Christians today, especially conservative Christians in America, often have a lot to say about people's sins and sinful behavior. Sometimes it almost seems as if some people simply wouldn't be happy if it they weren't complaining about others' sins. Curiously, one sin tends to get ignored: gluttony. Has gluttony ceased to be a sin, or is it an inconvenient sin because so many are guilty of it?

In Gluttony: The Seven Deadly Sins, Francine Prose writes:

These days, few people seriously consider the idea that eating too much or enjoying one's food is a crime against God, a profound moral failure for which we will be promptly dispatched to hell. It's doubtful that even the most devoutly religious are likely to confess and seek absolution for looking forward to breakfast, or having taken pleasure in the delights of last night's dinner.

It must be granted that the Seven Deadly Sins aren't given the same importance that they used to — gluttony isn't the only sin which has been downgraded in how Christians view the world. When was the last time you heard any Christian describe anger as a sin, for example? Even those which are still regarded as being at least a bit sinful, like pride, aren't emphasized much. I think that there may be a common reason for why some of the Seven Deadly Sins are ignored and others de-emphasized and the case of gluttony helps make this clear: all of the Seven Deadly Sins are sins which the average person likely commits on a regular basis, even if just a little bit.

If you take a look at the sins which conservative Christians most commonly attack, though, they are almost uniformly sins which others are guilty of and which the critics are unlikely to ever have to worry about themselves: homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, etc. So on the one side we have sins which anyone and everyone commits but they tend to be ignored; on the other side we have sins which are readily attributed to others but not to oneself and they are the focus of massive political, social, and religious campaigns.

Is this a coincidence? Somehow, I don't think so. I find it implausible that this pattern is not a sign of a basic problem which lies at the heart of evangelical, conservative Christianity in America (and elsewhere): Christians don't care to examine their own lives and emphasize the sins which afflict them yet they are very interested in examining the lives of others in order to condemn those sins which others commit.

This can easily allow a person to feel better than and even superior to those around because it's obvious that they aren't committing all of those horrible sins. If they had to focus on the more common sins like anger and gluttony, they'd have to confront the possibility that they aren't living very good lives and might actually have to change a few things — give up conveniences and pleasures in order to live up to the expectations of their own religions. Wouldn't that be just terrible?

Of the five warning signs that [Pope Gregory] identified as the hallmarks of the sinner, there are really only two — "too greedily" and "too much" — that we continue to associate with gluttony. Does the desire for costly meats or dainty cooking really sound like a crime against God, an evil that should rightly consign us to spend eternity in the third circle of hell? If gluttony is indeed a sin, who among us is not guilty?

I doubt that any conservative evangelical Christians will be able to escape guilt for the sin of gluttony. When was the last time you saw an evangelical leader stand up and condemn over-consumption of resources like food, drink, land, water, and energy as a sin? Do you ever suppose that someone like James Dobson will condemn the much more common sin of gluttony rather than the relatively rare sexual orientation of homosexuality? Do you ever suppose that someone like Pat Robertson will condemn the common sin of anger rather than the relatively rare act of abortion?

I don't. People like Pat Robertson and James Dobson would stop being so popular if they suddenly began to force their audiences to take responsibility for their lives and expect people to be accountable for their actions. They wouldn’t be so popular if they started to tell people that they have to change how they live if they wanted to conform more closely to traditional Christian ideals. The Pat Robertsons and James Dobsons of American Christianity acquire wealth, power, and influence by telling people what they want to hear and encouraging people to rationalize their behaviors so that do whatever they want without having to feel guilty.

It's the American way.

 

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