Definition: Gluttony is the willful and insatiable desire to over consume, excessively elevate, and be preoccupied with that which God created for good. It is more interested in consuming than in what is being consumed.
God considers gluttony a character trait of an evil person, and so He tells us to avoid those who eat and drink too much.
Don’t drink too much wine and get drunk; don’t eat too much food and get fat. Drunks and gluttons will end up on skid row, in a stupor and dressed in rags.
Proverbs 23:20-21, MSG
For it is possible that a wise man may use the daintiest food without any sin of epicurism or gluttony, while a fool will crave for the vilest food with a most disgusting eagerness of appetite. And any sane man would prefer eating fish after the manner of our Lord, to eating lentils after the manner of Esau, or barley after the manner of oxen. For there are several beasts that feed on commoner kinds of food, but it does not follow that they are more temperate than we are. For in all matters of this kind it is not the nature of the things we use, but our reason for using them, and our manner of seeking them, that make what we do either praiseworthy or blameable. -St.Augustine, Confessions
I fear not the uncleaness of meat, but the uncleaness of desire. -St. Augustine, Confessions
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The Sin of Gluttony
Author: Unknown
Overeating and obesity are becoming an epidemic in America. “All you can eat” restaurants with buffets are springing up all over the place. The Bible warns about the dangers of gluttony, but these warnings seem to go unheeded in America with restaurants that are little more than human feed troughs. Christians who go into these glutton cafes and eat too much are not giving a very good witness of the real Christian lifestyle.
Howard Guinness in his book “Sacrifice” wrote: Food, Do we eat in moderation? Some of us eat until we can’t comfortably eat any more and then stop. This is what the animals do. I know of at least one unconverted student who was put off from coming to Christ by the gluttony of a Christian. (Pg. 52).
Our gluttony can ruin our testimony, and hence, our chances of winning souls.
Gluttony is a sin, but today, most people see gluttony as no big deal. Gluttony will shorten your life, and most definitely will affect your quality of life, with loneliness, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, and an impaired lifestyle.
The problem may lie in trigger foods and drinks. Whatever food or drink substances that we are addicted to and cannot get through the day without may be the cause of why we eat too much. Artificial chemical mixtures like soft drinks and fake genetically modified sweeteners may be the very things that trigger us all to eat and eat and eat. Carbonated soft drinks, besides having chemicals in them, have carbon dioxide in them, which swells the stomach and causes us to need more food to feel full. The human body was designed to take in oxygen and emit carbon dioxide, and here we are doing just the opposite – pouring tons of carbon dioxide into our bodies. The acid in these drinks affects the ph balance of our bodies, making us overly acidic instead of the naturally occurring neutral or alkaline. These soft drinks also make fried foods with lots of salt taste even better, which causes us to eat more of them, thus packing on the extra pounds. Soft drinks with caffeine in them also keep us up at night, robbing us of our needed sleep. God did not invent gassy acidic chemical soft drinks, but instead gave us all natural water to drink. Drinking lots of water during the day not only hydrates our bodies, which are mostly water, but creates a sense of fullness, thus keeping us from eating too much at the next meal. Water also is the neutralizer of acids.
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