Gluttony
When most people hear the word “gluttony,” they define it as overeating. Very often, this is associated in people’s minds with a person’s weight, such that we may assume that people who are overweight are guilty of gluttony, while people who are not overweight are not guilty of it. However, this is an overly narrow, distorted understanding of gluttony. The sin of gluttony can be expressed in overeating. However, that is just one way in which this sin can manifest itself. And anyone can be guilty of gluttony, regardless of their eating habits or body size, which can be affected by many factors besides diet.
Gluttony is an excessive indulgence in something pleasurable. This can be any bodily pleasure, such as eating, drinking, sex (even with one’s spouse) or relaxation. But gluttony is not restricted to such bodily pleasures. It can be expressed just as much with more “refined,” mental or spiritual pleasures such as various forms of entertainment.
Christianity certainly does not teach that there is anything wrong with pleasure, bodily or otherwise. Anyone who thinks that ascetic self-denial and avoidance of pleasure is good and meritorious for its own sake has a distorted theology. God wants us to enjoy His good creation, and that includes enjoying food, drink, sex, and other pleasures. There is nothing wrong with loving these things per se.
However, in our Fallen state, it is very easy for us to overindulge in these pleasures. As a result, our loves become disordered. We become overly attached to things that give us pleasure, and our love for them distracts us from showing love to God and our neighbor. When this happens, we are guilty of the sin of gluttony.
Envy
Envy is “sorrow for another man’s good.”[1]St. Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologica, Volume II. Translated by Father Laurence Shapcote. Great Books of the Western World, Volume 18. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1990), page 567. It is closely related to the sin of pride. Pride is primarily about our attitude towards God; it consists in an individual viewing reality as if they, rather than God, are the center of the universe. As a result of this, we love ourselves more than our neighbors, and act in self-centered ways. Envy can be understood as at root being caused by the sin of pride, but it is directed specifically towards our fellow human beings, and has its own unique, distinctive character.
Pride makes us think we are better than other people and seek our own good even at the expense of others. Envy takes this prideful posture a step further, making us upset and sorrowful when good things happen to other people, even when this does not necessarily negatively impact us. Our desire to see ourselves at the center of the universe makes us react negatively to seeing others having more than we do or being more successful than we are, since we feel that we are the ones who “deserve” to be in that position.
In our Fallen state, feelings of envy crop up again and again when we see others succeed or have good things. Why? There is really nothing about another person possessing good things or having good things happen to them that negatively impacts us. There thus seems to be an irrational aspect to the sin of envy. Yet this does not stop it from existing in every human society and culture.
If we loved our fellow human beings, we would be happy when we see good things happen to them. In contrast, envy causes us to have the exact opposite attitude, and be unhappy when we see good things happen to others. Envy is thus radically contradictory to love, and is a deadly sin.
Consumerism and Contentment
It does not take much looking around at our culture, especially its advertisements, for one to observe widespread appeals to gluttony and envy. We live in a consumer culture. Businesses become wealthy by influencing us to consume more and more of their goods and services. They attempt to influence us to do this through advertising, which seeks to psychologically manipulate us into wanting things that we do not need. The most effective way to do this is to abandon rational persuasion and appeal to our base, subconscious desires and feelings.
Gluttony and envy can both be very powerful motivators of action. For this reason, they are two of the feelings and desires that our consumer culture attempts to instill in us and to exploit in order to benefit the economic power structures of our society. The more we consume, the more we give to those selling the goods and services we are consuming. Therefore, our consumer culture has a vested interest in getting us to be gluttonous, consuming more and more things that give us pleasure, even though it is an excessive amount, and even though it will never make us truly happy.
In spite of its irrational nature, envy can be a very powerful motivator of human action. Our consumer culture consistently attempts to get us to be envious of people who possess luxuries that we do not have, so that we will be motivated to spend money on these luxuries. Sometimes, these appeals to envy are made explicitly, but most of the time they are made implicitly, as we are promised that our conspicuous consumption of wealth will give us an equal or greater status than other people of whom we feel envious.
It is a curious fact that Christians so often object to sexually explicit content in advertisements and other media that appeal to the sin of lust, but are almost always silent about advertisements that appeal to greed, gluttony, and envy, which are equally serious sins. Perhaps this is because Christians themselves have become all too tolerant and accepting of these other sins. America, which is supposedly a majority Christian country, is by far one of the worst offenders for consuming far more than its share of resources, far more than would be sustainable if every human on the planet consumed as much as the average American.[2] … Continue reading
Christians need to avoid the sins of gluttony and envy, not only because these are personal sins that prevent us as individuals from loving God, but also because of our responsibility to care for God’s creation. In contrast to the sin of gluttony, Christians must practice contentment and self-control, refusing to overindulge in their desires. One of the ways we can do this is through the radically counter-cultural spiritual practice of fasting, by which we train ourselves to reduce our attachments to lesser goods and to reorient our priorities towards God. In contrast to the sin of gluttony, Christians must practice contentment and love. They must find their identity in Christ rather than through comparison with other people, and avoid being sorrowful at the good of others. Christians must do this for the sake of their own souls, for the sake of their fellow human beings, and for the sake of the rest of God’s creation.
Notes
| ↑1 | St. Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologica, Volume II. Translated by Father Laurence Shapcote. Great Books of the Western World, Volume 18. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1990), page 567. |
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| ↑2 | https://internationalbusinessguide.org/hungry-planet/#:~:text=U.S.&text=FACT%3A%20Americans%20constitute%205%25%20of,24%25%20of%20the%20world’s%20energy.&text=Qatar%3A%20The%20worst%20offenders%3A%20the,to%20support%20the%20global%20population. |