"I just want to be loved, is that so wrooong?"
Posted on 04/25/2014 6:34:01 AM PDT by Gamecock
How should Christians think about these claims? Well, the operative word in that question is “think.” We can’t settle for gotcha headlines and arguments that are more slogan than substance. We have to be open to reason, open our Bibles, and think this through.
Why do conservative Christians make such a fuss about homosexuality and give everyone a free pass—most notably themselves—when it comes to gluttony?
That’s a question you hear a lot of us these days and one you should expect to hear again and again, posed in a hundred different ways, in the years ahead.
Why are we asking about gays in heaven when we should be asking if there will be fat people in heaven? How can we say “their” sin of homosexuality is terrible while “our” sin of gluttony is no big deal? Everyone’s a biblical literalist until you bring up gluttony. Besides, the Bible contains three times as many exhortations against gluttony than against homosexuality.
How should Christians think about these claims? Well, the operative word in that question is “think.” We can’t settle for gotcha headlines and arguments that are more slogan than substance. We have to be open to reason, open our Bibles, and think this through.
1. Do we really want to suggest that one sin is no biggie because we’ve been pretty lax about a different sin? If it’s the case that Christians are wrongly intolerant of unrepentant gluttony–or any unrepentant sin–then shame us. Sins separate us from God. When we choose to embrace sins, celebrate sins, and not repentant of sins, we keep ourselves away from God and away from heaven.
2. Is it really wise to equate gluttony with being fat? People are overweight, underweight, or fit as a fiddle for all sorts of reasons. Can we be sure that those with a few pounds to shed are worse sinners than the fried-food loving bean pole blessed with an amazing metabolism? If we want to draw a ramrod straight line between gluttony and corpulence, Job has three “friends” we can hang out with.
3. It bears repeating, the reason Christians are talking about homosexuality is because everyone else is talking about homosexuality. Strange coincidence that evangelicals did not become “obsessed” with homosexuality until about 40-50 years ago when the culture became obsessed with sexual freedom. If the Supreme Court finds a constitutional right to jab people in the kidneys with poison-tipped spears, we’ll get worked about that too.
4. Gluttony is a favorite vice to throw into the rhetorical mix because it is one of the so-called Seven Deadly Sins. As Will Willimon explains, the earliest formation of the list of seven comes from Evagrius of Pontus, a desert monk and follower of Origen (who was later condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in A.D. 553). It’s not surprising that an ascetic who lived in a commune separated from the world might consider the temptation for food one of his chief maladies. One can detect more than a little monkish asceticism and some Stoic disdain for the body in the Fathers’ abhorrence to gluttony.
Throughout church history, theologians have understood the sin of gluttony in different ways. For some, immoderate desire is the issue. For others, eating more than we need is the problem. According to Augustine, food was not the problem but how we sought it and for what reason.
The Catholic Catechism does not call them seven “deadly sins,” but “capital sins,” because they engender other sins and other vices (art. 1866).
C.S. Lewis, with typical insight, has the devil Screwtape note how persnickety old ladies–the kind who always turn aside whatever is offered and always insist on a tiny cup of tea–are just as guilty of gluttony because they put their wants first, no matter how troublesome they may be to others. Health conscious foodies beware: the problem of gluttony, according to Lewis, was not too much food, but too much attention to food. We might say, in the broadest ethical sense, gluttony is using food in a way that dulls us from the spiritual and distracts us from God. That’s certainly a danger for most of us, but it’s not the same as enjoying a meal, feeling stuffed, or being overweight.
5. And what does the Bible say? Some will be surprised to learn that “gluttony” appears in none of the New Testament vice lists. In fact, most of the Bible is overwhelmingly positive about food. There are Old Testament feasts and visions of heavenly feasts. Jesus finished his ministry with a meal and instituted a supper for his remembrance in the church. If the New Testament has an overriding concern with food, it is that God’s people not be overly concerned about it. Food does not commend us to God (1 Cor. 8:8), and the kingdom of God does not consist of food and drink (Rom. 14:17). No honest reader of the New Testament can deny that Jesus and the apostles were much more concerned about what we do sexually with our bodies than with the food we eat (Mark 7:21-23; 1 Cor. 6:12-20; cf.1 Tim. 4:1-5).
In the English Standard Version, the word “glutton” appears four times and in every instance is paired with the word “drunkard” (Deut. 21:20; Prov. 23:21; and in a slander against Jesus Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:34). The word “gluttonous” shows up once, again alongside a reference to “drunkards” (Prov. 23:20). Two other times we have “gluttons,” once in a quotation from a poet speaking of lazy Cretans (Titus 1:12) and the other time in reference to the company a shameful son keeps (Proverbs 28:7).
The other passages often associated with gluttony are much less than meets the eye. For example, the point of Proverbs 23:2 (“put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite”) is about not being ensnared by the deceptive hospitality of rich hosts. And the saying in Philippians 3:19 (“their god is their belly”) is either a euphemism for sexual sin (see the next phrase, “they glory in their shame”) or a reference to the Judaizer’s legalistic demands regarding Mosaic dietary restrictions.
So what does the sin of gluttony look like? When we take time to open our Bibles and read the relevant passages, we find that gluttony is much more than eating a McRib sandwich and that partaking in food is much less of a concern than partaking in sexual sin. The composite picture from these verses suggests that a glutton is a loafer, a partyer, and a profligate. He’s the prodigal son wasting his life on riotous living. She’s the girl on spring break who thinks the pinnacle of human existence is to eat, drink, and hook up. A waistral living for the weekend. A big city high flyer who cares for nothing except for indulging in high society. A ne’er do well who takes lifestyle cues from the Hangover franchise.
So, absolutely, the church should speak against the sin of gluttony. But once we understand what the sin entails, I’m guessing most people would say they have a good idea where the church already stands on these issues.
Kevin DeYoung has been the Senior Pastor at University Reformed Church (RCA) in East Lansing, Michigan since 2004. Kevin blogs at the Gospel Coalition; this article is reprinted with his permission.
Also, the ads on T.V. are SO helpful, aren’t they?
The difference is, even if you’re fat, you know gluttony is wrong.
Homosexuals don’t think that sodomy is wrong.
Suppose Christians start talking about obesity. Well, the poor tend to be obese to a much greater degree than the middle class or well off. And the poor tend to be disproportionately black or Hispanic. What do you think the liberals will do then? That’s right!
“CHRISTIAN OBSESSION WITH WEIGHT IS JUST A MASK FOR THEIR RACISM!!!”
Liberals are so predictable....
I must disagree. They know it is wrong, but they are in rebellion against God. That is a large part of why they feel they must get affirmation of their habits from society. They won't get it from the one who really matters.
Maybe a few do honesty believe it’s wrong...but I think the “Pride” movement has done much to remove that stigma.
Nothin’ worse than a big fat ole homo.
(from The Catholic Encyclopedia, with minor edits)
Gluttony (From Lat. gluttire, to swallow, to gulp down), the excessive indulgence in food and drink.
The moral deformity discernible in this vice lies in its defiance of the order postulated by reason, which prescribes necessity as the measure of indulgence in eating and drinking.
This deordination may happen in five ways which are set forth in the scholastic verse: too soon, too expensively, too much, too eagerly, too daintily.
Clearly one who uses food or drink in such a way as to injure his health or impair their mental equipment is guilty of the sin of gluttony.
To eat or drink for the mere pleasure of the experience, and for that exclusively, is likewise to commit the sin of gluttony.
Gluttony is in general a venial sin in so far forth as it is an undue indulgence in a thing which is in itself neither good nor bad.
Of course it is obvious that a different estimate would have to be given of one so wedded to the pleasures of the table as to absolutely and without qualification live merely to eat and drink, so minded as to be of the number of those, described by the Apostle St. Paul, “whose god is their belly” (Philippians 3:19).
Such a one would be guilty of mortal sin.
“Spiritual gluttony” is the disposition of those who, in prayer and other acts of religion, are always in search of sensible sweetness; they are those who “will feel and taste God, as if he were palpable and accessible to them not only in Communion but in all their other acts of devotion.”
This is a very great imperfection and productive of great evils.
I still say of all, Envy is the most deadly of all, it was the primary source of Communism, which killed over 100 million people last century.
Also Nazism was based on envy of the British Empire, and that Germany wanted her colonies as well.
Yeah, I think the point when fat people preach over-eating in public schools as “normal, healthy, and beautiful” would be where we would get a lot more vocal over it.
It boils down to this..do I ask for forgiveness, healing, or blessing for what I do?...
Many of us are gluttons- for punishment!
Ain’t that the truth!
In practical terms, gluttony takes several forms.
1) Those who overindulge in food and drink, seeking out the ill effects of that overindulgence. The gourmand and the drunkard.
2) Those who overindulge neurotically, who use food as a substitute for love, those who are sexually attracted to obesity, the anorexic and bulimic.
3) Those who equate food with elitism and superiority, consuming only the most expensive food and drink, even if it is of inferior taste. They may eat little, but they sit on a mountain of waste to provide them that.
4) The fully fledged glutton, whose life and time and devoted to gastronomic excess, to the exclusion of all else.
5) The “spiritual glutton”, described in my previous post.
It is rare to find one of the deadly sins in isolation from the others. The Democrat party seems to embrace all of them at once, however.
Yet each deadly sin has its own character, for example, greed is unique in that it knows no limit. Literally everything that is, and can be, is not enough to satisfy greed.
Most sinners don’t believe they ARE sinning.
And twas ever thus.
Bingo! I reject the premise, that christians are focusing on homosexuality. It has rarely even been mentioned in my 30 years sitting in a church. What is mentioned almost every week is that we are all sinners and in need of a savior. The left is using homosexuality to attack the church and only pays attention to christians when they elicit a response that can then be attacked as bigoted.
But What About Gluttony!?! Do Christians focus on homosexuality and ignore sins like gluttony?
Oh stop. No one likes a jerk.
No one including the Government is trying to redefine gluttony or force the society to accept it as okay.
The leftist political agenda has changed homosexuality from a mental illness to a really really cool thing... Now the push is on to force Christians to accept this sin as normal or be sued and marginalized in society.
***two guys holding hands***
I don’t even know what to say to this. I thought actual anal sex had something to do with this. I guess I was so wrong. All homosexuals want is a little bit of affection...no sex whatsoever. How silly of me.
"I just want to be loved, is that so wrooong?"
I don’t know about that. I’ve met more than one person who seems to believe that they simply can’t lose weight no matter how little they eat or how much they supposedly work out.
I really can’t care less what someone else thinks is wrong or not unless and until it directly effects me.
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