I never like those “you’d have to run for thirty minutes” “you’d have to climb Mt. Everest five times” comparisons for calorie counts, because they ignore the fact that you consume thousands (usually) of calories a day just existing.
It varies with each person, of course, but the average man as I understand it burns nearly 3,000 calories a day just going about his business.
What is gluttony?
Is it stuffing yourself, making yourself barf, and then stuffing some more (the classic gluttony of ancient Rome?)
Is it being fat? If so, by whose standards?
It it eating “junk food?” If so, how do we define “junk food,” and is it ever ok to eat it?
Is it more gluttonous to eat a $13 salad with little fancy imported raisins and balsamic vinegar and trendy shim shams in there, or more gluttonous to have a $1 McChicken?
Or is gluttony being excessive in any given area (tv watching, work, eating, shopping, spa treatments. . .)?
Are desserts ever necessary? If not, is it a sin to have dessert?
What is the place of feasting in the Christian life? Does Scripture not prescribe times of feasting as well as fasting? When we feast, are we gluttons?

Thank you so much for posting this and particularly for the bit about the obese people showing the homosexuals the door at church. This is something near and dear to my heart as I work in a ministry helping people overcome gluttony.
Marie — I would say that gluttony is when we use food for any purpose other than that which it was intended. As Christians we are to find our souls’ satisfaction in Christ. That means going to Him when we are happy, sad, bored, frustrated, stressed, etc, instead of to food. That also means that a carrot stick can be as bad as a bag of chips if we are eating just for the sake of eating.
To me, the great news is that we have liberty to enjoy what we want to eat. I have been at a healthy weight for five years now after being fat for pretty much all of the 29 years of my life previous to repenting of gluttony. I still enjoy ice cream almost daily. I enjoy eating so-called “bad” foods regularly. However, I also exercise regularly and I enjoy those “bad” foods in moderation. In other words, I don’t eat a whole bag of Doritos in one sitting anymore. I eat two slices of pizza instead of three. And so on.
If anyone is struggling with this issue please come and check us out at http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com/lords_table/ We would love to help you. Plus, the course is free!

“One critic said that if he found a country in which such striptease acts with food were popular, he would conclude that the people of that country were starving”.
I would say that is a good conclusion. It might seem weird to say that we (as a country) are starving sexually, but remember that many people don’t really differentiate sex and love or acceptance or fulfillment. We are starving for acceptance and/or fulfillment and unfortunately people go to the wrong places to look for it.

We Southern Baptists like to enjoy an abundant potluck (a term that combines superstition with the potential for gluttony) after celebrating an alcohol-free Communion.

While we may not have special theaters where food in seductively unveiled (at least not yet)
One could (and people have) argued that the Food Network is the functional equivalent.

People don’t seem happy about the comparison of gluttony and homosexuality (perhaps it is easier to comdemn sin that one is not oneself prone to?), so how about comparing gluttony with drinking? It’s pretty clear to me that neither eating fatty food nor drinking alcohol is necessarily sinful, but overindulgence in either is. Many U.S. Christians, particularly here in the South, unreservedly condemn drinking alcohol in any quantity, yet they think nothing of eating huge portions of food at a church potluck. Heck, many of those Christians might be healthier if they drank some wine along with their gut clogging cuisine. I suspect that the sin of gluttenous eating kills many more Americans than gluttenous drinking, and as Joe points out, the church seems oblivious.

No argument about what I refer to as “buffet-butt Baptists” (I’m a Baptist by the way), but (no pun intended) feasting is a biblical concept. And “fat” is seen as a blessing throughout Scripture.
Obviously, obesity is a real problem in America and I deplore the soft-bellied and soft minded American male who over indulges in everything. However, that burger would not be inappropriate for my neighbor farmer after he’s worked from dawn to dusk in the hot sun bailing hay. He’ll burn that many calories before 10 am. And I would recommend chugging a quart of Hardees ice-cold sweet tea as well!
But that burger WOULD be inappropriate for the soft-belly.
Bottom line: eat up if your body needs it. Otherwise, stick to salad and lean meat.

“To work off those calories a person would need to jog for over 3 hours, walk briskly for 7.5 hours, or simply sit in front of the TV for 31 hours straight.”
Is it the actual consumption of the food that makes it sinful…or the fact that we do nothing with it??? Under option #3-the 31 hours in front of a screen…could that work with computers as well??? Maybe we might only have to sit there for 29.5 hours since we are “using” keyboards and mice??? Is it scientificly proven that there are only 24 hours in a day???

Boonton,
Obviously you did not grow-up Baptist! It is well known in Baptist circles that when the Bible says “wine” it is simply grape juice!

Nancy,
Listen, Christianity exploded in the Roman Empire. Romans were Italians. Don’t tell me Italians didn’t know the difference between wine and grape juice!!!!!!! ;)

Boonton…That only happened at a wedding…they drank it up immediately!

Boonton – answer to your question re: wine. Its unfermented wine – “grape juice.” At least that’s the argument.

Nick:
I think you are on to something. I agree that it is true that it is easier to wink at a sin when you are prone to it yourself, but that overlooks the problem with the analogy it self.
While gluttony is a sin, gluttony is not a perversion of the created order as is homosexuality.
Nowhere does the Bible say that gluttony is an “abomination” as it does about homosexuality.
The analogy to drunkenness is a better analogy because, as you say, both are similar abuses of the gifts of God. Homosexuality is not an abuse of sex in the same way that adultery or fornication is because usually we think of them as taking place between a man and a woman and sex is supposed to be between a man and a woman so adultery, for example, is a crossing of the boundaries God has set, not a twisting of the gift itself. Likewise, gluttony and drunkenness are abuses, a crossing of the boundaries, not abominations or perversion.

Richard
Boonton – answer to your question re: wine. Its unfermented wine – “grape juice.” At least that’s the argument.
Ok then I think they would have called it that. If grape juice was basically unheard of in that day…as it would be if you couldn’t stop it from fermenting then suddenly being served grape juice at a wedding when wine is normally served would make you notice that and say something.
Again no religion that can’t tell the difference between wine and grape juice would have ever won over Italians.

On More Serious issues:
Jack
Is it gluttony for 5% of the Earth’s population to consume over half of it’s oil?
I’m going to say no because this is a deceptive way to describe it. The image this brings to mind is sitting in a pizza parlor with a bunch of friends and the waitress brings over a pie. You excuse yourself to wash your hands and when you get back not two minutes later your annoying fat friend has eaten the whole pie and only left you with a slice!!!
But that’s not quite how it works. It’s not like there’s a big pool of oil and we are gobbling it up each year leaving none for the helpless fellow who went to the bathroom. We use most oil more than other people so we buy most of what is produced each year. It’s more like going to the pizza place and you order a single slice but your fat friend orders a whole pie for himself. Yes maybe he ate 90% of the pizza at that table but you could have ordered a pie too if you wanted (or if you had the money). If he had refrained from ordering the pie it’s not like they would have given it to you for free.
If we stopped buying oil tomorrow everyone in Africa wouldn’t start to suddenly drive cars. Yes maybe they would drive a bit more since the price of oil would almost certainly fall but at the same time a lot of oil wells would simply be turned off just like the cook would simply make fewer pies if people order less pizza.
So I think the best way to understand gluttony as a vice is to see it as being unbalanced. If you’re consuming too much that is gluttonous. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re hurting others but you are hurting yourself. I’d say most people in the US are not gluttonous with oil. We consume what is reasonable given our current circumstances. Yes as a whole we can change policies so we don’t need to use as much and we are going to be doing so as long as gas stays over $4/gal but I know very few people who really can be described as gluttonous with gas.
Joe
While we may not have special theaters where food in seductively unveiled (at least not yet), there is certainly something “queer about the state” of the food instinct in America.
The difference is that when it comes to sex we are visually stimulated but when it comes to food stimulation works better when it comes in the form of smell. We don’t really have ‘food porn’ but the food industry does put a lot of effort into pumping as much ‘food smells’ as possible at us whenever we pass buy a food court. No doubt Hardees would love it if someone could invent a HD TV that could emit the scent of meat cooking whenever one of their commercials came on.

Boonton:
As much as I hate to admit it, you’re right about C.S. Lewis seeing gluttony in “making a show of your eating habits.” And it was in Screwtape.
Maybe you could explain how the “food industry does put a lot of effort into pumping as much ‘food smells’ as possible at us whenever we pass buy (sic) a food court.” Care to back that up with some facts? I was always under the impression that the exhaust fans pumped the smells OUT of the building–not AT the customers.

Care to back that up with some facts? I was always under the impression that the exhaust fans pumped the smells OUT of the building–not AT the customers.
Bad smells yes but good smells you’d want to vent out to the potential customers. The people walking by who smell fresh coffee, steak or will be more enticed to come inside and order something. I have no idea how much effort they put into doing this purposefully. I remember it mentioned in a marketing class I took in college a long time ago. I don’t doubt that a lot more money and effort is put into visual based advertising.

Tsk tsk, just when were being civil there jd goes again.
What I should of written is that I know restaurants will pipe pleasing smells onto the streets so people walking by will be tempted to swing in. How do I know this? Because it was mentioned in a marketing class both by the professor and one or two students who worked in the business. Do I have any knowledge of how much money has been invested in this? How much science has been put into figuring out what smells make people buy and what puts people off? No and I never said I did.
Is it a ‘lot of effort’? I would say so considering that it’s pretty hard to ‘manage smell’. Unlike music or video you can’t just put it in a room or on a street corner by setting up a speaker or monitor. You also can’t just vent the kitchen into the street otherwise you’d end up hitting people with smells that aren’t so pleasent. I don’t know how they do this, if it is all trial and error or if there’s technology they purchase to do it. Didn’t claim I did know.
I probably should have written restaurants instead of ‘the food industry’. The reason I didn’t I must admit is simply that I don’t like the word restaurant since I tend to misspell it a lot so ‘food industry’ is a lazy writer’s out.
I do know unlike sex, where we operate more with our eyes, a huge portion of our experience of food comes through our nose which is why if you’re going to do a ‘food striptease’ better to do with using smells. This is why stuff doesn’t taste right when you have a cold.

For all you new posters here, this is standard operating procedure…
For those new here jd is a member of the Trinity of Stupidity. Three presons, jd, smmtheory and ucfengr united in an annoying tactic of demanding backup for any and all ‘assertions’. Most of the time they refuse to actually specify which assertions they want you to back up….don’t try to back up everything you say, though, because they will then get upset and complain about your posts being too tedius to read or respond too. When backup is provided they will invariably ignore it or dismiss it with a wave of the hand.
They don’t actually disagree with you. Or I should say when they do disagree with you they absolutely don’t want to produce, see or hear about any backup, support or facts. No when the demands come to prove how you know something you can almost always bet they don’t have any actual disagreement with what you said. They’ve stumbled on the idea that endless nitpicking actually amounts to something more than pointless spam.

And one more question: Where in the New Testament besides the gospels is gluttony condemned?
If you do happen to find gluttony condemned (and it is, somewhere) make careful note of what the author meant by it and how it is defined.

BTW–Here’s the verse:
Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.–Matthew 9:17

Boonton, just to show that I really don’t take your attacks personally (I know they are just a response to a fear of looking stupid. A quite warranted fear, in my opinion) I will show you how to support your assertions. Look at comment 41; I made an assertion that in comment 29, Nancy misinterpreted the Bible verse she was drawing from. I then provided the basis for the assertion, in this case that the CO2 from the fermentation process of the new wine causes old skins to burst, while new skins would retain the flexibility to expand to accommodate the expansion. I then cited the Bible verse to show that she had recalled it incorrectly. Quite simple really. Please make a note of this for future posting.

I think sometimes Joe posts stuff that not even he believes.
Let’s pretend for a moment that he does believe we can equate our overindulgence of our food appetite with our overindulgence with our sexual appetite.
When talking about our overindulgence for our sexual appetite would he post a picture of a naked woman? Of course not, because it would be a temptation which could lead some to sin.
So why then would he post the equivalent picture of food if he equated the two?
The answer is, he doesn’t.

So why then would he post the equivalent picture of food if he equated the two?
I remember a long time ago some conservative site had an article on the “most dangerous books”….Joe referenced it too….each ‘dangerous book’ was linked to their Amazon.com affiliate account so they not only were helping their readers to buy these ‘dangerous books’ but were making a $ off it if they did. You gotta take some of this with a grain of salt.
Even if you equate the two, though, it doesn’t follow that the stuff that may lead to overindulgence in sex is the same stuff that leads to overindulgence in food. A picture of food, even over the top food, is just not the same thing in our culture.
ucfengr
So now you expect me to provide support for your unsupported assertions
No I’d like you to try to find posts you made that equaled the quality of the post you cited about the wine. You’re pretending you do something you almost never do.
I am “Tivo-ed” for viewing tonight. I have gotten to where I hate watching commercials.
They finally broke their ‘funk’ and are getting interesting again.

No I’d like you to try to find posts you made that equaled the quality of the post you cited about the wine. You’re pretending you do something you almost never do.
So, again, you make an unsupported assertion and then expect someone else to do the hard work of supporting or refuting it. If you really think I am asking something of you that I rarely do, provide support. You go through the archives and make your case. Of course, it would probably be easier to support your own assertions rather than trying to prove your case against me, but easier still would be your current tack of whining. So I suspect that is what you will continue with.

To Boontoon:
Don’t know if this has already been said but I’ve heard the arguments attesting that the wine Jesus made was non-alcoholic and I find them lacking. It is pretty clear to me that the according to the Scriptures drinking alcohol is not a sin, it’s the over-consumption, lack of self-control, drunkenness, etc. that is wrong.
One of my professors, a teetotaller, admit that he couldn’t use the Bible to justify his stance.
To ex-preacher:
I couldn’t offer up a verse in the NT or OT condemning gluttony for you. But neither could I offer an explicit verse condemning sex before marriage. I would justify calling gluttony a sin based on the principles that ARE explicitly laid out in the NT: self-control, knowing your body is a temple of the HS, etc.
There’s some verses on gluttony in Proverbs, but I don’t think they were referring to the kind of gluttony Joe is talking about here. Perhaps you already know the answer, ex? Please enlighten me.

Drew,
That seems to be what I’m also finding googling it a bit. No one seems to have a Biblical argument for wine not being wine. The closest I saw was one guy whose argument essentially was that wine is bad therefore Jesus would never make anything that could be bad (did the bread, then, have zero carbs in it and cause no increase in sugar levels for the diabetics?)
Perhaps prohibitionists simply created a bit of folklore about wine being grape juice?

It seems to me that gluttony probably isn’t one of those eternally applicable sins like murder or theft, but a sin more like running away from your slaveowner or working on Rosh Hoshanah. This is because food was much harder to come by in the days of old. Today we make so much corn, for example, we are turning it into diesel so we can drive our SUV a quarter mile to church.

I never thought about it the way you present it before, but it is definately a forgotten sin. Thanks for the thoughtful reminder.
Barb

Here is an article supporting the non-fermented wine theory…seems they could preserve simple grape juice after all.
http://www.biblicalperspectives.com/books/wine_in_the_bible/1.html

I find exception to the article in certain things as it clubs people like myself who enjoy the food I eat as gluttons.
I enjoy eating junk food more than eating “non-junk” food. Yet I am perfectly fit for my age, hieght and in wieght. I eat fried chicken or pizza or a philly cheese steak meal EVERYDAY for lunch for the past 10 months at the least. I thank before every junk food meal for giving me food to eat which I enjoy and like. Believe it.
Dinners are almost the same. I don’t do all that dieting and going for greens and tons of vegetables and all. Yet healthwise, I am normal by God’s grace (132 pounds for 5′ 6”, Blood pressure: 115/80). I walk around 5 miles everyday for my commutes which helps I guess.
Yet because I enjoy the food I eat, burgers, steaks and pizza with coke and fries and all, I would look like a “glutton” to joe carter.
My two cents:
The article makes the mistake of clubbing gluttony with enjoying food you eat or it doesn’t talk at all about the biblical view that you can and should enjoy the food you eat giving the impression that enjoying the food you eat is also sinful and glutonous at worst.
Gluttony as explained by scripture:
Romans 16:18
For they that are such SERVE NOT our Lord Jesus Christ, but THEIR OWN BELLY; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.
Philippians 3:19
Whose end is destruction, whose GOD IS THEIR BELLY, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)
A glutton’s god(s) is his belly.
Can we enjoy or are we allowed to enjoy a good meal say a double cheese quarter pounder which I enjoy? According to the article, no. According to the Bible: yes.
Proverbs 13:25
The righteous eateth to the SATISFYING OF HIS SOUL…
Is eating “junk food” gluttony or what is not always “needed” by the body gluttony – icecream, choclates, pizza, fried chicken?
According to the article – yes (eg: Hardees’ Monster thick burger). But who told the fats, proteins, carbs and nutrients, no matter how insignifcant they are in your meal are “not needed”? Who defines what is “junk food”? What if I eat junk food everyday for the past two years and am still healthy and fit. Is that still “junk food”?
We are to eat “meats” with thanks giving:
1 Tim 4:3
…and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanks giving
ALSO, scripture is loaded with plenty of feasts. We are all invited to the GREAT HEAVENLY FEAST… unless Joe wants to abstain to make sure he doesn’t cross the 2000 calory limit.
In Christ,

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I am amazed at Christians who understand that sin cannot be overcome in the flesh by the natural man, but who simply do not understand that gluttony must be over come by the Holy Spirit’s power also. It seems that most people really believe that this sin of greediness for food just requires a diet and some will power. There is much deception involved in that sin and the devil attacks children with it sometimes before they are even aware of what is going on. This sin requires the grace of God and His Truth which sets men free indeed!