 million women (27.1 percent) and 15.4 million men (24.2 percent) between ages twenty and seventy-four are 20 percent above desirable body weight. These people are in danger of developing heart disease, strokes, and certain cancers. Indeed, the morbidity and mortality statistics for these people approach those of heavy smoker.

While the problem is clear, practical solutions have been sadly lacking. Hundreds of different diet books have been published, many making the best-selling list. Most of these end up on a shelf collecting dust, forgotten. Why? Because they don't work over the long haul. Only 2 percent of those who lose weight have kept it off after seven years. Such books have focused too concretely on food, rather than its symbolic nature and a person's relationship to it.

In contemporary psychiatry, the behavior that comprises anorexia nervosa, bulimia, or obesity is viewed as a final common pathway that is fed by multiple cause, for example two people can exhibit the same behavior for different reasons. It follows that these reasons need to be addressed before we can expect any lasting behavioral change.

The Serpent Beguiled Me and I Ate is the first diet book I've read that deals with issues beyond the refrigerator in a psychologically sound and accessible way. The author starts off by making us aware of food's symbolic nature and how it is connected to those things we hold most dear: love, family, control, money, and power. He then shows us how to take control of these forces rather than just reacting to them.

One last but central point needs to be addressed, and that is the use of the Bible as a source for this book. The Judeo-Christian tradition and Western culture are so intertwined as to profoundly affect how we think and feel about the world around us regardless of what we profess. To the extent that we are all products of our upbringing and share similar values, the atheist and true believer drink from the same cup. This book is for all, not just the devout.

The Serpent Beguiled Me and I Ate is long overdue and has the potential to help millions help themselves.

Robert L. Hampton III, MD

Acknowledgments

For encouragement, support, inspiration, and research:

Mr. and Mrs. Richard A. Dumke

Mr. and Mrs. Donald S. Dumke

Mr. R. Emerson Price

Mr. and Mrs. Bernard L. Shaw

Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Gould

Dr. Seymour M. Farber

Mrs. Virginia M. Blight

Mary Champ Rose

Mrs. Campbell Hearst

Dr. and Mrs. Robert L. Hampton III

Mr. and Mrs. Mark Farmer

Mr. and Mrs. Gregory J. Hampton

Mrs. Karen L. Horvath

Mrs. Robert L. Hampton Jr.

Mrs. Sawyer Weaver

Dr. Max Pearce

Dr. and Mrs. Harold L. Ross

Mr. and Mrs. Stanley P. Charles III

Mr. and Mrs. Michael K. Pritchard

The Rev. and Mrs. J. Peter Farmer

The Rev. Richard W. Graves

Mrs. Stevenson Leighton

And the entire Baum, Hinckley, Kerr, and Yazman families.

Introduction

Hope for the Future

There is hope for your future.

—Jeremiah 31:17

Several years ago, I had an experience that radically changed the way I viewed the problem of being overweight.

One early January afternoon, I had a counseling appointment with a middle-aged woman named Martha. Martha suffered from chronic depression, which was both the cause and the result of her weight problem.

In our session, Martha recounted how she had regained the twenty pounds she had lost the previous summer. Then came the holidays, and Martha put on an additional eight pounds. I feel fat and ugly, she said. I just can't seem to help it. I was thinking about starting a new diet this week, but I don't know. I always gain back all the weight anyway. I just feel it's all hopeless. Martha's eyes filled with tears, and her voice choked. There is always hope, I said. Yet there was something in my voice that was unconvincing. The words were hollow, and both Martha and I knew it. She gave me an incredulous look and a long sad sigh that questioned my sincerity. After all, I had just shared my own frustration over gaining five unwanted pounds. We both sat there fat and depressed and sadly without hope.

If you ever feel a little like Martha, you are not alone. Today there are over eighty million Americans with a weight problem. One in three of us needs to lose weight, and we spend over $40 billion a year on a diet industry that largely ignored both the need for good nutrition and our own personal relationship to food. Consequently, 95 to 99 percent of all attempts to permanently control weight are doomed to failure.

In my study that evening, I was thinking about Martha and my failure to comfort her. Her words I just feel it's all hopeless kept echoing through my mind. The words disturbed me, and as I thought about them, my mind automatically leaped to the leftover pizza in the refrigerator and the rocky road in the freezer below. As I opened the refrigerator door, I suddenly realized what I was doing. Here I was about to consume half a pizza and a huge bowl of ice cream because I was upset about a weight problem.

It was there, in front of the refrigerator, that I dedicated myself to search for an answer. I shut the door, went back to my study, and began the long process of query, reflection, and research that lead to this book. The Serpent Beguiled Me and I Ate: A Heavenly Diet for Saints and Sinners is based on an understanding of over four thousand years of religious traditions, teachings, and experiences with food. This diet has changed my life, and I want to share it with those who still feel that awful sense of hopeless frustration over a seemingly uncomfortable problem. There is hope for your future.

Part 1

Spiritual Awareness

1

The Serpent Beguiled Me and I Ate

(Genesis 3:13)

If you are reading these words, you probably either have a weight problem or you are just a little curious about what on earth religion and losing weight have to do with each other.

Ask Yourself

What is food? Why do I overeat?

What role does food play in my life?

Does food control my behavior?

Why do diets fail?

What do I really want from food?

Being overweight is not fun. It can be a symptom of a serious disorder. If you are unhappy with your weight, then food is in some way controlling your life. You need to take that control back and break the obsessive power food has over you.

You don't need another fad diet. But you do need to do the following:

Discover the source of your psychospiritual relationship with food.

Develop a lifelong approach to dieting based on the principles of good nutrition and creative control.

Understanding Food: The Psychoreligious Symbol

Symbols are power signs that signal a response deep within us. They touch the very core of our being by representing our unconscious desires, unspoken beliefs, and secret longings. When you understand how your symbolic system operated, you understand yourself, and you can then begin to make some creative choices about changing your behavior. When you learn to understand what food and eating mean in your life, you will have taken the first and indispensable step toward controlling your diet, and this is exactly what The Serpent Beguiled Me and I Ate: A Heavenly Diet for Saints and Sinner will help you do! You will learn your own special psychological relationship to food (chapters 2 and 4) while you learn how to take creative control of your eating habits (chapters 3 and 5). Then, through the rest of the chapters, you will learn unique ways to utilize the numerous teachings, tools, and tactics that will help you make your diet a success story.

The amazing thing about food is that we eat it for more than just taste and survival. Food and the process of eating put us in touch with feelings and forces that dwell at the very root of our psychospiritual experience. Food, then, is both a powerful religious and a powerful psychological symbol. To understand the psychological power of food is to understand its religious significance. Conversely, to understand food as a religious symbol is to gain insight into its psychological consequence. It is all an astonishing interrelated network of meanings, which you will learn to decipher.

You will learn to uncover those hidden food-related assumptions that exist just below the surface of your conscious reality.

As you read this book and learn new ways to take control, always remember that food is a powerful psychospiritual symbol. You will claim power for yourself and your diet only after you become aware of what food really means in your life.

The Historical Drama of Eating

If you are Jewish or Christian, you belong to an eating religion. And even if you are not a member of an organized church, your psychological associations with food have their origins deep within the Judeo-Christian tradition. A brief survey of biblical history will illustrate not only the importance of food as a religious symbol, but the power that symbol has for our spiritual and psychological understanding.

Eve and the apple

In the very first chapter of the Bible, God says: I have been given every green plant for food (Genesis 1:30). And in the following chapter, God created the garden of Eden and out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food (Genesis 2:9). Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it And God commanded the man, saying ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat it you shall die' (Genesis 2:15–17).

Food and instructions about what to eat are an intrinsic part of the creation from the very beginning, and you can't read through the first two chapters of Genesis without running into a dietary plan. Of course, as we all know, it wasn't long before we were off the diet. Chapter 3 of Genesis is devoted entirely to poor Eve and her failure to keep to the diet God prescribed. As a consequence, nothing has ever been the same since. So if you feel guilty when you sneak that extra candy bar, just remember also that temptation and transgression were first symbolized by food and the act of eating.

Of course, when Eve was confronted with her sin, she came up with the all-time classic excuse, The serpent beguiled me and I ate (Genesis 3:13). That's just about it, isn't it? What better excuse is there for yielding to temptation? Flip Wilson's character, Geraldine, echoes Eve when she said: The devil made me do it. That old devil has been causing us problems since the dawn of creation. The devil seems to know our weaknesses, and it is obvious that forbidden food is one of them. Read the third chapter of Genesis, noting how food is used to symbolize the primary forces of good and evil, knowledge and innocence.

Adam's and Eve's punishments were severe and included death, pain in childbirth, toil and exile from the beautiful, happy garden state. But notice that part of their punishment was couched in terms related to food. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground (Genesis 3:19).

The patriarchs of Israel

The next time the Lord God appeared was to Abraham. God told Abraham that his wife Sarah would give birth in her old age to a son. This story explains the origins of the Jewish people, who are the promised descendants of Abraham and his son Isaac and Isaac's son Jacob. But note this all-important revelation is preceded by a meal of cakes, curds, beef, and milk, which Abraham has Sarah prepare for the Lord. And so it was over a meal that the destiny of Israel was foretold.

The story of Abraham and Sarah, and their son Isaac and his two sons Jacob and Esau, is found in chapters 21 through 37 of Genesis. One of the most dramatic events in their family saga involves the rivalry between the two brothers, Jacob, the herder, and Esau, the hunter. One day poor Esau, the older of the two boys, came home in such a state of hunger that he sold his birthright to his brother for some bread and a pottage of lentils. Esau was then cheated out of his father's deathbed blessings by Jacob, who disguised himself and served his father a savory food that the old man associated with Esau, his oldest and favorite son.

It is a complicated story involving blessings, birthrights, deceptions, preferential treatment, sibling rivalry, and the making of covenants. And again food becomes a vehicle through which history is determined. In the end, it was Jacob rather than Esau who became a patriarch of Israel, and it was the savory dish that made the difference.

Joseph and the food dreams

Now Joseph was the eleventh and favorite son of Jacob, and at seventeen, he was sold as a slave into Egypt by his ten jealous brothers. Soon after Joseph arrived in Egypt, it was discovered that he possessed a great talent for interpreting dreams. As it happened, the Pharaoh, his butler, and his baker were all having a very strange series of dreams about food, and Joseph's accurate interpretation of these dreams saved Egypt from famine and so impressed the Pharaoh that he placed Joseph in charge of the entire country.

Ironically, Joseph's brothers soon appear on the scene in search of food. Out of kindness Joseph forgave his brothers and brought the rest of his family into Egypt, where the food was plentiful and the living easy. And for a time, all was well.

Passover

Passover, the greatest event in the Old Testament, involves food from beginning to end. The Passover narrative, as contained in the book of Exodus, provides Western religion with its focus on theology of hope and liberation. Here the symbol of food represents the very core of our religious concepts and the very heart of our religious experience.

Long after Joseph died, a new Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph and his family. And because this new Pharaoh became concerned over the power of influence of the people of Israel, he put them into bondage and afflicted them with heavy burdens. But, as always, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob remembered his people and sent Moses to save them from what has become an intolerable situation.

On the night before the Jewish people left Egypt, they shared the first Passover meal, in which all the recipes were strictly prescribed by God. Then, after their deliverance, there was a difficult forty-year period when they wandered in the wilderness of Sinai. We are told that during this journey there was much complaining over the quality of food, for the people remembered that in Egypt they had sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full (Exodus 16:3). To quiet their complaints and save them from starvation, God sent down manna from heaven and quails from the desert. And the Lord said to Moses, At twilight you shall eat flesh and in the morning you shall be filled with bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God (Exodus 16:12).

The conclusion of the Passover story comes when the children of Israel reach the promised land, which is described as a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 13:5).

To commemorate their liberation from slavery, God commanded His people to perform a yearly Passover feast in which every item of food was to have a symbolic significance. This commemoration has been kept for thousands of years by the Jewish people in the celebration of the Passover meal. It is this ritualistic meal that is the central act of Judaism and explains a tradition rich in history and the belief that change and liberation are always possible.

Christianity: The Meal Continues

When we turn our investigation to Christianity, we again find a meal