A Glutton for Punishment

I told you I was going to write about gluttony.

Between the amount of food America consumed on Thursday and the amount of stuff (yes, I just used the word "stuff", which I will define as material goods that have little to no importance - mainly the result of impulse shopping incited by the atmosphere and advertisements of the occasion) people bought on Friday, I think the relevance of this post does not need discussing. Do not worry, though. I am not writing to condemn or judge. I, too, ate way too much on Thursday. Also, I ended up shopping on Friday - granted, I didn't wake up (or stay up) at an ungodly hour of the day to storm a retail store. I went at a perfectly decent time: 3:00PM and ended up with 2 DVDs, shower gel, and shampoo.

Concerning gluttony, Frederick Buechner (can't you tell that I'm reading Buechner at this time?) said this:

"A glutton is one who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition" (35).

The quote caught my attention because I believe that there is some truth to it. As humans, our natural tendency is to overcompensate. Even if the real problem is something completely different, we run to things that we know and have control over (usually the tangible things) and excessively obsess. Why do you think we come up with terms like "emotional eaters" and "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?" Ever see those romantic movies where the heroine have just gotten her heart broken and decides to make it better by eating ice cream right out of its container? It's just like that.

Most of all, we (this is me speaking on behalf of all humankind; I try not to generalize, but this is pretty typical according to my observations) crave the intangibles like love, acceptance, confidence, encouragement, intimacy, etc., but when we don't know where to go to get those (and of course, the people we expect to give us these things disappoint us one way or another - they just fall short), we turn to other controllable things to overcompensate. We turn to things like emotional eating, not eating, relationships (a.k.a relying on one person to fulfill everything - yikes!), workaholic-ness (this word does not exist), sex with the wrong people for the wrong reason, super frantic religious piety, and much much more. We have the tendency to look for the right thing in all the wrong places.

The cure for spiritual malnutrition is Jesus Christ.


This might be scary for some people (or, really, everyone - only some of us admits this) because we can't be in control. We can't demand grace or love from him. We don't deserve the it. We can't earn it either. These things have to be given freely. The most amazing thing is this: he did give it freely.

For starters, "Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God" (1 Peter 3:18). He didn't stop at just that, though. He came "that [you, me, everyone really] may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10). That thing your soul crave for - he wants to give that to you.

So I guess it's time to look at our life and get the bigger picture, not just the view one has when one's head is inside the icebox.