MWUTT 54: Gluttony - When Appetite Becomes Your Master

Gluttony rarely feels like slavery. It feels like comfort after a hard day, a reward you earned, or simply the freedom to eat whatever you want. But scripture says people are slaves to whatever has mastered them. So how can a Christian enjoy food as a gift from God without letting appetite become his God? And how can you tell when that line has already been crossed? Welcome to Men Who Understood the Times. Sam, what is the sin of gluttony, and then what does God say about it?

Well, to the best of my understanding here, gluttony is not simply eating too much food. It is eating too much food to escape something. I think whether that is escaping discomfort or whether you're chasing reward, whether you're using that as a coping mechanism to deal with stress or anxiety or loneliness, it is when a good thing, like food that is just meant to nourish us and maybe taste good, especially as the holidays are coming up here, we're gonna- we're gonna taste good food on Thanksgiving and Christmas. When that good food turns into a coping mechanism, a controlling thing, that is when the danger of gluttony creeps in. And I think the danger of it specifically is how normalized that it, it has become. I-- Scripture talks about how even, I mean, this has been around forever, but, like, the definition that, um, Paul gives in, in Philippians is chapter three when he talks about how food has become their god. Their stomach has become their god. They have become controlled by their cravings and their urges. They didn't have bags of potato chips back then, but now we're, uh, we're even more disadvantaged because we have all these yummy foods. And so that, in a nutshell, is, is my definition of what gluttony is. It's a craving that you act on. It's not, it's not necessarily just eating more food than, than you normally would.

Well, yeah. And then, you know, when you think of gluttony, I mean, compare it to some movies. So you think of Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars or Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or Templeton the rat in Charlotte's Web. And I understand that those are classic movie references, and you th- you two guys are so young, you may not get them, so you have to look them up, but they're classics.

I'm not that young. I, I got all of those.

Okay.

Hey, I, I, I knew those.

All right. Oh, good. Uh, so Zach, what, what do you have to say about the definition of the sin of gluttony and then build on what Sam already said on what does God have to say about this sin?