How to Not Do Gluttony

Normalized Overconsumption, Narratives of Temperance, and the Joy of Controlling Gluttony

1. The Overconsumption Norm

I have a rough history with moderation.

In elementary school whenever I had access to pizza or candy I’d eat and eat until I’d get sick. In high school I didn’t know how to stop drinking after starting. In college I would run over 60 miles a week and get frustrated when I couldn’t go further.

I struggle with temperance; I prefer Gluttony.

In retrospect, it’s hard to tell whether I had a natural predisposition toward Gluttony or if I was just raised in a world that accommodated my disinterest in moderation.

Anti-moderation is a normalized way of inhabiting the Western world. Over-consumption has become the new consumption. We see it in our restaurant portions, the never-ending parade of fitness hacks, the 15-second postscripts on sports gambling commercials offering resources for what to do if you can’t stop placing bets, and the cheap products overflowing our landfills. Summarizing the way Gluttony extends into the consumeristic space, the writer Jennifer Price notes,

In the global-market, high-tech late twentieth century, Americans make only a tiny percentage of the items we personally use—and in an urban society of comparative anonymity, we use the things we buy to create ourselves. The clothes, the sound systems, the books, computers, cars and bumperstickers: we use these not only as key tools to work and to have fun, but also to act, think and communicate. Gifts, too — and one could argue that an upscale mall is an outsize gift arcade — have become essential and abundant fuel for social relationships. We give gifts to mark important events, to reward and motivate, to tell stories about the places we travel. And shopping itself can be as much a social outing as a quest for goods. Buying something is at once an economic act, a social act and an act of creativity and imagination. And it's been shown that many Americans prefer shopping to sex.¹

This overconsumption is helped along by market competition, which often tries to increase production and lower costs by lowering the quality of their products. These factors increase the availability of consumables to even the lowest-income members of society. While these products may have once been restricted to the elite, privileged peripherals of a society – which is essentially the historical standard – the modern world makes myriad objects of Gluttony easily accessible across all income and education levels.

Francisco de Goya, Glutton Eating by Himself (c.1812-1813), via JSTOR

But this process of constant consuming operates like a reverse hunger — the more we consume, the more desperate we become to consume more. So in a sense, perhaps this immoderation and availability is simply a marketer’s way of targeting the impulse that drives us back again and again to pleasures: our addictive tendencies.

Unfortunately, these tendencies might just be a feature of modern culture. This is because, as theologian Kent Dunnington argued, our society fails to provide “nonaddictive modes” for experiencing pleasure.² In other words, our culture doesn’t offer any vision for the good life that doesn’t involve overconsumption.

Addiction is a very strong word, and maybe you don’t think it relates to you. But it might. You might not struggle with narcotics, but you might struggle when you realize there’s no chocolate cake left in the house, or when you open your Instagram craving for the slot machine of new likes and follows to drop down, or when you find you don’t feel good about yourself until you’ve put in an extra hour at the office.

As the theologian John Smith notes, “In our modern context, Gluttony transcends mere overeating; it has come to symbolize a cultural compulsion to overindulgence in all areas of life—a phenomenon that undermines the discipline of grace and the proper ordering of desire.”³

Dunnington argues that we need to squarely confront these realities. Whether you’re an addict or ascetic, paying attention to our desires is crucial — they’re a mirror that show “us who we truly are.”⁴

Yet, in some ways, many ascetic strategies for controlling Gluttony almost feel like another thing to consume. Even though they’re advertised as tactics to alleviate overconsumption, they’re marketed like any other transient consumer trend. Just think of Dry January, No-Spend Month, or sensory deprivation retreats. They’re faddish quick-fixes – typically unhelpful in the long-run.

Fighting Gluttony isn’t as simple as a juice cleanse or a positive psychology life hack. It isn’t tamed through the simple development of new habits — though new habits help. Taming Gluttony is more concerned with cultivating temperance.

As such, temperance isn’t just a helpful skill; it’s a key feature among those who’ve learned to live the best lives.

Yet understanding temperance starts with understanding Gluttony.

2. The Two Roads: The Gluttonous or the Temperate

The 13^th century Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote that Gluttony is an “inordinate desire” because it rejects “moderation in accordance with the rational order of nature.” One can tell whether they’ve strayed into gluttonous territory when their consumption “diverts the soul from its higher end.”⁵

Personally, I lean in when I hear Aquinas discuss Gluttony. Born to a particularly noble and well-off family, Aquinas essentially had a life of ease and unending resources carved out for him. But he rejected it in favor of joining up with the Dominican Order, a Christian sect his aristocratic family didn’t approve of. On his way to join this regime, his brothers kidnapped him, brought him back to the family castle, and held him prisoner there until he came to his senses.

Allegra Kent, Gluttony, Life (1960), via JSTOR

It didn’t work. His brothers even hired a sex worker to dissuade him from committing to celibacy, but Aquinas apparently drove her away with a burning log (as one does). After their attempts to lure Aquinas back failed, one family member eventually helped him escape through a window in the middle of the night.

After his escape, Aquinas went on to write some of the greatest works of philosophy in human history. And it was all made possible through his simple determination to reject the plenty of his youth and chase a lifestyle of abstinence, charity, and chastity.

In one sense, Aquinas’ story is about someone throwing caution to the wind, rejecting conventional wisdom, and emptying himself for the sake of something greater.

But the real story, I think, is about a person who followed the path toward true wisdom. When we frame his story theologically, Aquinas reached his decision through a clear and logical assessment of the two roads his life could’ve taken: the gluttonous or the temperate.

Maybe Aquinas recognized that the fullness of joy would’ve been better realized through the latter rather than the former. Perhaps growing up on privilege allowed him to see the diverging roads for what they really were.

Seven hundred years earlier, Lady Philosophy, the character that guides Boethius’ prisoner through the annals of moral nomadism, taught that those who devote their lives to the accumulation of power, wealth, social influence, or pleasures will perpetually keep the contentment of having “enough” at arms length.⁶

All of these pursuits, achievements, or possessions were really just “shadows of happiness.”⁷ They sidetrack us from finding any sufficient treatment for the God-shaped holes in all our hearts because they ultimately “cannot bring us to the destinations they promise.”⁸

Put another way, Lady Philosophy shows that the fulfilment we might believe lies at the bottom of the carton of ice cream, the end of our Netflix series, the next Hinge match, is just a chimera. The itches we’re really trying to scratch are existential. Overconsumption cannot solve our longings because all things that are consumable exist on an entirely different plane of reality than our most fundamental soul-longings.

Gregory the Great described Gluttony along similar lines: “Excess in eating is not a matter of mere physical appetite but a disorder of the will, whereby the soul neglects its true nourishment in favor of temporal, bodily satisfaction.”⁹

This is why Gluttony has a lot in common with idolatry. John Piper likened Gluttony to a “silent idolatry in which our appetites dictate our desire, thus robbing us of the self-discipline that honors God.”¹⁰ Gluttony behaves as if ancillary cravings are ultimate.

The cancerous part of idol worship is that it prevents us from finding fulfillment in God because it disorders the proper ordering of our loves. It’s why those caught in addiction are so unhappy. It’s not “because they choose to be unhappy, but because their will is in such a condition that it can’t choose what would ultimately make them happy.”¹¹

Perhaps when Aquinas chose a life of uncertainty over a life of endless resources he was actually choosing the road that would grant the most joy. He chose a life with God that freed him from Gluttony rather than a life of privilege that would’ve been ruled by Gluttony.

Yet, while vilifying pleasures and committing to total abstinence might seem wise, it isn’t necessarily the only or true cure for Gluttony.

3. Renunciation/Enjoyment

While some think of temperance as rejecting all pleasures and pursuing total abstinence, temperance is more about knowing the right moments to enjoy pleasures and the right moments to renounce them. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “There is a fine, often overlooked, line between a healthy enjoyment of the senses and an indulgence that slowly overwhelms the soul—a subtle encroachment that threatens our inner order.”¹²

Finding this line may require a proper understanding of how to enjoy creation. The apostle Paul warned against overindulging in creation (Eph. 5:16; Rom. 1:24-32), but he never rejected creation.

The impulse to reject creation is a Gnostic idea, not a Christian one.¹³ While congruence with Jesus’ lifestyle is the best way to live our lives (1 Cor. 11:1; Eph. 5:1), we don’t have to interpret this as a total rejection of earthly pleasure.

Mainly because, it doesn’t seem like Jesus Himself rejected all worldly pleasures (see Matt. 9:14-15; Luke 7:34, 15:32, 24:21-23; John 2:6-11). Jesus attended a wedding where He created 120-180 gallons of wine for a presumably already tipsy afterparty. He feasted enough to make critics call him a glutton and drunkard.

John Calvin famously responded to depictions of Jesus as a teetotaling ascetic: “We are nowhere forbidden to laugh, or to be satisfied with food, or to annex new possessions to those already enjoyed by ourselves or our ancestors, or to be delighted with music, or to drink wine.”¹⁴ We’re never told to stop enjoying food or drink or nature; instead, we’re told that in whatever “we eat or drink” or “do,” we should just do it all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). Inhabiting the world in an either/or posture of vilifying all pleasures or letting them dominate us — addiction or asceticism — is neither realistic nor helpful.

C.S. Lewis also noticed this tendency. So he recommended that we embrace what he called “the blessedly two-edged character” of Christianity.¹⁵

It’s the task of balancing the weird complexity of being able to call something in creation “good” without, on one edge, vilifying it, or, on the other edge, being mastered by it. In this sense, it’s quite similar to Aquinas’ temperance (i.e., the ability to “not shun all pleasures, but just those that are immoderate or contrary to reason”¹⁶).

Yet Lewis’ idea isn’t just about finding a good midpoint, but about training the pleasure impulse itself into an instrument that turns our attention toward what matters most.

The theologian Christopher Watkin builds upon Lewis’ idea from a spiritual formation perspective. He argues that instead of looking for a “perfect middle,” we should approach pleasures through a spectrum of “renunciation” and “enjoyment.”¹⁷

Renunciation is a way of being in the world without condemning it, elevating ourselves above it, or assimilating to it. Enjoyment is a way of soaking in the things God has called good, while also realizing that we could function perfectly well without them. And when we feel so inclined, we can then turn these things we renounce into things we enjoy – and vice versa.

Renunciation helps us learn to say no to certain pleasures without racking up self-righteousness or judging those who partake. Enjoyment is the barrier that keeps us from experiencing a depressive lack of joy, fun, or delight.

As bioethicist Gilbert Meilander puts it, “Renunciation is necessary lest we immerse ourselves only in the thing, trying to grasp and retain it. Enjoyment is necessary lest renunciation become a principled rejection of the creation itself.”¹⁸

Or, in Lewis’ words, renunciation is the realization that, “Marriage is good, though not for me; wine is good, though I must not drink it; feasts are good, though today we fast.”¹⁹

And enjoyment is the realization that “Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”²⁰

Out of everything I’ve read, this seems like the best model for taming Gluttony.

4. Relational Temperance

I’m convinced that temperance — the disciplining of Gluttony — is a key component of experiencing the joys of life with God.

Augustine described temperance as something of an overarching virtue that fertilizes a moral order within and outside of ourselves. “Our body, too, is a sacrifice when we chasten it by temperance, if we do so as we ought, for God's sake, that we may not yield our members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but as instruments of righteousness unto God.”²¹

Thankfully, temperance is more of a reality amongst church-attending Christians. A recent study notes that, on average, Christians are far less likely to binge eat and binge drink than non-Christians.²²

I haven’t mastered my Gluttony, but I’ve come a long way. Before I eat, I try to frame it as enjoyment rather than indulgence. I remind myself that exercise is for health rather than hedonic accomplishment or vainglory. When I have a drink, I no longer feel the compulsion to have another.

It’s not drab abstinence. I call it “relational temperance” – in that all of my consumption is ushered into my communion with God. It even pours into my relationship with others as we work out temperance in community. It’s not another life-hack or quick-fix; it’s reorienting the heart until consumption itself becomes a vehicle into God’s presence. And it makes me so, so happy.

1. Jennifer Price, Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 196.

2. Kent Dunnington, Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice (Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011), 4 ebook.

3. John Smith, “Gluttony, Self-Control, and the Modern Christian,” Journal of Christian Ethics 20, no. 2 (2002): 123–45 (at 130).

4. Dunnington, Addiction and Virtue, 1-6 ebook.

5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), II-II, Q4, A2.

6. See Ross D. Inman, Christian Philosophy as a Way of Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), 60.

7. Boethius, Consolations of Philosophy, 3.1, 47.

8. Boethius, Consolations, 3.8, 60.

9. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, Book X, chapters 5–7.

10. John Piper, “America’s Most Tolerated Sin.” Desiring God. March 2008. https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/americas-most-tolerated-sin.

11. James K.A. Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine (Grand Rapids, Mai: Brazos,2019), 69.

12. GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1908), 75.

13. Thomas Traherne, Centuries (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico, 2020), xii.

14. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), Book III, Chapter 19, Section 9.

15. C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmens, 2014), 158.

16. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Sacred Text Archives, 1974, I-II. Q60.

17. Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022), 492.

18. Gilbert Meilaender, The Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought of C.S. Lewis (Toronto, CN: Regent College Publishing, 2003), 32-33.

19. Lewis, God in the Dock, 158.

20. C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 116.

21. Augustine, The City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1984), Book X, Chapter 6.

22. Alexa Lardieri, “Religious People Drink Less than Those with No Religious Affiliation,” US News, March 6, 2019, https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-03-06/study-actively-religious-people-drink-less-than-those-with-no-religious-affiliation.