WHAT IS GLUTTONY?
Photo from Unsplash.
Imagine, if you will, driving on a dirt road. A dirt road that has seen its fair share of traffic. Over time, ruts have been left in the road where the tires of previous cars have passed. The ruts may have started out small, but now are deep channels that your tires seem almost drawn to. Because of this, the ruts make it easy for you to stay in the same portion of the road as all those prior cars. At times, it’s almost like the car can steer itself because it’s so much easier to keep rolling in the ruts that have been worn into the road than to get out of them. The road almost seems to help funnel you to where you’re supposed to go. What’s more, the ruts give the road greater definition. You’re more aware of where the road is and what the road is by virtue of those ruts that have been worn into it.
These ruts are for the road a bit like habits are for us as people. Habits are a huge part of our lives. They are the things that we have done so frequently that we do them more or less automatically. They are stored so deeply that they no longer require conscious thought because our so-called “reptile brain” takes over. Think about it: How often, when you’re brushing your teeth, do you have to think consciously about each step of the process? Just like the ruts, our habits come to define us as people, both in our own eyes and in the eyes of other people. We are what we habitually do. If we consistently give to anyone we encounter in need, we come to be known as generous people. If, on the other hand, we make a habit of stealing from people, we come to be known as thieves.
When we talk about habits in relation to our faith, what we’re really talking about are virtues and vices. Good deeds and sins are individual positive or negative actions, but virtues are patterns of positive behavior, and vices are patterns of negative behavior. Just like the ruts in the road, virtues and vices help us navigate our lives, and even come to define us. They form a big part of our self-image, and they are the basis of the value judgments that other people form about us.
The earliest framework for thinking seriously about virtues, and the most common one in Christianity, comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (though its popularity is also no doubt due to the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas’s later use of Aristotle’s work). Aristotle defined virtue as the midpoint between two extremes of deficiency or excess. (1) At first glance, it might seem strange to think of virtue as a middle ground between extremes, given that we sometimes think virtue is just an abundance of some good quality. The easiest example to understand this framework might be the virtue of courage. Courage, when you think about it, is in between foolhardiness (the habit of taking fear too lightly) and cowardice (the habit of taking fear too seriously). And if virtue is the mean between extremes, then the vices are usually one or both extremes.
All this brings us, finally, to gluttony itself. While gluttony is often referred to as a sin, it is probably more accurate to think of it as a vice. Gluttony is not simply a single negative action or unrestrained impulse. It is a pattern of behavior formed when negative actions or unrestrained impulses become habitual. Because of the force of habit, it is a pattern that, once formed, becomes hard to escape. Gluttony is also often called a deadly sin, though the term “capital vice,” from the Latin capitus, meaning “head,” might be more helpful. The vice of gluttony lies at the head of many other sins that it can lead you into. It might also be helpful to talk about gluttony in relation to the virtue it is classically considered in opposition to: temperance. Temperance is perhaps the epitome of the classical understanding of virtue. Temperance, sometimes known as moderation, is quite literally the mean between two extremes. It means, at its most simple, not giving in too much or too little.
We often think of gluttony as mere overindulgence, especially regarding food. This, though, is an extremely narrow definition of the vice of gluttony, and one that often leads us to a false sense of security that we have avoided it. It can also easily lead to demonization and a sense of superiority toward others. If we think of gluttony as only overeating, it’s easy to think we aren’t gluttonous while still being able to point at some people who we think are. But of course, gluttony is much more than mere overeating. It is what Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung in her book Glittering Vices calls a “routine quest for gratification,” (2) or what we confess in the Ash Wednesday liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer 1979 as “[o]ur intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts.” (3) Gluttony is really any excess in indulgence or consumption, particularly regarding physical pleasures. For many of us, gluttony is the vice of choice that we never actually chose, but simply fell into because pleasure is so… well, pleasurable. Whenever we engage in regular gratification or overconsumption, we are veering toward the vice of gluttony.
That is what makes gluttony so insidious: We can be gluttonous towards literally anything that brings us physical comfort. And we like physical comfort! Physical comfort is a good and necessary thing! But that doesn’t mean that every means of pursuing it is inherently good, or even neutral. It is possible to engage and indulge our appetites in harmful, unhealthy, and distorted ways. It may not even surprise you, by this point, to hear that people have thought through all the different harmful or distorted ways that we can indulge our appetites. There is even a helpful acronym: FRESH. We can indulge too fastidiously, too ravenously, too excessively, too sumptuously, or too hastily. (4) These are all sins of a type of excess, but four out of the five are much more complicated than simply too much of a certain pleasure. They have more to do with the way that we pursue that pleasure, or our attitude toward the pursuit of pleasure. We can be too fastidious, or excessively picky about the details, never satisfied unless things are perfect. We can be too ravenous, or consume without ever being satisfied. Indulging too excessively is perhaps what we often think of as gluttony, the pattern of consumption or indulgence that goes beyond reasonable limits. Consuming too hastily means refusing to savor the pleasure. Or we can indulge too sumptuously, or seek only those things which will provide the maximal amount of pleasure (or the maximal amount of status if we can be seen to consume it). Most of these are much harder patterns of consumption to identify than the question of how much is too much, and even that question is often much harder to answer than we are willing to admit.
So what is it, you might be wondering, about these patterns or habits of consumption that are so harmful? Can it really be as bad to be picky as it is to overindulge or overconsume?
For one thing, these gluttonous behaviors are harmful to us. We hurt ourselves by overindulging, because of the way that our brains work. There is a necessary chemical in our brains called dopamine that plays a number of roles, but most important for our purposes is that it helps us to experience pleasure. More specifically, it makes us feel a sense of accomplishment or reward from a job well done. When we indulge in something we find physically pleasurable, it is dopamine that helps give us a sense of enjoyment. But the sensation of pleasure that dopamine helps us feel is subject to diminishing returns. The more we engage in a similar behavior that we find rewarding or pleasurable, the less pleasure we gain from it over time. And what’s more, the more we engage in that same behavior, the less pleasure we gain from everything else over time, too. Seeking pleasure too much actually makes us resistant to the effects of dopamine, so that we are less satisfied overall. And the only way to get back to deriving the same, original amount of pleasure from pleasurable things is by abstaining from them for a time. Gluttony, in other words, robs us of the pleasure that good things are intended to bring us. It’s only by embracing temperance that we’re able to really enjoy them as they’re meant to be enjoyed.
Second, these patterns of unhealthy engagement of our appetites are harmful to others. Overconsumption is a massive problem facing the world today. Our patterns of consuming more than we need are at the root of the crises of deforestation, excessive generation of trash and waste, an increase in threatened animal species, increasing levels of air and water pollution, diminishing natural resource reserves, and more. There are serious consequences to our pursuit of pleasure. Many of those most prone to overconsumption are mostly insulated from those consequences. It is inevitably those who are poorest and most disadvantaged to begin with who feel the most immediate effects. If we fall into the vice of gluttony, our consumption becomes an end that we pursue rather than a means for joy. We start to consume without thinking of the consequences, and only accelerate the pace at which we strip the planet of natural resources.
What’s more, when we pursue our own pleasure as our highest goal, we are incapable of loving our neighbor the way that God intended. Our own appetites and consumption are meant to be tempered by consideration for the needs of others. As St. Basil said, “[t]he bread you are holding back is for the hungry, the clothes you keep put away are for the naked, the shoes that are rotting away with disuse are for those who have none, the silver you keep buried in the earth is for the needy. You are thus guilty of injustice toward as many as you might have aided, and did not.” (5) If we focus too narrowly on our pleasure, we wrong our neighbors by robbing them not only of sources of enjoyment, but often of basic needs.
Lastly, and most importantly, the pattern of unhealthy consumption and indulgence that we call gluttony gets in the way of our relationship with God. While self-denial is not the most popular of spiritual disciplines, we cannot ignore the fact that Jesus quite literally tells us to deny ourselves and pick up our cross and follow him. (6) The Second Letter to Timothy advises him to avoid “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power.” (7) You could find a worse definition for the word translated “flesh” in the Letter to the Romans than overindulgence or an excessive pursuit of pleasure. It’s there that we’re told, “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law.” (8) And of course, self-control is given as one of the fruits of the spirit in the Letter to the Galatians. (9) Just like we can’t serve God and mammon, (10) we can’t serve God and our own pursuit of pleasure. Ultimately, a decision must be made.
The patterns that we establish are what will come to define us. If we develop a pattern of overconsuming or overindulging, eventually our pursuit of pleasure will become our primary motivation. We will become gluttons: people who are increasingly hard to satisfy, who are increasingly callous towards others, and who are increasingly disconnected from God.
For more on Aristotle’s framework of virtue, see his Nicomachean Ethics, with the definition and further exploration of virtue found in Book Two. For Thomas’s discussion of virtue is found in the Summa Theologica, I-II, beginning at Question 39
Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies (Grand Rapids, Mich: Brazos Press, 2009), 164.
Episcopal Church, The Book Of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David According to the Use of the Episcopal Church (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 268.
DeYoung, Glittering Vices, 166. (end note, p. 260 credits W. Jay Wood)
St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice, trans. C. Paul Schroeder (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2009), 70.
Luke 9:23-24 (NRSV)
2 Timothy 3:4-5 (NRSV)
Romans 8:7 (NRSV)
Galatians 5:22-23 (NRSV)
Matthew 6:24 (NRSV)
