America, Listen Up!

This post is by Jonathan Storment in his series on the seven deadly sins, this one on gluttony.

“Their god is their stomach.” –St. Paul

When I was in college, I interned at a large church in Texas, and on one day I happened to be the only “minister” in the building.  A man had walked in needing some pastoral help, and the administrative assistant asked me to talk to him.  That was a mistake.

The man was twice my age, and obviously distraught, and after a few uncomfortable moments of chit-chat here is what he told me.  Every night he waits for his wife to go to sleep, and then he creeps out of the bedroom and gets in his car and he drives to several different drive-thru stops to order copious amounts of food.

He doesn’t get all the food at any one drive-thru because of his embarrassment about how much he is going to eat.  Then he finishes his meal by going to Denny’s and ordering one or two meals.  He had been doing this for the past 6 months and when he came to church for help, he had put on well over 50 pounds.  And now he was telling me, a 20 year old junior, his story.  I knew enough to ask something like, “Why do you think you do this?”

He told me that it was because his wife beat him.  I think I said something pastorally sensitive like, “That’s messed up man.  Let’s pray.”

I tell you that rather extreme story because it is easy to see when some people have a bad relationship with food.  But what Christians call the vice of gluttony isn’t really about overeating, it is about loving food in the wrong way.  I never thought I was a glutton, now I am starting to wonder if I know anyone who isn’t.

C.S. Lewis, in his book, Mere Christianity famously made the comparison of lusting after a woman to a craving for food.  You have probably heard this quote before:

You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?

I have always loved that metaphor.  I have recently started to realize that it is no longer hyperbole.

Beyond C.S. Lewis’ wildest dreams these days we actually can and do gather a large audience to watch food.  We have entire channels set aside for it, and have wildly popular shows about cooking and eating (even the people who work in these shows see the problem with them).  We use the term “food porn” to talk about our relationship to food.  We are a land of gluttons.

Now when I say gluttony, you probably have some images that come to mind:  The unrecognizable obese person that the evening news shows walking in B-roll footage (but only from the neck down), or that cousin who just shovels it down at Thanksgiving.

And hey, at least that idea of gluttony is relevant.  Of all the Seven Deadly Sins, it seems that this is the only one that the world and Christianity agree.  This, everyone knows is a sin.  Western Culture, after all, despises the overweight, those pitiful souls who don’t have chiseled abs or a certain size waist.  We punish those people who can’t push away from the table.

Will Willimon points out that a recent study shows that eleven percent of Americans would abort a fetus if they were told that the fetus had a tendency toward obesity.  Elementary school children say that they are more judgmental toward the fat kid in class than they are toward a bully.  Studies have shown that an overweight person is at a distinct disadvantage in being hired for a job when compared with someone who is not overweight.  The problem is that for most of us, the thing that bothers us about gluttony is not the sin but the fat.  But this is a thin view of sin.  Because the way Christianity describes this vice, most gluttons are thin.

C. S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, points out that with gluttony the problem is not so much the quantity but the quality of our consumption.  At one point Screwtape, the head demon, coaching another demon gives him an example of how they had managed to get an older woman caught in this vice without her knowing.

[When it comes to food] what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate, to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? [We have] this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demur little sigh and smile, “Oh, please, please . . . all I want is a cup of tea, weak, but not too weak, the teeniest weenniest bit of really crisp toast.” You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognizes as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others… . . . The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which [the devil] has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life. The woman is in what may be called the “All-I-want” state of mind.

Gluttony isn’t just about eating too much, it is about thinking about food and particularly self too much.  Now suddenly a whole new dimension of how this sin works opens up doesn’t it?  Many gluttons are very thin.  The problem with gluttony isn’t loving food.  It is loving food too much, or in the wrong ways.  And the punishment fits the crime, because we are a culture that loves food too much, we are also a culture that is losing the ability to appreciate it.  We eat fast, we eat alone, we eat watching television (sometimes about better food) or while staring at our phones.

Rebecca DeYoung says it this way:

Gluttony’s excessive pursuit of the pleasures of the table eventually dulls our appreciation for the food we eat, the pleasure we take in eating it, those with whom we eat, and the God who created what we eat and gave us the ability to take pleasure in it…Who will appreciate a simple piece of cheese more—one who eats several Big Macs every day, or one who has just undergone a Lenten fast, abstaining from meat and dairy for several weeks?  It is easy to misunderstand fasting as a practice that devalues eating and food or regards it as evil. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I think it is indicative that Christianity calls gluttony a vice, when Jesus was known for his banquets and feasts.  But the Jesus who was rumored to be a glutton started his ministry with fasting.

God made a good world filled with food that was meant to be enjoyed.  One of God’s first commandments was for us to eat, and the first sin was what and how we chose to eat.  We were made to both feast and fast.

Augustine once asked whether are we willing to do without pleasure if it is asked of us?  Are we overly attached to our comforts?

I think the answer to that is found on our plates, and these days, often our DVR.