The Neglected Sin of Gluttony

The Coronavirus crisis has upended all of our lives. When the crisis started, I must confess I was lackadaisical about the whole situation. I am young, I thought. This will not affect me. As the deaths started to accumulate, and new data started to come out on comorbidity, I realized that my lack of concern in this issue was not only ill-informed but also unwise. The insolence of youth is alive and well in me.

I had somehow forgotten that I have two health issues that could put me in grave danger were I to be infected: obesity and diabetes. As I wrote in my In Defense of Asceticism post, obesity has many causes that defy simple explanations. But I also pointed out that I felt pretty safe in assuming my cause for obesity and diabetes are overindulgence in processed food and a lack of healthy habits.

St. Paul: Our Body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit

The Apostle Paul declares on 1 Corinthians 6:18-20:

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, So glorify God in your body. - ESV, emphasis added. 

The original Greek word for Temple used by Paul is naos. This word was used for the temple of Jerusalem and only for the Sanctuary. The Sanctuary includes the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. Think of the radical implications of this incredible claim by the Apostle! St. Paul is elevating our bodies to the same stature of the holiest of physical spaces on earth: The Holy of Holies, the place where God’s Spirit dwells! 

The context of this verse is sexual immorality in general, and the engagement with prostitution in specific. St. Paul is writing to a culture drenched in Stoicism. Many Greeks, and those wittingly or unwittingly committed to the philosophy of stoicism, believed that sex was merely a biological desire like food. Since the body was meant for destruction, Stoics argued, acts attached to biological necessity were of no moral consequence. 

Stoicism had a blatant disregard for the body. They looked forward to death as the release of one’s soul from one’s miserable body. St. Paul is concerned that an inferior value of the body would lead to fornication or sexual immorality. He asserts that the body is made not for immorality but for the Lord! Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the body is imbued with unthinkable moral value. Since we will also be resurrected, what we do to our bodies matters. 

Union with Christ - What We Do to Our Bodies Matter

Our union with God is so intimate, that Paul uses the imagery of sexual union to describe it. Because of this reality, what one does to one's body affects not only us but the whole Christian community! Sins done to our bodies, in other words, are no private sins. It is also not just something that is done among "two consenting adults", as is often colloquially defended. 

These body-sins, in a way that we may not understand the full ramifications of, affects the whole body of Christ. They affect the Boyd of Christ not only in a worsening of reputation, though that is clearly the case, but also because, when one gives oneself to another immorally, a part of oneself is given to that other that is now not given to God, and what is not given wholly to God cannot be given to the community. When our bodies are engaged in immoral acts, we are “defiling” the body of Christ in that sense. In other words, when we engage in these body-sins we are robbing the body of Christ of our complete devotion. 

The Neglected Sin of Gluttony

To bring us back to the original musing of this post: how we treat our bodies matters. It matters because God, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is redeeming our whole beings, including our bodies. And while the Apostle Paul is dealing with sexual immorality in the 1 Corinthians passage, I can't find good reasons for his thinking to be expanded to other issues of body-sins, like gluttony.

Gluttony, for some reason, has been the forgotten sin. It has been relegated to the realm of health, and even in that space, it is now being challenged. The unfortunate prevalence of fat-shaming and fat-phobia in our society has made any mention of a connection between weight and health anathema. And yet, the connection to health and weight seems to be clear by both the scientific literature and in my personal experience. But, even if there is no connection between them, the Church has still regarded gluttony as a sin. 

I am slowly paying more attention to how I treat my body. I am slowly extracting these sins from the limiting realm of health and putting them in their more righteous place: in my devotion to Christ. Overeating is a sin, plain and simple. We must rediscover the frightening reality of this sin and its possible prevalence in our lives. We need to repent of it. It is destructive to both us and the world. It leads to the destruction of our God-given and redeemed bodies, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and to the destruction of God's creation. In a world where many go hungry, overeating and food waste should disturb us to our core.

Church, it is time to repent.