The Untouchable Topic

The Public Square
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I agree with Matthew. @John Maybe your church’s sins and struggles are different than where I’m from (or myabe I’m missing the point altogether), but in my church, we’ve had to work through the opposite side of the spectrum more than the gluttony side.

We’ve had families judge other families for what they allow their kids to eat, drink. What they put into their own body. We’ve actually had to work more on helping others understand that Jesus declared all foods clean so don’t judge your brother when he shows up with McDonald’s or is drinking coke.

I understand that’s not your issue, but just sharing my reality. If I’m understanding correctly, you’re talking about the over drinking of coke, overeating of McDonalds, etc. I’m sure it’s brushed off in many churches just like many other sins are brushed off in many churches today. But gluttony is a more difficult sin to pin down if I’m thinking correctly. If a man lust after a woman he sees at the store, no gray area…sin. If a man drinks two cokes for lunch…well…it could be sin to some and could be just fine for others.

Again though, I assume you’ll feel like I’m missing point because you’re talking about the “consuming multiple times one’s daily caloric expenditure…” And you may be right that some brush that off…I don’t feel like we have in our church…but I can imagine that in some churches that it’s easier to talk ambiguously about pride than gluttony because everyone is against pride from a high level until we’re talking about their own pride…but if you talk about gluttony the overweight people feel uncomfortable and might cause problems and complain…and if you don’t want to deal with people and their sins you’d probably steer clear of that sin. all that to say, I just haven’t found that to be the case with our church.

Last thing…and maybe you’ll agree…everyone has a myriad of sins. If I’m counseling a couple that has marriage sins, and parenting sins, sexual sins, and financial sins, and gluttony sins, and hatred of authority, and lack of love for church, and effeminacy issues, etc…gluttony isn’t going to be at the top of that list in our discussion…you (plural) can’t fix everything and so you help where the need is the greatest…so sometimes not talking about gluttony at that point in time is done out of love for greater needs.

I’m glad you don’t want to overlook the sin, thanks for the reminder brother. Keep up the good work.

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Lol. I seriously hope not. At any rate, I hope my straightforward logical analogy helped tip the balance the other way. I don’t think logical analogies are allowed in post-modernism. :slight_smile:

I do think gluttony is a widespread problem, but I’d probably just categorize it under a broader umbrella problem that we have: luxury.

Luxury (in its full meaning, not the slightly simplified form we use it today) used to be widely condemned, but it is unaddressed today. It is similarly hard to figure out where the line is. We live in a wealthy nation. It’s a blessing, including the luxuries that come with it. The same with plentiful food. We should be thankful for it, but not self-indulgent.

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And would it not be accurate to say that the way most of the Christians I described offend in the area of luxury is through pickiness and haughtiness disguised as high standards and concern for the “temple of the Lord”?

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This is well articulated Joel, thank you. I feel this is definitely the case. Ideally, every Christian would be made to sweat a little over the coarse of a year’s sermons and be the subject of the “non-glance” from the rest of the congregation (by which I mean, one knows who the pastor is preaching directly to with that point, so don’t glance down the pew at them…)

I fear I am coming off as being harder on those who struggle with this issue than the myriad of other sins that beleaguer the church, but that is only due to inarticulateness on my part (and a sense of humor that often gets me in trouble) I think I agree with everything that has been said by others in this thread. I simply think that because this particular sin is perhaps easier to spot, it often gets overlooked for fear of offence.

Of course, if one’s eyes are open, the evidence of sin is everywhere. One need simply look in the church parking lot to spot pride, Facebook pages to spot vanity, etc.

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No doubt those offenses can be couched in such terms.

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Matthew,

It wasn’t hard for me to do this. My Facebook friends list is modest in comparison to many others’ (about 320), and a third of them are women, and a third of those are the demographic you describe. So - what then? Maybe 30 to 35.

Thinking now of posts about food - yes, they come predominantly these women. But to my memory, every one of these are highlighting some foodstuff they’ve prepared or discovered which they are holding out to their friends’ attention, because it’s so interesting, delightful, beautiful, amazing, delicious, comforting, etc. etc.

I don’t remember a single post that has any nutritionally-Pharisaical qualities! Instead, they all amount to a rejoicing in the goodness of the foodstuff they’re holding out to their friends to observe.

I have run across the kind of post you’re talking about - but not in the Facebook posts of my friends on FB. Maybe I ought to get out more? I really don’t want to add these kinds of people to my FB friends list! But, what’s curious to me is this - without intending to exclude such women, none of them are among my friends list! I wonder why?

FWIW, I’m an old Marine Corps cook. For all of my 39 years of marriage, I’ve done about half of the cooking (sometimes more during various seasons of marriage). My wife heartily agrees that I am the chef of the house, who has easily done 90 percent of the hospitality cooking or specialty cooking in our marriage.

So, food, its preparation, and its presentation have always had a keen interest for me. I do notice those food posts when they pop up in my FB news feed, and I simply don’t see the ones you’re referring to.

Any idea why they might occur frequently in yours, and so infrequently (nay! never!) in mine?

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Not to hijack the thread, but whenever I hear the term “luxury” I invariably think of this sketch - The Four Yorkshiremen. Not that it’s off topic completely.

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This is the line of reasoning that the foodie mamas on social media always strike from. Don’t you know your body is the temple of the living God? Don’t you know it’s holy and needs to be protected and nourished and not abused? Taking this line through to its conclusion, all we become is idolaters of the body. They neglect their children and their husbands in favor of endless hours of jogging, yoga (and Starbucks – don’t forget the obligatory Starbucks cup in your social media posts).

Let us not forget that our Lord’s body was beaten, bloodied, and crucified. Don’t forget that Paul suffered nakedness and beatings and stonings. These men did not regard their bodies as holy articles to be preserved and exalted, but rather as vessels to be used in obedience.

A couple at our previous church years ago moved to Tanzania as missionaries. They had 5 children of varying ages. I remember the mother contending with feelings of guilt concerning the quality of the food, clothing, and medical care that she would be subjecting her family to by leaving the US. Where did these feelings originate? The kinds of peer pressure that Matthew is referring to. We’ve made idols of our bodies to the point that missionaries feel guilty for denying their families the luxuries of organic produce.

Paul’s point concerning our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit was not that our lives are supposed to become centered on the preservation of our flesh.

By the way, you know what else damages the body? That cell phone in your pocket. The radiation bouncing through your body all day long. Your WiFi. The blue light from your computer screen. If you’re going to go tinfoil hat about estrogen in our water supply, then carry your thought through to conclusion and go full tinfoil hat! If life is about preserving your body, you have a lot of work to do, John.

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Probably worth noting that the Apostle says that ONLY sexual immorality defiles the Temple of the Holy Spirit which is our body. ALL OTHER sins a person commits are outside the body. I Cor 6:18.

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While certainly a possible outcome, that is not the inevitable conclusion one must draw. Of course, the context of the verse is regarding sexual sin, and to extrapolate too far out of that context would be wrong. But surely you see how the self-abuse of one’s body (not external abuse, as is the case of Christ and the Apostles) can lead to the diminishing effectiveness in our ability to do Kingdom work, no?

As for your Tanzanian friends, I suspect the diet they are eating is actually much healthier than the processed garbage that is so abundant state side.

Done my friend!

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Definitely, yes. But let’s be sure that’s where the focus is then – effectiveness for the kingdom; not because the body itself is to be preserved as a holy object.

Where disregard for my body is lamentable for me is not when I look in the mirror and see puffy cheeks, or have to move up a belt notch when I get dressed in the morning. It’s when I find myself lacking the physical strength needed to serve well. It’s when I’ve so neglected “Brother Ass” that he has become a donkey unfit for the labor at hand.

If I am indulging my flesh to the neglect and at the expense of the work for which God has created me, then yes, I have entered into the sin of gluttony. I have made life about the feeding of the flesh, rather than the worship of God.

But to treat Brother Ass as if he’s the one to be worshiped is also sin.

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Kind of a tangent, but I think related. Doug Wilson has written some great blogs on the topic of “foodolatry” in the past. Here’s one I kept hold of:

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Oh, one more thought. You know what else is bad for the body? Childbearing and childbirth. Oh, how we ought to pity the women who have succumbed to the oppressive, patriarchal model of motherhood. Women who have had their flesh rent, and have irreversible stretch marks and weak bladders from giving birth to children.

Do they not know that their body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?

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Very good. This is exactly the logic I was talking about originally. Don’t you know that high fructose corn syrup is bad for you and thus a sin against the Temple of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you know that food dyes are a sin against the Temple? Don’t you know that not getting enough Co-q-10 is a sin against the Temple? Don’t you know that Christian holiness requires you to pay attention to every ingredient (as well as the latest “research”) with every bite you eat? My family is oppressed by this constantly.

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Awesome. lol

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36

To me this misses what the OP is actually trying to address. The fact that people disagree about what constitutes a healthy diet doesn’t mean a healthy diet doesn’t exist. The fact that people are jerks and moralize about about supplements or ingredients they only just learned about doesn’t mean that “health” as a concept doesn’t exist or that all diets, body fat percentages, and physical fitness levels are equally “healthy.” The fact that there is no consensus among middle-class housewives about what a healthy lifestyle looks like shouldn’t cause us to throw up our hands and proclaim that none of it matters.

This reasoning reminds me of the type of reasoning we criticize: “Unless you can give me an exhaustive list of everything effeminate, then effeminacy doesn’t exist/isn’t a sin.” I don’t want to minimize the oppression your family has had at the hands of the food-pharisees, but it seems to me that a lot of the reactions on this thread are against things John hasn’t actually argued. The “post-modernist” feeling, in my estimation, is the feeling of nearly being chucked out the Overton Window for asking a question.

I wonder how much of this has to do with social class and location? Middle class vs poor, urban vs suburban vs rural? I (obviously) don’t know the context of everyone participating in this thread, but the Reformed do skew decidedly middle-class and respectable. We middle class have the luxury of fussing over the new dieting fads and becoming evangelists for the latest snake-oil. But most of the really overweight people I know are poor, not middle-class. They aren’t putting coconut oil in their coffee or worrying about gluten. They’re eating whatever is in the freezer section of Dollar General because that’s what’s available and convenient. They’re drinking 64oz sodas because they’re only $0.99 at Wesco.

I’m not saying this as a condemnation, but as a reality and a consequence of the luxury Joseph rightly pointed out. I don’t think it can or should be reduced down to gluttony, per se. But I think John’s right that something is severely wrong and the church shouldn’t punt on this. I’ve been in those prayer meeting with the sedentary, 80-lbs overweight sister who always wants prayer for healing but takes no practical steps toward health.

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Zak,

You said exactly what I wanted to say about this. Any time you are dealing with sins of degrees, be they effeminacy or gluttony, both antinomianism and legalism become potential problems, and anyone arguing for one side or the other is open to one accusation or the other.

As I believe I’ve heard Tim say in the past, it’s possible to acknowledge a problem without being autistic about solutions. And just because it’s possible to be autistic about solutions doesn’t mean that we can’t acknowledge the problem and look for solutions, even if the solutions need to be pastoral, sometimes in the narrowest sense.

I also strongly agree that the various sins on the gluttony front cut strongly across various distinctions in our culture, with the Pharisaical side bending in the direction of young, female, urban/suburban and middle-upper class. The glutton and drunkard contingent bends older, male, rural and lower-class.

I could write a massive judgmental screed about veganism, for example. Suffice it to say, if you find an old, male, rural, lower-class vegan in America, he is probably unique. Young, female, urban, middle-class vegans, on the other hand, are a multitude.

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Thinking Someone’s thoughts after Him . . . a parable:

The next day, Victoria went up to her quiet-time alcove to pray, about the sixth hour. Then she became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they made ready down in the Bosch-equipped kitchen, she fell into a trance and saw heaven opened and an object like a great organic-cotton 600-thread count sheet bound at the four corners, descending to her and let down to the earth. In it were all kinds of GMO vegetables, and hormone-infused four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts and rodents, clusters of bat jerky, snake fritters, and boiled vulture eggs. And a voice came to her, “Rise, Victoria! pile it high on your plate and eat!”

But Victoria said, “Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything infused with hormones, insecticides, artificial flavors and colors, or any genetically modified organism! Evah!!”

And a voice spoke to her again the second time, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.” This was done three times. And the object was taken up into heaven again.

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Actually, I’m fairly certain not one of them would complain because of their shame. Pastorally, I am often more concerned about morbidly obese women in our church processing their faith through their fat because of the constant shaming of fat in our culture than I am their gluttony. Don’t know if I’ve often met Christian woman who was really heavy who didn’t live in shame for it whereas I don’t know that I’ve ever met a Christian man who was proud or greedy who had any shame over it. Chuckling as I write. Love,

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To me this misses what the OP is actually trying to address. The fact that people disagree about what constitutes a healthy diet doesn’t mean a healthy diet doesn’t exist.

My last post was an aside, but not unrelated. The OP was talking about an “unaddressed problem of obesity among Christian brethren” which is “clearly evident”. To which I and others responded, “Really, there are fat American Christians who don’t feel shame and guilt about eating too much?”

It was a helpful turn in the discussion to focus on gluttony. There are many Christians (fat and thin equally) who are sensual with their eating and need to repent.

But I think many would do well to consider the parade of demons that have been unleashed in the church by a fixation on fad dieting and food scruples. Consider some Scriptures and please bear with a long post.

First, I wrote “demons” just now and by that meant the “teachings of [literal] demons”, who “require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving” (I Tim 4:1-3). Satan loves food laws, because they produce the division that he’s after. How so?

These teachings introduce factions in the church. When potluck day comes, one can find it getting more and more difficult to find something to bring that will satisfy everyone’s particular diet and won’t earn criticism about the ingredients (refined sugar!). Yet “the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17 – consider the whole chapter). It’s not what’s on the plate, but who is around the table.

There are Judaizers who are “upsetting whole families by teaching what they ought not to teach” (Titus 1:11). I have encountered literal Judaizers, who teach that we should avoid foods prohibited by Leviticus (because God wanted Israel to be healthy, of course). I refer to metaphorical Judaizers too. Pork restrictions were God’s idea; how much more should we be careful with man’s commands! Discord is sown in the family when the cook’s tyranny oppresses everyone else, or families cannot eat together because of someone’s pickiness.

Individually - I’m convinced that 1 Tim 4:7 and following fit hand and glove with the beginning of the chapter. When I read Josephus writing about the Essenes, how their scrupulous Torah diet made them look 50 at the age of 90 and how they lived to be 125 I thought, “That’s who Paul was talking about!” And practical experience bears this out. We only have so much time and effort for self-improvement. How much more frequently we know about someone’s pursuit of physical perfection than their pursuit of holiness! Sadly, in time the misplaced emphasis often becomes evident.

Now I wrote all this because I’m convinced the unaddressed danger to the sheep is not too many big gulps, but man’s “little laws”. God subordinates healthiness much lower than “a close second to sexual immorality” (OP). I hope I’ve made it clear that the world is not an innocent and helpful teacher here. From where I sit, these are the things that Christians need to be extremely wary of, much more so than a second piece of pie, which God created to be “received with thanksgiving”.

Don’t get me wrong! There is sin in both ways. People eat too much too and doing so indulge the flesh. But they are not equally dangerous to us. Obesity has been condemned by everyone everywhere. Most of us need to justify ourselves before we enjoy any amount of what the world condemns as “decadent”. But obsessions over eating and healthiness have not been warned against except on page after page of the New Testament.

And as they say these days, “the [world’s] cure is worse than the disease”. Consider Col 2:20-23. “Do not taste” has the “appearance of wisdom”, but is of “no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh”. I would wager that 99 out of a 100 overweight people could give a hearty personal testimony to the truth of these verses. All the dieting, scruples, and obsession with image have a hand in producing obesity and unhealthiness. Laws provoke our rebellious hearts into more rebellion. Only the gospel of Jesus can deliver us from gluttony, Pharisaism, pride, and vanity.

And Jesus can deliver us from destructive habits that destroy our bodies! But when He does so, it doesn’t result in a sudden interest in the ingredients in our food. It doesn’t result in a new energy for counting calories or a sudden taste for arugula. It might not even result in weight loss! When Jesus delivers us from our bondage to food, He puts our appetites in their lawful place. Food loses its ability to comfort and it loses its ability to justify. It takes a far back seat to righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. We realize that our bellies are not our god to be served by indulgence or by asceticism. Jesus is to be served by laying down our lives and bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit. May He pour those out on us!

Maybe I’m arguing with no one and we’re all on the same page. Praise God! It helped me to spend a day reading these Scriptures and typing them out, and hopefully by God’s grace it will be helpful to someone else too.

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