by

Many of you are probably familiar with C.S. Lewisâ€™s Mere Christianity.Â His chapter on â€œSexual Moralityâ€ has some analogies in it that have struck me for some time.Â With your indulgence, I will quote what Lewis has to say then go on to make my point.

Lewis compares our sexual appetite with our appetite for food to show us how disordered the sexual appetite is.Â â€œThe biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body.Â Now if we eat whenever we feel inclined, and just as much as we want, it is quite true most of us will eat too much; but not terrifically too much.Â One man may eat enough for two, but he does not eat enough for ten.Â The appetite goes a little beyond its biological purpose, but not enormously. . . .

â€œOr take it another way.Â You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act â€“ that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage.Â Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?Â . . .

â€œHere is the third point.Â You find very few people who want to eat things that really are not food or to do other things with food instead of eating it.Â In other words, perversions of the food appetite are rare.â€

Lewisâ€™s point is that our food appetite is relatively healthy, but our sexuality is messed up.Â You can read the whole chapter to get Lewisâ€™s valuable insights on sexual morality, but Iâ€™m interested in how the sin of gluttony has changed since Lewis wrote these words in the 1940s.

Letâ€™s look at his claims one by one.Â First, he says that we may eat a little more than we need to, but not enormously more.Â Yet according to Denise Grady of the New York Times (3 August 2010), â€œSlightly more than one in four Americans were obese in 2009, and nine states had obesity rates of at least 30 percent.â€Â These numbers are considered conservative; many researchers put them higher.

Weâ€™ve all heard that food portion sizes have increased in the last decades, with the biggest increase seen at fast-food restaurants.Â In 1977 snacks, for example, were â€œ11.3 percent of average Americansâ€™ energy intake, while by 1996 that figure had climbed to 17.7 percent, which is more than a 50 percent increase.â€Â That wasnâ€™t the only figure that increased, if youâ€™ll excuse the pun.Â This same report from Science Daily, 22 January 2003, also says, â€œAmong people under age 39, pizza and salty snack consumption rose as much as 143 percentâ€ during the same two decades.

People are not just eating a little more than they need to.Â Theyâ€™re eating terrifically, even enormously, more.Â Decades ago, when I was a kid, I donâ€™t remember anyone carrying food or drink around routinely.Â Now people even go into church with a thirty-two ounce vat of coffee, and my college students complain that I wonâ€™t let them eat during a class that lasts only an hour and fifteen minutes.

Next Lewis imagines a strip-tease act for food.Â He assumes that we will laugh at how ridiculous such an idea would be.Â But Paste Magazine.comâ€™s review of â€œThe Ten Best Food Shows of the Decadeâ€ offers this statement with a shrug-of-the-shoulders tone:Â â€œIt says something about America, no doubt, that weâ€™ve reached the point where eating food is not enough â€“ we now must be entertained by it.â€

Look in Wikipedia under â€œFood Reality Television Seriesâ€ and youâ€™ll find 53 links listed.Â They include such classics as â€œThe Naughty Kitchen,â€ featuring the chefâ€™s Sexy New American Cuisine.Â Take it all off!Â The chef even prefers to call her showâ€™s coordinators â€œdoor whores.â€Â How sexy can you get.

Or you can look up the website called The Food Pervert.Â Her slogan is â€œIâ€™m here to show you mine, whether you show me yours or not . . . . .Â . my food of course!â€Â Sounds like a food strip-tease to me.Â The picture shows a sultry wench proffering a giant turkey.

Thirdly, Lewis claims that food perversions are rare, that mostly people just want to eat food.Â Well, The Food Pervert is not the only person on the internet boasting of intemperate appetites â€“ search for yourself, if you really want to.Â Or you can look up www. ifood.tv.Â The writer there chortles about the Gross Food Movement.Â I will not strew the requisite numbers of [sic]s among these poorly written sentence look-alikes; youâ€™ll just have to â€œstomachâ€ the gross prose.Â â€œWhy is it (the Gross Food Movement) done? Simply because it is not considered norm.Â It is a breath of fresh air!Â An act of breaking the healthy diet vows that has chained our food habits!Â The Gross Food Movement worships everything that we have been banned from our diet for our health.Â . . .Â It seems like gluttony has a new movement in its honour!Â Hail the Gross Food Movement!â€Â Itâ€™s not just a meal any more, itâ€™s a movement.Â The banner of the revolution is a Krispy Kreme doughnut stuffed with sloppy joes.

Not perverse enough for you?Â How about the television show â€œHurl!â€?Â This is what the page linked to Wikipedia says about the show.Â Again take the [sic]s for granted:Â gluttony cancels grammar, evidently.Â â€œThe concept is for competitors to alternate between challenges of competitive eating several pounds of food is to play through extreme activities after eating a lot to see who will be last to vomit.â€Â Youâ€™ll be glad to know that â€œAll food and drink are identified as being organic.â€Â Vomiting is filmed and rated by a sophisticated bucket-count system.

What is going on?Â What have we become?Â Our culture has gone crazy.Â But at least the church is addressing the problem.Â Iâ€™m glad that there are so many sermons on the Deadly Sin of Gluttony in churches around America.Â Iâ€™m delighted that St. Thomas Aquinasâ€™ definition is so frequently quoted from the pulpit:Â Â “Gluttony denotes, not any desire of eating and drinking, but an inordinate desire… leaving the order of reason, wherein the good of moral virtue consists” (Summa Theologica 2, 148, ad 1).Â Itâ€™s a good thing that all Christians, in a non-legalistic way, practice the biblical discipline of fasting, as Jesus modeled, in order to remember that man does not live by bread alone.

Or not.

I think weâ€™ve forgotten that gluttony is one of the Seven DeadlyÂ Sins.Â Most Christians would agree with Lewis that our sexual appetites are disordered, but would they say the same about our desire for food?Â When we confess our sins, either privately or to another, does gluttony even make the list?Â Satanâ€™s done a good job getting us running around after sexual sins while completely ignoring the other organ that runs our lives.

Hereâ€™s what Lewis has to say in The Screwtape Letters.Â Remember that the narrator is a devil and speaks from that perspective.Â â€œThe contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, shows only your ignorance.Â One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it the whole length and breadth of Europe.â€Â Or America.

Why do Christians â€“ preachers, writers, teachers, people in the pews â€“ so infrequently address gluttony?Â Could it be that fasting and conscious moderation are seen by evangelicals as too papist, too legalistic and smacking of works righteousness?Â Temperance in eating, to the Extreme Grace crowd, becomes a way of earning favor with God or an unhealthily monkish mortification.Â What a shame, when generations of wise Christians have known that temperance is training in freedom, and fasting is a means of quieting our flesh and developing our hunger for God.

Modern Christians have also been more affected by pop-Freudian ideas than they would like to admit.Â They have absorbed, without perhaps acknowledging it, the conviction that repression is unhealthy.Â Repress the desire for food, or sex, or blurting out whatever youâ€™re feeling, and youâ€™ll develop a complex; eventually all the repressed emotions will boil over and harm you and everyone around you.Â Or at least thatâ€™s what the check-out counter magazines say â€“ you know, the ones that tell you that you have to be good to yourself or youâ€™re no good to anyone else; that you deserve the best; that this month you need to pamper yourself.Â You can find the magazines right next to the chocolate bars.

Finally Christians are reluctant to confront gluttony because of the sheer weight of the problem.Â (Sorry, these phrasings just seem to happen.)Â So many people now are obese and unhappy about it that they exert great pressure on others not to mention the weight problem.Â Itâ€™s rude to say anything about eating habits, they imply.Â Itâ€™s unkind.Â Itâ€™s also embarrassing to many would-be prophets who are packing on the pounds themselves.

But while growing obesity is one symptom of our cultural problem with gluttony, not only fat people are gluttonous.Â The issue is to what degree we are ruled by our stomachs.Â Screwtape goes on to say, â€œBut what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern?â€

Iâ€™ll be the first to confess that I speak from personal knowledge. Â I do not live according to the freedom of the spirit but am still trammeled by the flesh. Â My inner spoiled child clamors for bribes from the grocery cart of life, and I too often placate her; I can hardly hear Godâ€™s voice over her yelling.Â I have convinced myself that life is not daily crucifixion but daily treatsÂ awarded to myself for â€“ well, for having survived another day.Â I have mistaken the source of my life; I have forgotten that my true life is hidden with Christ.

The antidote to gluttony is not a successful diet and a sleek figure.Â Even if it were, thatâ€™s no good to me.Â Iâ€™ve never been able to manage the successful diet, and the sleek figure is long gone.Â The antidote to gluttony is drawing life from the living vine, not from one more treat; itâ€™s being fed by the word of God.Â To use Jeff Dunnâ€™s imagery, if we continue to seek happiness by stuffing ourselves, weâ€™re just feeding a corpse.

Now thereâ€™s an image to put me off my food.

[Pictures of state fair food taken by, but not eaten by, Jeff Dunn at this year’s Tulsa State Fair.]