Feasting isn’t gluttony

“When are you going to teach on gluttony? You couldn’t pay me to have sex out of marriage or steal, but I will eat a bag of chips and a box of cookies at the same time in my living room watching TV. The guilt? It’s horrible.”

I received this message from a congregant. I appreciate her self-awareness, honesty, and courage. She’s not alone.

Millions of Americans are not healthy. Forty-two percent of adults are obese and another 30% are overweight. Almost 20% of children are obese and an additional 16% are overweight. Nearly half of all Americans have one or more preventable chronic disease, “many of which are related to poor quality eating patterns.” Happy holidays?

What are the eating patterns that represent a problem? Not feasting, but gluttony.

Gluttony is thankless, mindless overeating. It’s rooted in comfort-seeking and incubated in entitlement; acting as though every bite of food is salvific. Gluttony is the Standard American Diet (SAD). High carbs, high fat, accompanied by low fiber and low protein. Can someone gluttonously eat broccoli and beef? Unlikely, as the fiber and protein resist overeating. Yet ultra-processed foods, mechanistically stripped of their fiber and protein in order to make them more immediately gratifying and addicting, serve as the foundation for the way many Americans eat.

Government food, agricultural, and pharmaceutical subsidies incentivize unhealthy eating patterns in multiple directions: doing things like underwriting GLP-1s (a drug that promotes weight loss) and allowing $23 billion in SNAP benefits to be spent on sugary drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar.

“A companion of gluttons shames his father," says Proverbs 28:7. Why? The glutton delays not gratification, his god is literally his belly, and he’s unwilling to steward the good gifts of his body and food. Unable to stop scratching the itch, he is on the trajectory of prematurely ending his life.

Feasting may mean giving your body more than it needs, in contrast with fueling (giving your body what it needs) and fasting (not giving your body what it needs). But feasting isn’t only overeating; it’s overeating with a conscious purpose: most recently thanksgiving. If entitlement is the soil in which gluttony grows; gratitude is the environment in which feasting flourishes.

We raise our glasses “to the King,” give honor where honor is due, celebrate victories, and appreciate friends and family when we feast; there are toasts, speeches, prayers, and stories shared. History is remembered, blessings are counted, and hope is spread like too much butter on warm toast.

If you add up all the feast days that were prescribed in the Old Testament, it would account for about 19% of the annual calendar. This wasn’t mindless indulgence; this was a time focused on remembering the works of the Lord and reminding one another of His promises.

Surprisingly, proper feasting, not just fasting, is the antidote America needs to address its gluttony problem. The age of cynicism has begotten the age of gluttony. When you lack thankfulness and embrace spirits of negativity, you start to feel entitled to foolish pleasure seeking; after all, who cares? Likewise, the spirit of nihilism begets gluttony; if there’s no life after death, then your only hope is to maximize your return on every moment, one morsel of pleasure after another.

It’s harder than ever to be mentally and physically fit. Billions of dollars are invested every month to make you envious, entitled, engorged, and enraged. America needs the holiday feasts now more than ever. So plan a feast, attend or host, make speeches, sing a hymn, drink to the King, and wear your stretchy pants. Feast in rebellious resistance to gluttonous, entitled, and cynical culture.

I’m reminded of the dying words of a dwarf-king filled with regret, Thorin, near the end of The Hobbit: “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

“Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who alone does great wonders” Psalm 136: 3-4