Gluttony has become a popular world-wide sport. Like chocolate, gluttony appeals to the pleasure centers of the brain. Unlike chocolate in moderation, gluttony knows no moderation and is deadly.
TV producers at the Food Network have latched onto our craving for gluttony. You know the shows: Some slick host roams the country for mounds of meat only a Boa constrictor with an unhinged jaw could swallow. Other hosts sit in competition for pounds of payload designed to inflate the stomach to the size of their star-struck egos. As a society, we are fascinated with overindulgence. For example, in Buñol, Spain, an annual food-fight festival, La Tomatina, is a tomato-throwing contest in which tens of metric tons of over-ripe tomatoes are wasted in a single hour simply to entertain tourists.
Gluttony Is More Than Overeating
Gluttony is more than overeating. The real sin lies, not in the food we consume, but in the things we over-desire. When our wants vastly outstrip our needs, we are guilty of the sin of gluttony. In 590 A.D., Pope Gregory I revised and canonized the Seven Deadly Sins from a work by a 4th Century monk, Evagrius Ponticus. In fact, this monk listed the sins in eight major categories, not as evil actions, but as evil thoughts (“Seven deadly sins,” Wikipedia, 2010). Gluttony is the seventh sin, but not the least among its pernicious rivals.
Gluttony of thought–avarice of desire–is the cousin to pride and the twin fountain of selfishness. We have only to look a short distance in our decade for the signs of gluttony:
1. Dress and grooming that murder modesty by screaming for the natural man’s attention;
2. Credit-card mania drunk with the elixir of the shopping spree, but hung-over with the headache of debt;
3. Restaurant plates the size of steering wheels designed to feed the race to an early grave;
4. TV commercials twice as loud as the programming, as if gluttony of volume could substitute for content.
Self-Control
Gluttony of the stomach is a reflection of gluttony of the mind. Alma warned that we will be judged by our words, works and thoughts. (Alma 12:14; see also Mosiah 4:30). The Savior set the example of self-control over mind and body when He fasted for forty days in the wilderness. (Matt. 4:1-2). There, He withstood Satan’s temptations by emphatically rejecting the appeal to the natural appetite. Said the Lord, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matt. 4:10). Thirty years earlier, the Savior’s mother also sequestered herself from the world for forty days before presenting the Christ child in the temple. In following the Jewish custom, Mary accomplished the “days of her purification” (Luke 2:22) as a symbol of rejecting the natural woman for the sanctity of the spiritual.
In like manner, each dedicated disciple of Jesus can conquer the natural appetite. An important but little understood key to self-control is the revelation on keeping the Sabbath day holy: “…only let thy food be prepared with singleness of heart that thy fasting may be perfect…” (D&C 59:13). It is “singleness of heart” that allows us to give perfect thanks and to eat in moderation. Moreover, singleness of heart allows our natural appetite to yield to the focus on God and neighbor. (D&C 82:19). By serving others and focusing on God, we purify our thoughts so that gluttonous desires give way to self-control and selfless behavior.
Zorro
As a young boy, I longed to be Zorro, the swashbuckling hero of Spanish-California legend. Donning the black mask, cap and cape, I vanquished my friends with a slashing plastic sword tipped with colored chalk. When the neighbors angrily decried the “Z’s” in their sidewalks and doorposts, my mother forced me to scrub out the graffiti I’d created. Perhaps emulation is the sincerest form of flattery, but like most childhood fantasies, my Zorro persona was short lived. While I learned to “put away childish things” (1 Cor. 13:11), I also learned a valuable lesson about gluttony.
The More We Get, The More We Desire
The more chalk-graffiti I made, the more I wanted to make to pepper the neighborhood. Overeating and overindulging the senses are no different. After all, eating is pleasurable and life sustaining. Certain diversions, while not life sustaining, are pleasurable. When indulged to excess, they become nooses of addiction that strangle self-control. We are the self-governor of our wants, the captain of our appetites. If there were a banner for the natural man, it would read: The more we get, the more we desire.
Gluttony, greed, unbridled desire: these are the destructive ingredients in the soup of selfishness. Fasting and prayer, service and focus on God are all vital stepping stones on our path to perfection. May we reject gluttony of appetite and thought as we conquer the natural man–one bittersweet morsel at a time.
