Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony
1.
Gluttony: From the Middle English glotonie, 'gluttony'; the Middle
French glotoier, 'to eat greedily'; the Old French gloton, 'a glutton';
the Latin glutto, 'a glutton', derived from gluttire, 'to swallow',
from gula, 'the throat' or 'gullet' (see 'gullible'); and the Greek
delear, 'a bait', and deleazo, 'to entice' or 'catch by bait'. In
Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:34, Jesus, contrasting the crowd's reactions
to himself and John the Baptist, says that they regard him as a phagos,
'a glutton' or 'man given to eating' (unlike John, who neither ate
nor drank). There is no other mention of gluttony in the New Testament.
2.
To overindulge.
The word gluttony stems from the Latin gluttire, meaning to swallow
or gulp down, but is also understood to mean overindulgence in any
material item - as though, having given up on the promises of the
afterlife, one is determined to enjoy oneself here on Earth. Most
often, however, the word was (and continues to be) associated with
excessive eating.
According to legend, gluttony became a sin because (in the case of
overindulgence in drink) it would cause a hangover and, in turn, prevent
a person from attending church. True or not, the legend demonstrates
that gluttony is a sin more complex than a mere propensity to overeat.
Religious thinker Thomas Aquinas wrote that gluttony is not about
"... any desire of eating and drinking, but an inordinate desire
...leaving the order of reason, wherein the good of moral virtue consists."
Nevertheless, the term "glutton" summons but one image:
that of a person whose sin is made evident by a corpulent body and
especially a big belly.
Catholic teachings outline not one but five ways in one can eat and
drink like a glutton: not only is it wrong to consume too much, but
also to eat or drink too soon, too expensively, too eagerly, or too
daintily. If your toast must be a specific shade of brown and buttered
just so, you're a glutton: you devote too much mental energy to your
food rather than to matters of the spirit.
Like lust, gluttony is a sin of the flesh. It is similarly considered
one of the lesser sins, perhaps because it is easier for the glutton
to change his or her habits when confronted with evidence of the transgression:
that round belly is pretty hard to ignore. However, it remains a sin
because of its tendency to reduce us to the level of animals, which
lack a sense of self-control; similarly, when we drink to excess,
we lose our sense of reason - another thing that separates us from
the lower creatures