When is eating sinful

The Israelites spoke of their past captivity with fondness and God's present provision with disdain. Returning to those cruel, whip-wielding task masters didn't seem too high of a cost to get some meat and onions.

Trusting God was too hard. The taste of old food too good. How often do we do the same? Slavery to sin seems worth it if we can indulge in whatever we want. You might be asking, what's so wrong with gluttony? Is it really sinful to eat too much, to need a sweet fix, to feel out of control with food?

The Israelites may have wondered the same thing. Yet their greedy longings invoked God's wrath because it was a rejection of Him:. Say to the people, "Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat, for you have wept in the hearing of the Lord, saying, "Who will give us meat to eat?

For it was better for us in Egypt. You shall not eat just one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have wept before him saying, "Why did we come out of Egypt?

While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people with a very great plague. Therefore the name of that place was called Kibroth-Hattaavah which means "the graves of greediness" , because there they buried the people who had the craving. Maybe you've never thought of overeating as a sin before. Maybe it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. But gluttony is the sister sin of drunkenness. Both are too much of a morally neutral thing.

Drinking wine is not a sin, but too much wine leads to drunkenness, an overindulgence which persuades our loyalty away from Christ to alcohol. Likewise, too much food leads to gluttony, an overindulgence which persuades our loyalty from Christ to a good meal. Gluttony is just more socially acceptable than drunkenness. But when you lose the ability to say no, you can be assured that you are no longer walking in the Spirit who bears the fruit of self-control. If overeating is not a sin, if it is just a "bad habit" to be reformed, then worldly answers like diets and meal plans are the answer.

But if it is a sin, then it is to be grieved and repented of. We need to learn about God to love Him, said Seraphim, but when our stomach is full, the intellect becomes sluggish making it difficult to learn about God. Anything carried to excess, such as eating, may become detrimental. As a reminder of this, many religions observe a period of fasting when adherents eat and drink only at set times.

We strive to balance physical needs with spiritual needs. This means practicing self-restraint to distance oneself from the body — to concentrate on oneself as a spiritual being and to grow closer to God.

There are many names for God in the Bible. Gluttony leads to unhealthy levels of desire that draw our eyes away from God sin and onto that next bite, that next possession, that next conquest. When my heart is lead astray by gluttony, I miss out on all that God has provided for me in Christ. Down the road of gluttony is wanting that will never be satisfied. For anything to be a sin is simply for it to be condemned by some religion or other.

There is no question whatsoever about whether gluttony has been condemned by most and perhaps all major religions. Eating food to excess differs from say consumption of alcohol, for example, which is totally prohibited by some religions, but not by others. There is an objective aspect to gluttony which is also not controversial, namely that it is unhealthy.

It is not at all controversial that gluttony is a major causal factor in diabetes, heart problems, etc. Eating excessively is not considered a sin but highly discouraged.

Wastefulness, however, is prohibited. If he must fill his stomach, then let him fill one third with food, one third with drink and one third with air. Greed commanded them to be stingy, and they obeyed; it ordered them into alienation, and they obeyed; and it commanded them to sin, and they sinned. There is no question in Roman Catholic theology that gluttony is morally wrong.

The harder question may be what comprises the sin of gluttony. For something to be sinful there are several elements that must be met: it must be morally wrong, the person must have knowledge that an action or inaction is morally wrong and the person must freely intend to do the act or not to act. However, if someone has an eating or drinking disorder, there is a question about whether that person is freely choosing the moral wrong.

A sin could lie in refusal to seek help for the disorder rather than gluttony itself. These seeds of habit energy will bear unpleasant fruit someday. What are the definition and consequences of being gluttonous? Gluttony is defined as the over-indulgence or lack of self-restraint in food, drink, or wealth items, especially as status tokens. Merriam-Webster defines gluttony as "habitual greed or excess in eating With the alarming rate of modern obesity we see today, perhaps many have forgotten or forsaken the warnings against gluttony and its deadly consequences.

Furthermore, Church leaders from the rigorous Middle Ages developed a more extensive view of gluttony, as St.

Thomas Aquinas did in his work called Summa Theologica. Thomas Aquinas emphasized a list of five ways to commit gluttony:. Aquinas resolves that "gluttony denotes inordinate concupiscence in eating"; the first three ways are related to the food itself, while the last two related to the manner of eating. He declares that abstinence from food and drink overcome the sin of gluttony, and the act of abstinence is fasting. According to John Piper , there are a lot of reasons for obesity in our culture.

It's not just that we eat a lot of bad food. We're also pretty inactive and don't do a lot of walking, running, biking, etc. Oftentimes obesity issues are connected as much to activity issues as they are to what goes into our mouths. Muscles are designed to burn food, but if they aren't being used then any amount of food is going to result in obesity. But "gluttony" is a better word to use in this context rather than "obesity," because overeating is where the problem is, not how much you weigh.