For Christians, humanity’s first sin involved food: fruit. Their most revered ritual of remembrance is the bread and wine of Communion, a sacred “meal.”
And some of their most long-standing practices seesaw back and forth between feasting and fasting — yet lead inexorably to what medieval believers called the sin of gluttony.
That brings us to Thanksgiving, a nonreligious national holiday that features a lot of eating, or, more to the point, overeating. But does that extra pile of potatoes amount to gluttony? What about that third piece of pumpkin pie?
“Sitting around the table at a feast is not a gluttonous act,” Mary Louise Bringle, author of “The God of Thinness: Gluttony and Other Weighty Matters,” said last week, reaffirming what she told The Salt Lake Tribune in a 2013 story. “Sitting in front of the television gobbling potato chips is.”
Centuries ago, it was Pope Gregory who created the list of seven “deadly” sins, and the Catholic pontiff had some conditions for gluttony.
He argued it was wrong to think about food the minute you awake, to eat rapidly without saying grace, or to fail to recognize God’s hand in providing sustenance.
The seven deadly sins:
• Pride.
• Greed.
• Wrath.
• Envy.
• Lust.
• Gluttony.
• Sloth.
It is sinful, then, to stuff yourself rather than savoring each bite, to spend so much on food that you go broke, or to be too picky about what you eat.
“Eating too much is a small part of gluttony,” said Bringle, who teaches at Brevard College in North Carolina, “Fixating on three grapes and two curds of cottage cheese is a form of gluttony. Buying Lean Cuisine and obsessing about fat grams is gluttony.”
Indeed, she said, anything that keeps us from accepting the gift of food with humility and moderation is a sin. Both self-indulgence and self-denial undermine our relationship to God, the Earth and others.
That, some observers insist, lets the joyous, family-oriented U.S. holiday off the hook.
Not so fast, said University of Utah religious studies scholar and historian Colleen McDannell.
While periodic celebrations may be fine, Americans consistently eat more than they need, while others in the country and across the globe starve, she said last week. That is textbook gluttony.
“You shouldn’t overdo anything,” McDannell said, “because that ruins the community.”
Medieval Christians lived in agrarian societies that were “trying to keep people from dying,” she said, so gluttons were those who consumed more than their share of resources.
That, McDannell said, seems to describe some overeating Americans in our day.
What’s the problem?
The sin in all this greedy consumption, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is not in the food, the cars or the clothes, but in the ravenous yearning for more, more and more.
“The vice of gluttony does not regard the substance of food, but in the desire thereof not being regulated by reason,” Thomas wrote. “It is a case of gluttony only when a man knowingly exceeds the measure in eating, from a desire for the pleasures of the palate.”
That’s often the case these days.
Obesity has ballooned to an epidemic in the U.S., food portions have expanded, plates have grown ever larger and daily caloric intake has skyrocketed.
Next to Thanksgiving, Americans consume the most food on Super Bowl Sunday — more than 11.2 million pounds of potato chips, 8.2 million pounds of tortilla chips, 8 million pounds of guacamole and 4 million pounds of pretzels.
The day after the big game, a study by The Workforce Institute at UKG estimates, about “20% of employees ages 18 to 34 miss work. …[Some] 34% of those ages 21 and over stated that drinking too much was a key factor in their unplanned absence.”
Does that fit the definition of gluttony?
Food is ‘foundational to faith’
Baptists don’t enumerate Gregory’s list of sins the way some other faith traditions do, said the Rev. Curtis Price of the First Baptist Church in Salt Lake City, but they recognize a scriptural and literal connection to food.
“Food is very foundational,” Price said, “not only to faith but to family and community.”
The Jewish “sacrificial tradition” is at its core “a shared meal between God’s people and their God,” the pastor said, “an offer of the first fruits.”
Heaven is described “as a banquet feast,” Price explained, and Jesus’ first miracle “is really good wine and lots of it.”
And the heart of Christian symbolism, he added, “is bread and wine eaten together as a symbol of God’s abundant grace and mercy.”
Over and over the scriptures liken God’s abundance, he said, is having more than enough.
Eating becomes a problem for Christians, though, when it “is a kind of greed,” Price said,” taking more than you need and then throwing the rest away.”
In one of the Apostle Paul’s admonitions to the Christians in Corinth, “people of means were showing up to the love feast, getting drunk and eating all the food,” he said. “When the poor arrive, they are judged.”
Paul argues for “a shared equitable meal,” Price said. “You dishonor it when it becomes an excuse for selfishness and hoarding.”
Communal meals should celebrate simplicity, he said, and express gratitude for God’s generous offerings.
It is crucial, he said, “to be satisfied with enough.”
A good Christian mantra for Thanksgiving.
