It Is Not Best For Man To Eat Alone

Christianity Today op-ed: It Is Not Best for Man to Eat Alone, by Anna Broadway (Author, Solo Planet: How Singles Help the Church Recover Our Calling (2024)):

When the waiter brought out my long-awaited high tea that day, I didn’t expect I’d still be grieving it decades later.

I was 21 and enjoying my first “real” spring break during a debt-building week away in London. After years of devouring chaste romances set in England, I’d learned that Harrods was the best place to experience the glories of scones, clotted cream, and tiny sandwiches, all served on tiers of gleaming china and, of course, washed down with hot tea. So on my inaugural trip across the sea, it seemed only right to indulge my credit card’s largesse on a high tea at Harrods. Alone.

As I looked around the room that day, I knew I’d made a grave mistake. Not even the tender scones and decadent clotted cream could balance the bitter taste of regret. They worsened it. With each new delight, I felt more keenly the lack of someone to share my enjoyment with.

When I was doing fieldwork for my book on singleness, someone told me it might be worse to eat alone than sleep alone. Eating alone is certainly a problem for people who live by themselves. But with 21st-century work schedules, sports practices, and other structural realities, even those with seemingly “built-in” meal companions in spouses or children or roommates often dine solo too. When we do share supper, allergies and dietary restrictions can create other divides. This shift has even changed apartment and home designs as dining rooms fall out of fashion.

Sometimes, the solitude of a meal alone feels welcome. Perhaps an introvert drained by a day of meetings wants nothing more than time alone to decompress. And for some harried parents, a quiet cup of coffee—a reward for getting up before the rest of the household—might feel like a rare and precious solace.

But for Christians, the question of how and with whom we eat involves more than our own preferences. What is God’s design for our meals?

Scripture includes a surprising number of stories featuring food. To prepare for liberation from slavery, God has the Israelites eat a special Passover meal of lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs that observant Jews continue to recreate annually to this day. Jesus later reinterpreted this meal in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

Jesus used food to make connections with outcasts and sinners. He made a meal to mend the rift caused by Peter’s betrayal, frying fish for breakfast on the beach. And it was only at the table that an Emmaus-bound duo finally recognized him. ...

[M]aybe our meals alone can still honor God’s design. How? Maybe we slow down to notice the sights, sounds, scents, sensations, and tastes of eating. (This can also help with anxiety and stress.) Instead of distracting ourselves with YouTube or social media, we can acknowledge and welcome God’s presence with us. And we can give sincere thanks for those who made and delivered and planted and cultivated and harvested, as well as the One who provided the rain.

And also: We should try to eat with others as often as possible.

I write this as someone who now eats many meals alone, sitting at my gate-leg dining table in the chair that faces the window. Thanks to one book interview with a Norwegian man who sometimes paid bills while he ate—and hated this—I try hard to avoid doing work during dinner. On better nights, I eat while reading or listening to a book. On worse nights, I scroll on my phone. ...

Sharing food can take vulnerability and flexibility. But once you get past the initial risk or discomfort, deeper connection usually follows, and loneliness recedes. ...

Revelation ends with the promise of food restored, after all. In its final chapter, the tree of life, whose fruit caused God to banish humans from Eden, reappears (Gen. 3:22, Rev. 22:2). Only once God resumes sharing that food with humans does the Bible declare the curse no more, and God and humans so close that “they will see his face.”

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