GLUTTONY
Sin: I think we can all benefit from thinking about sin, even if we don't believe in a supreme being, even if we don't accept notions of divine punishment, of heaven and hell. The concept of sin is usually thought to be a religious concept, the deliberate violation of the will of God. I want to think of sin without religious references, with regard to a broader definition. I want to examine sin in the sense of personal failure, of the harm we can do to ourselves. In this sense, sin will still include violation of rules but not necessarily rules imposed by religion. I want to examine sin as violation of rules of good conduct, violation of rules which are designed to make our lives better. Of course sin will often include harm to others but I urge that the harm we do to others by our conduct is usually exceeded by the harm we do to ourselves.
I recently revisited some books about the seven deadly sins, especially Henry Fairlie's The Seven Deadly Sins Today. We all know the seven deadly sins: If not religious, we know the popular songs or pop groups referring to the deadly sins. The seven deadly sins are pride, avarice, luxury, envy, appetite, anger and sloth. The list of seven deadly sins is a good list of things to avoid if we want to be happier and lead better lives. We don't need to be religious to see the value in not hurting ourselves and others. So I've decided occasionally to write about these sins and also, in contrast, about the classic virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, faith, hope and love.
Gluttony, or appetite as some writers call it, is the most difficult sin for me to consider, because I greatly fear falling prey to it. Gluttony is, to put it simply, the sin of pleasureless over-eating, of appetite to eat simply for the sake of eating, of appetite which transcends the food. Fairlie points out that a glutton doesn't enjoy food, is likely disinterested in food as such, but is only interested in eating, in over-consuming. In this way, we can see that gluttony is related to envy and luxury.
Please note that I'm not talking about the desire to satisfy real hunger or the emotional problems we often see related to eating and I'm not talking about obesity and other problems which may follow over-eating. I'm talking about over-eating as a goal, as a way of showing that one is capable of it. Perhaps at a time or place of scarcity of food or misallocation of food one could understand the impulse, while still condemning it. But the sin seems most common where food is plentiful, where no one needs to fear starvation.
Dorothy Sayers, one of my favorite mystery writers, wrote in war-time England that gluttony can include over-consumption of all sorts of things, that desire which transcends need is also a sin. (The Other Deadly Sins) She feared that encouragement of over-consumption threatened society because it creates a vicious circle of wants and dissatisfaction. To the glutton, there is never enough.
I think we can see that gluttony is not to be confused with healthy appetites. It's not a sin to enjoy food, or other goods, and occasionally to over-consume. It's only when the appetites become unhealthy, when the pursuit of eating or consuming eliminates the enjoyment that we need to worry. So enjoy the food you eat and the other things you consume. As long as you do, you will not be guilty of the sin of gluttony.
10-9-00
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