Author: Teddy Ray

The skinny glutton

applePirates of the Caribbean depicts one of the last curses I’d want to endure. Barbossa and his crew have lost all ability to feel, smell, and taste. That big green apple is its most prominent symbol. Barbossa yearns for the day that he can actually enjoy it again.

What a great gift God has given us, that we were made to delight in things! We don’t go through life merely using things for the sake of survival and efficiency. We’re made to enjoy and savor and appreciate.

It’s no wonder that the symbol for the Pirates curse is a piece of food. Our relationship with food has a special place among all the things we enjoy.

Think of any party. It might have dancing or singing or games or music. But there’s little doubt that food will be a part of it. Regardless of time or place in history, food has been a party staple.

I originally thought it was odd that one of the seven capital vices would focus on eating. The category seemed too narrow. Some people have expanded the definition of gluttony to include any over-indulgence––movies, social media, email, even being a “glutton for punishment.” Yet as I’ve considered these more, eating seems to have a special place in our lives. God has given us all a common need for food and the common gift of delight.

What, then, is the problem with gluttony? If you think it doesn’t apply to you because you don’t overeat, stick around…

Good desires gone bad

In my post on lust, I said that every vice distorts or perverts something good. Lust and gluttony are considered two of the three “warm-hearted” vices. They have to do with a distortion of our desires––an attempt to over-indulge them.

Our desire to enjoy food gets distorted in two ways. We could call the mottos for these two distortions “eat to live“ and “live to eat.”

Eat to live

You might have met an ascetic––someone who practices severe self-discipline and avoids all forms of indulgence. Maybe you’ve toyed with ascetic ideas in your own mind. For the ascetic, anything that’s not specifically devoted to God is a waste of time, money, and energy. In many ways, the ascetic is the extreme Christian utilitarian. “What’s the purpose in eating anything else when beans and rice can sustain?” For the ascetic, food is for sustenance and nothing more: “eat to live.”

Temporary periods of ascetic living can serve a good and holy purpose. With regard to food, we call that fasting and abstinence. More on that below. But a permanent lifestyle of asceticism risks denying the goodness in God’s creation.[1. You’ll see an example of the same outlook affecting sexuality in 1 Corinthians, when Paul has to write to married couples about sex: “Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.” (1 Cor 7:1)]

Live to eat

The more common distortion in our relationship with food is gluttony. We usually associate gluttony only with overeating, but the issue at root isn’t necessarily quantity. You can be a skinny glutton.

Asceticism distorts our desires by denying pleasure. Gluttony does the opposite. It over-amplifies pleasure. For the glutton, the pleasure of eating and being full isn’t one of many pleasures to enjoy, it’s the pleasure. The appetite and tastes dominate: “live to eat.”

I think Aquinas described it best when he called this sort of intemperance a childish sin.[1. Found in Rebecca DeYoung’s Glittering Vices. Again, I imagine more of this post than I know is indebted to insights she led me to. You should read it.] Imagine a child at the table, unhappy with what he’s been offered to eat. “It’s yucky, I don’t want it.” He complains. He pouts. Because his personal pleasures aren’t being met, he sits through dinner with a scowl.

Or imagine the child ready to eat before dinner is ready, throwing a fit because she’s hungry, pestering her parents for something to eat “right now!”

Adults may handle the same situations with a bit more dignity, but their attitudes may be the same. We all want things to be exactly to our taste,[1. Sally: But I’d like the pie heated and I don’t want the ice cream on top, I want it on the side, and I’d like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it, if not then no ice cream just whipped cream but only if it’s real; if it’s out of the can then nothing.

Waitress: Not even the pie?

Sally: No, I want the pie, but then not heated.] in enough quantity, and exactly when we want them. But to what degree will we dishonor and disregard other people and priorities when these needs aren’t perfectly met? When our desires go unfulfilled, does it affect our attitude and treatment of others? If so, gluttony may be at root.

When gluttony elevates the pleasure from eating to an unnatural place, it tries to get too much from food. That may be because of another void that we’re trying to satiate. We use food to dull a feeling of emptiness or pain and, in the process, we ignore the real void.

You can see the vicious cycle at work in this… The root of emptiness goes unresolved, but food’s pleasure doesn’t last. As a result, we go back to food over and over, trying to temporarily fill the persisting void. If you’ve ever watched The Biggest Loser, you’ve seen them identify this cycle in nearly every contestant’s life. The pleasures from drugs, drinking and sex often attempt to do the same.

Seen this way, gluttony turns food into our comfort in times of trouble and distress. We seek refuge in food at times when God should be our refuge. When this happens, we not only distort God’s good gifts, we replace God with them.

As a caution, we should remember what ascetics seem to miss: there’s a time for feasting. Refraining from gluttony isn’t refraining from feasting. It’s about placing our feasting in the proper context––as an occasional special indulgence, one that accompanies celebration and facilitates relationships. That’s much different than gluttony’s regular over-indulgence, often as a coping mechanism or replacement for healthy relationships.

Fighting back against gluttony––Lenten Practices

Join me in two practices in the next week.

First, spend some time in self-examination. Is gluttony evident anywhere in your life? Rebecca DeYoung outlines five forms of gluttony with the acronym FRESH. Are you eating Fastidiously (is it spoiled if you don’t get just what you want?), Ravenously (e.g. loading up at the potluck in case there’s not enough), Excessively, Sumptuously (does it have to be rich and filling to satisfy you?), or Hastily?[1. from Glittering Vices, p. 141-142]

Second, spend a day in fasting. Actually, I’d encourage you to pick a day of the week to fast for the rest of Lent. (See this excellent piece by Jonathan Powers on fasting and feasting and gluttony as the gateway to all sin.)

Why fast? First of all, because God commands it in the Old and New Testaments. Furthermore, through fasting, God forms the virtue of temperance in us. He forms in us the ability to moderate our desires. Fasting claims that we don’t have to have everything that we want, even when it’s accessible to us.

If you can’t do a full 24-hour fast, perhaps you can choose something to abstain from. I recently heard someone talking about a person who was giving up chicken for Lent. He asked, “Why give up chicken for Lent? Is chicken really hindering your relationship with God?” He didn’t understand the purpose of Lent or fasting. Chicken isn’t likely hindering anyone’s relationship with God. But a gluttonous attitude that compels a person to take whatever they want, whenever they want, may very well be hindering their relationship with God. Temporarily abstaining from chicken may be the small next step someone needs to take in learning temperance.

 

So may you take pleasure in God’s good gifts. May you eat not just to live, but to delight. And may that delight lead you to a deeper enjoyment of God and his creation, not to a replacement for them.

What do you think? Should gluttony really be considered one of the capital vices (those that tend to underly all of our sinfulness)? What do you think about a definition that includes fastidious and sumptuous eating, not just over-eating?

Next week: “Wrath––fighting dirty for a bad cause”

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Reaching out without watering down

Me trying to establish some credibility

I need to start this by assuring you that I care about finding creative ways to share the gospel, opening up new conversations about my faith with people, being a “grace-bearer” to others.

I’ve tried in several ways to act on that. A few years ago I started meeting weekly with a group of men––especially focused on several who referred to themselves as “church dropouts”––to talk about the Bible, theology, and the state of our souls. This year my family moved to Spain to help with the start of a new church that is trying and praying hard to share the gospel.

I share that because I think several people view what I’ll say below as a refusal to be creative or an apathy about sharing the gospel.

Me fighting for the sanctity of sacred things

drive up weddingHow do you feel about drive-up weddings?

You have the bride, the groom, the vows about undying love, and the piece of paper that makes them official. Isn’t that ultimately what a wedding is about?

But something seems missing, doesn’t it?

Because a wedding is actually more than that. It’s not just about the bride and groom and the piece of paper. It’s also about the community of family and friends who come to witness and bless their marriage. It’s also about that larger liturgy––prayers of blessing over the couple, exhortations and encouragement from Scripture, and (at its best) receiving Holy Communion with family and friends as the first marital act.

The drive-up wedding misses all that. In the process, a sacred communal act gets watered down. It loses that corporate element and makes the wedding entirely about the couple (and the person at the drive-up window, I suppose). It loses the wedding liturgy, which frames the act of marriage within a larger context of prayer and Scripture and communion.

star trek weddingThe utilitarian says the bride and groom are married at the end of the day, regardless of the details. And (s)he’s right. I add, though, that the wedding ceremony is a not-insignificant rite that launches the couple into marriage. And the drive-up married couple has begun their marriage with a sadly watered-down understanding of marriage.

Now marriage doesn’t belong just to the Church. You can get married dressed as Klingons and get a “live long and prosper” benediction from your officiant, Spock. So I’m not going to fight against its watering down. That’s outside my purview (except for Christian weddings, which I hope we’ll keep sacred).

But I’m alarmed at the ways I see Christian leaders watering down the rites of the Church, in the name of outreach.

A popular youth ministry speaker used to speak with great passion about sharing the gospel with teenagers. He spoke with equal disdain for people who questioned the appropriateness of some of his tactics. I could nearly imagine him saying, “We used the communion elements for a food fight in the sanctuary, then a teenager gave his life to Christ… And would you know that our church council scolded me rather than throwing a party?!?”

He never said that––but he wasn’t far from it.

I commend that speaker for his passion for youth to know Christ. But I was somewhere between frustrated and appalled by his disregard for anything sacred. Yes, he was bringing teenagers into the great Body of Christ. But he was desecrating the things of the Body in the process.

[My disclaimer: some church rules are just silly. And we can get so worked-up over our “nice things” that we find no place for certain people in our buildings because they might get the carpet dirty. We need to re-examine our priorities in these cases.]

AshestoGo4Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and I’ve seen several news articles and Facebook mentions about “ashes to go,” “drive-thru ashings,” and “ashes on the street.” I commend the people who did those things. They’re being creative, thinking about how to reach the “person on the street,” and surely starting some good conversations. Good people, good intentions, probably some good results.

But I wish they hadn’t done what they did. I commend them for a well-intended act, but I disapprove of the act itself.

When I shared that with a friend, he responded, “It would be great if uninterested people would come sit in a service for their first time but it isn’t reality. I guarantee offering ashes and prayer at a mall planted seeds in hearts that a service invite might not have and possibly opened a door to further conversation with people.”

I suspect that a growing number of church leaders are thinking like that today. I commend their desire to reach out, but I wish they didn’t use a drive-up wedding approach to do it.

The rites of the church are beautiful and sacred. I want to share them with the world. But I want to share them as the beautiful and sacred things that they are.

The ashes of Ash Wednesday aren’t just about the individual and the ashes. They’re about a community that comes together in prayer and confession. They’re given context by Scriptures that speak of our mortality and urge us to be reconciled to God. When we do drive-by ashings, we miss all of that.

I don’t doubt that practices like this can spark great new conversations, perhaps even bring new people to faith. Even yet, I wonder if we should be doing them. Can we bring people into the beauty of the Church without watering down its beautiful rites in the process?

We can plant seeds and open conversations by handing out wafers and juice at a mall, or doing baptisms in the mall fountain. Still, we might ask whether that means it’s the best thing to do. Do the ends justify any means?

Am I discouraging the Church from being “relevant”? I hope not. In their proper context, our most sacred rites are incredibly relevant. If the world won’t participate in the full, sacred rites, though, let’s not give them the drive-up wedding version. Let’s instead find other ways to be relevant to them, while inviting them into the larger life of the Church.

Lust is a thief

casual-sex-formalEvery vice distorts or perverts something good. The tragedy of lust is that it robs us of some of God’s greatest gifts.

God made us for relationships. Deep, intimate, self-giving relationships.

And one of the most intimate human behaviors God has given us is sexual intercourse. By its very designation, sex is intended to be an intercourse––about exchange and relationship.

Lust perverts all of that. Rather than seeking relationship through deep, intimate, mutual giving, lust seeks out its own pleasure. Rather than treating the body and sex as beautiful gifts to be honored and protected, lust treats them as cheap pleasure-delivery devices. “Lust is as irreverent about bodies and sex as it is obsessed with them,” says Rebecca DeYoung in her great little book, Glittering Vices.[note]p. 174. I read Glittering Vices just before writing this series, and I’m deeply indebted to it throughout. I’m sure most of this post could be a footnote to ideas that DeYoung’s book put in my head. I recommend you pick it up.[/note]

How lust is robbing us today

Casual sex, casual nudity, and pornography are eroding our respect for the body and sex. They’re training us to separate two things that God created to go together––intimate relationship and the intimate giving of our bodies. In short, these are training us to replace the deep joy of self-giving relationship with the cheap thrills that lust provides.

One research report after another verifies pornography’s devastating effects on its users’ social relationships and actual sex lives.

In a sexual relationship, we fully give our bodies to another person. When that happens outside the bounds of a marital relationship––a full commitment and joining together of two persons’ lives––we do something with our bodies that we haven’t yet done with our lives. The commitments of our bodies and our lives are out of sync. I suspect this confusion of commitments has contributed to increasing divorce rates. Take a look at this 10-minute video, “The Economics of Sex.” As sex has become easier (as the video puts it, in greater supply), the number of committed relationships has decreased.

Relationships built on lust, whether casual sex or the porn industry, rely on the premise that no one is getting hurt––that these are relationships involving consenting adults. But that notion is fiction. It denies the relation of our bodies to our minds and souls. When you involve your body in something intended for deep intimacy, your mind and soul can’t help but be effected.

Some self-examination and practices

I’m usually quick to absolve myself from most vices when I look at them in their narrowest terms. Once I start to look at the larger concepts, though, I often find those vices lurking within me more than I had expected. Some rigorous self-examination has been good for me. I hope it might be for you, too.

Our goal here isn’t to feel guilty. Our goal is to identify these vices’ symptoms or catalysts in our lives, then to begin pulling them up like weeds at the root. That will always require God’s grace and will most likely require some dedicated practices on our own part.

In the next week, will you examine yourself for signs of lust? Are there any ways that you’re treating others’ bodies or your own with less reverence and modesty than they deserve?

Two practices:

1 – If lust is really an attack against intimate relationships of mutual-giving, one of the best ways to fight back is to invest in good, mutually-supporting friendships.

Rebecca DeYoung captures this well: “The best advice, then, for resisting lust is not to get an Internet filter (although you should do that too!), but to have good friends. If we have genuine friendships in which we learn to give and receive love in a healthy and satisfying way, we will be less inclined to wander off looking for sham substitutes and quick fixes. Good friendships teach us how to respect one another, to offer appropriate physical affection, to appreciate and care for others without looking for something in return, to trust one another. Someone who knows what real love looks like, whether in a sexual relationship or not, is a person who is less tempted to find lustful pleasures a tempting option.”[note]Glittering Vices, p. 178[/note]

One further question for friendships: Where can you share openly with someone and receive accountability? Not just about lust, but about life. Before Lent is over, can you find a consistent place for openness and accountability? Look for a person or community who will ask you direct-enough questions about good and evil in your life, who will encourage and pray for you and share openly with you, as well.

2 – Examine what you’re consuming. I’ll be specific and direct for a moment here. I’ve been dismayed by the number of devout Christians––even Christian pastors––whom I’ve seen talking about The Wolf of Wall Street. One website describes a few scenes from that movie (out of many similar ones) in matter-of-fact terms [a warning, these are rather graphic]:

“A man masturbates while looking at a woman in the middle of a crowded party (we see his erect penis).”

“A man is shown thrusting into a woman from behind while she performs oral sex on another man (we see her bare breasts and side of her buttock). A man thrusts on a woman while kissing another woman. Three fully nude women (bare breasts, abdomens, buttocks, genital areas are shown) kiss and caress a man lying on a table while a crowd watching chants.”

These depictions dishonor everything about the body and sex. Rather than treating certain parts of our bodies with special modesty, they display them to the whole world. Far from an intimate act of self-giving, sex is a public act that the movie viewers are invited to watch.

If you’re consuming pornographic images like this, and you don’t believe that they’re deforming your value of the body and sexuality, I think you’re kidding yourself. You can’t have a high regard for the intimacy of human sexuality when you sit in a public theater and watch people have sex and display their nudity for public viewing. Might we consider the mere behavior of watching things like this as lustful––a use and abuse of others’ sexuality for your own entertainment? As I’ve said before, I don’t know where the line is on some things like this, but I’m certain this is well past it. If you choose to stop consuming things like this, it might mean you don’t get to see every Oscar nominee. It might mean you miss a great opportunity for cultural engagement and critique. From the earliest days of the Church, Christians self-excluded from some of the culture’s most popular activities. Why shouldn’t we expect a need to do the same today––for the sake of our souls and our witness?

You were made for deep love and intimate relationship. The vice of lust seeks to rob those from you by turning your attention to shallow and selfish bodily thrills. May God fill us all with his self-giving love and free us from lust’s selfish deceit.

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