Gluttony. If you were guilty of committing this sin, would you admit it? How, in fact, can we determine whether we (much less someone else) is a glutton?
And, even if we do fit the description of a glutton, is it all that bad? I mean, it’s not like it is nearly as bad as any of the other so-called “seven deadly sins,” right?
Perhaps C.S. Lewis can offer some illumination on this subject? Our investigation could lead us to a curious, yet edifying, discovery. Just as it enlightened the author of “Ok Google, Who’s Fatter, Me or C.S. Lewis?”
Like many of us, in his prime C.S. Lewis did not consider himself beset with the problem of gluttony. Historically, people have been more physically active when they are young – at least that was true before “addiction” to screens, keyboards and game controls became endemic.
Even a quarter century ago this trend was being seriously studied, as in “Computer Use and Physical Inactivity in Young Adults: Public Health Perils and Potentials of New Information Technologies,” which appeared in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
As the capacities of the new information technologies for delivering targeted, tailored health behavior change programs are developed, the issues for physical activity promotion will become particularly salient.
The emerging paradox is that this new behavior setting for physical activity program delivery is also a setting that strongly promotes long periods of sedentariness.
C.S. Lewis, obviously, lived prior to the ravages of this plague. Yet, he was not immune to the temptations of the Seven Eight Deadly Sins, as identified by the Desert Father Evagrius Ponticus.
As already mentioned, C.S. Lewis did not consider himself particularly vulnerable to gluttony. This is illustrated by a witty (and fascinating) postscript to a letter written to his lifelong friend Arthur Greeves in 1930.
P.S. When I said that your besetting sin was Indolence and mine Pride I was thinking of the old classification of the seven deadly sins: They are Gula (Gluttony), Luxuria (Unchastity), Accidia (Indolence), Ira (Anger), Superbia (Pride), Invidia (Envy), Avaricia (Avarice).
Accidia, which is sometimes called Tristicia (despondence) is the kind of indolence which comes from indifference to the good – the mood in which though it tries to play on us we have no string to respond.
Pride, on the other hand, is the mother of all sins, and the original sin of Lucifer – so you are rather better off than I am. You at your worst are an instrument unstrung: I am an instrument strung but preferring to play itself because it thinks it knows the tune better than the Musician.
GULA – J.A.G.
LUXURIA – J.A.G., C.S.L.
ACCIDIA – J.A.G.
IRA – C.S.L.
SUPERBIA – C.S.L.
INVIDIA – C.S.L.
AVARICIA – (neither, I hope)
Two decades later, C.S. Lewis would make a related observation in a letter to his friend Don Giovanni Calabria. Apologizing for the delay of his correspondence, Lewis wrote:
Nothing else was responsible for it except the perpetual labour of writing and (lest I should seem to exonerate myself too much) a certain Accidia [sloth], an evil disease and, I believe, of the Seven Deadly Sins that one which in me is the strongest – though few believe this of me.
Gluttony is Not Synonymous with Being Overweight
I meet few people who do not wish that they weighed a few pounds less than they do. That would include the elder C.S. Lewis. Listen to his self-description in a letter to a young admirer in 1954.
Self-effacing, as always, he said he was nothing special to behold: “I’m tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading . . .” (I hope this is not the only dimension of Lewis that I come to resemble more as the years pass by.)
The United Kingdom and Ireland have an historically odd manner of assessing a person’s weight. I suspect there is a bit of intentional obfuscation involved when they use the archaic measurement of “stone” rather than pounds or kilograms.
As Britannica says, “the stone is still commonly used in Britain to designate the weights of people and large animals.” Ironically, babies are not weighed this way, presumably because few of them weigh a full stone – fourteen pounds – at birth.
In the military it was important to remain below your maximum allowable weight. This becomes a problem for a fair number of folks (a dilemma with which I’m personally familiar).
Due to the aforementioned problem with sedentary activities, meeting these height and weight guidelines has become a serious issue for many young recruits.
Still, gluttony is not synonymous with weighing more than is healthy for us. Not so, according to a great column at Intellectual Takeout.
It’s typical to associate gluttony with overconsumption, or, an excess of food or drink. But according to C.S. Lewis, that’s only one form the vice takes. The broader definition of gluttony is any inordinate desire related to food or drink. That includes overconsumption, but it also includes overselectivity regarding the type or quality of food and drink.
Derek Rishmawy discusses this Lewisian distinction as well.
I have to admit that I struggle with gluttony. Yet those who know me probably wouldn’t suspect it. Indeed, I’m tempted to deny it myself because I don’t tend to have a weight issue . . . All the same, this is a sin I’m beginning to realize I need to be increasingly watchful against.
Of course, that confession only makes sense when you understand that there’s more than one way of being a glutton. I’ll let C.S. Lewis explain what I mean.
He cites Screwtape’s letter to his demonic protégé reveling in one of the seldom noticed “victories” of humanity’s Enemy.
One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe.
This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient’s mother . . . She would be astonished . . . to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small.
But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? (The Screwtape Letters)
Now, there is something for us to examine in our own lives.
As for those troubled by their physical weight (be it higher or lower than they would like), I discovered an entertaining site where you can find out how much you would weigh on any of the other planets in our solar system.
Exploratorium lifted my spirits by informing me that on Mars I would weigh a mere 96.1 pounds! And best of all, that’s less than seven stone!
The illustration above is based on a detail from The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things painted c. 1500 by Hieronymus Bosch.
Mere Inkling Press 
Gluttony is the pursuit of satisfaction, in a way which results in more and more dissatisfaction. The lie is that satisfaction is just beyond one’s grasp – one more drink, one more piece of cake, one more pleasurable experience – then I’ll be satisfied! But it always delivers the opposite of what was promised.
While in it’s grip one forgets that appetites are never satisfied for long. Jesus speaks to this in John 4:
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman at the well had been seeking satisfaction in romance.
This is a theme in Lewis’ poem Luxuria:
“When Lilith means to draw me
Within her secret bower,
She does not overawe me
With beauty’s pomp and power,
Nor, with angelic grace
Of courtesy, and the pace
Of gliding ships, comes veiled at evening hour.
Eager, unmasked, she lingers
Heart-sick and hunger sore
With hot, dry, jewelled fingers
Stretched out, beside her door,
Offering with gnawing haste
Her cup, whereof who taste,
(She promises no better) thirst far more.
What moves me, then, to drink it?—Her spells, which all around
So change the land, we think it
A great waste where a sound
Of wind like tales twice told
Blusters, and cloud is rolled
Always above yet no rain falls to ground.
Across drab iteration
Of bare hills, line on line,
The long road’s sinuation
Leads on. The witch’s wine,
Though promising nothing, seems
In that land of no streams,
To promise best—the unrelished anodyne.”
this dynamic of dissatisfaction in the name of satisfaction is the primary way we’re distracted from and robbed of our Joy – a thing that can only be experienced in the present.
more on the deadly sins here:
https://andrewsawyer.substack.com/p/free-indeed
The pattern of gluttony is far more common than one might assume, it is simply dissatisfaction in the name of satisfaction. The lie is that one must consume or experience something in order to be satisfied – one more drink, one more piece of cake, one more pleasurable experience – and it is proven to be a lie when we indulge only to find ourselves dissatisfied.
Lewis speaks to this dynamic in his poem Luxuria:
When Lilith means to draw me
Within her secret bower,
She does not overawe me
With beauty’s pomp and power,
Nor, with angelic grace
Of courtesy, and the pace
Of gliding ships, comes veiled at evening hour.
Eager, unmasked, she lingers
Heart-sick and hunger sore
With hot, dry, jewelled fingers
Stretched out, beside her door,
Offering with gnawing haste Her cup, whereof who taste, (She promises no better) thirst far more.
What moves me, then, to drink it?
—Her spells, which all around
So change the land, we think it
A great waste where a sound
Of wind like tales twice told
Blusters, and cloud is rolled Always above yet no rain falls to ground.
Across drab iteration
Of bare hills, line on line,
The long road’s sinuation
Leads on. The witch’s wine,
Though promising nothing, seems
In that land of no streams,
To promise best—the unrelished anodyne.
And also in The Great Divorce in the encounter with the ghost with the lizard on his shoulder:
‘Be careful,’ it said. ‘He can do what he says. He can kill me. One fatal word from you and he will! Then you’ll be without me for ever and ever. It’s not natural. How could you live? You’d be only a sort of ghost, not a real man as you are now. He doesn’t understand. He’s only a cold, bloodless abstract thing. It may be natural for him, but it isn’t for us. Yes, yes. I know there are no real pleasures now, only dreams. But aren’t they better than nothing? And I’ll be so good. I admit I’ve sometimes gone too far in the past, but I promise I won’t do it again. I’ll give you nothing but really nice dreams—all sweet and fresh and almost innocent. You might say, quite innocent…’
Jesus also touches on this in his encounter with the woman at the well in John chapter 4:
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
She was trying to find satisfaction in romance, and had gotten exactly the opposite.
Now, the thing with the deadly sins is that they quelch the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. The fantasy of satisfaction is a counterfeit of Joy, a topic that Lewis was quite fond of. You see, satisfaction is always offered in the future, just outside of our grasp. It is a distraction from the joy that is available to us, always and only in the present moment.
And what is our task in the present? Jesus tells us in John 15:
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Is such a thing possible to those who are busy chasing satisfaction?
More on the deadly sins here:
https://andrewsawyer.substack.com/p/free-indeed
Thank you for sharing your insights and the additional citations from C.S. Lewis on the subject.
Hi Rob,
I love food but try to eat healthy. But sure, I do get food on my mind. Blah for sin always turning something good into its worst form. Much like Sauron turning elves into orcs. Thank the Lord that He will restore all things as they should be in the end. Thank you, Gary
Gary Avants Forbear Productions * *garyavants66@gmail.com garyavants66@gmail.com
True. It’s a tragic result of the Fall that sin can transform good things (e.g. food) and neutral things (e.g. money) into instruments of our temporal (and hopefully not eternal) destruction.
Can you imagine what real untainted water, apples, or people’s whole being are in god’s hand.
Gary Avants
Great insight, Gary. When apples, etc. — and even water itself — are heavenly, it helps us understand how completely death will be banished from heaven and the new earth.
How clever of you to time this post so that it precedes Thanksgiving — a holiday which celebrates abundance. Of course, if we are profoundly grateful for the many blessings God as bestowed on us, we are unlikely to fall into gluttony.
Gluttony, like most if not all the Seven Deadly Sins, is self-centered. When we take the time to look beyond our own plates, we cannot help but realize how little so many others have on theirs.
There is perhaps another aspect to gluttony. This involves a lack of faith on our part. We do not trust that God will supply all our needs. So we take measures of our own to assure that the needs of our stomach (the most concrete of our needs) are met.
Of course, the needs we may be attempting to slake with food include love. God can supply that, too. Again, however, we must trust Him first. That can be difficult for those who did not experience much love in childhood.
Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble, gobble.
Would that I were clever enough to time this post…. :)
Great ideas here, Anna. Our abundance should move each of us to generosity with those less fortunate. I suspect that during the “holidays” food banks and such efforts do receive additional gifts… but the hunger is year-round.
As for lack of faith in God’s future provision, this makes me think of our recently-rescued year-old pup. Coming from a rescue kennel, we were not surprised that she wolfed down (almost “inhaled”) her meals. Her regular, filling meals have helped her slow down a bit, but it will still take a while to wean her from that behavior which was doubtless necessary during her time on the streets.
Happy Thanksgiving to you, as well.
That our Jack was not immune to certain overindulgences humanizes him for me. On the other hand, had he exercised more and smoked less, we might have had even more of his wonderful mind and heart to indulge in!
Yes, C.S. Lewis was extremely candid about his own shortcomings. A mere man, just like the rest of us.
Would that he had lived longer. I’ve never smoked a day in my life, in part because my mother was a smoker and I worried greatly about its effect on her health.
I am, however, sympathetic to the people of her generation (born in 1929) who. were led by Hollywood and compromised medical authorities to dismiss the actual dangers of tobacco. So sad.
When I look at pictures of Americans from the Depression and WW2 era it’s striking how thin they are especially compared to today. We really do not know food hardship or have especially active lives, yet I have only myself to blame.
Yes, people used to live healthier lives, with a more natural balance between work and leisure. And our leisure used to involve much more physical activity. I’m fortunate to live on modest acreage in the woods… even at 70, minor home repairs, turning fallen trees into firewood, and walking two energetic dogs provides a pleasant balance to sitting in front of my computer monitor.