Two
of the seven deadly sins – lust and gluttony – emphasize bodily appetites. Of
course, some lust and some gluttony involve coveting, wanting to enjoy a sexual
relationship to which one has no right or privilege or a food that belongs to
another. Lust and gluttony may also express greed: an insatiable appetite for
more.
Both
lust and gluttony receive too little attention today.
Lust properly denotes wanting to
possess another person sexually The word's broader connotations that encompass
strong desires for food, drink, money, power, etc., all of which are forms of
envy, greed, or gluttony.
Morally,
lust is wrong because it dehumanizes the object of one's lust, reducing that
person to an instrumental means of satisfying the luster's sexual appetite.
Mutual passion is not lust, distinguished by both persons' equal interest in
giving and receiving pleasure.
Unfortunately,
the presumption that women are male possessions permeates the Bible's
condemnations of male lust are riddled. In Scripture, for example, adultery is
wrong because it violates the claim of the father on unmarried and the husband
on the married woman. This dated and incorrect view of women does not negate
the more basic rejection of lust as dehumanizing.
Contemporary
condemnations of pornography, prostitution, and sexualized product promotions
most helpfully emphasize that dehumanization of a person for the sexual
gratification of another is wrong. Even when the person being dehumanized
participates freely and receives generous remuneration for doing so, the
practices are wrong because they erode human dignity and worth.
Concomitantly,
lust dehumanizes the person who lusts. Lust diminishes aspects of being human
that differentiate us from other animals, especially our self-awareness or
self-transcendence, our ability to love and to be loved, and our limited
autonomy. Lust enslaves one to her or his passion, often causing a person to do
acts later regretted. In lust, a person is less than fully human.
Gluttony
has a similar effect on the glutton. Eating, rather than sex, becomes the
driving passion. The glutton's hunger diminishes self-control (part of limited
autonomy), maybe the ability to love and to be-loved (certainly true for the
morbidly obese unable to move without assistance), and the aesthetic sense
(quantity not quality of food is important). As with lust, that which
diminishes one's humanity ultimately destroys one's spirit.
Today,
people often emphasize the physically destructive aspects of lust and gluttony
more than the spiritual and relational issues. Lust puts one at increased risk
of having sexually transmitted diseases. Gluttony leads to obesity and
increased odds of health problems and dying prematurely. The deadly sins are
illustrative of how the spiritual wisdom of the world's religions has much of
value in spite of being found in the often anachronistic, inaccurate, and
incomplete vessels of ancient scriptures.
How
can the person, whose life is spinning out of control, caught in the grip of
lust or gluttony (or envy or greed) experience transformation, returning from
death to life?
Twelve
Step programs, such as Overeaters Anonymous and Sex Addicts Anonymous, are one
path that many people have found helpful. For the glutton, as for the person
trapped in a life define by lust, envy, or greed, what began as sinful
overindulgence can become a pathological pattern over which the person has no
power or control. These powerful, spiritual programs recognize that what may
have begun as sin, can become pathological illness. Sadly, no Twelve Step program
exists for the pathologically greedy.
Community
offers another path out of gluttony, lust, envy, and greed that many people
have found helpful. The power of community has received particular emphasis
among commercial organizations formed to help people take control of their
eating, e.g., Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. Healthy religious congregations
of all major religious traditions have provided countless people essential
lifesaving assistance in coping with deadly sins, helping people to regain their
humanity by focusing on God and others.
Yet
a third path, perhaps the most difficult, is for the individual tempted or ensnared
by the deadly sins to embark on his or her spiritual journey in solitude, refracting
personal experience and struggles through the prism of other people's
experiences, encountered in oral or written form.
Only
a fool thinks I can do this alone; I
don't need any help. From birth, we have leaned on others to learn how to
walk, to talk, to drive a car, and to live. My parents, when frustrated by my
stubborn independence, would remind me that I could go through life the hard
way, learning everything for myself, or the easy way, learning from others and
their mistakes. The interiority of the spiritual life, and the inability to
experience another's interior life, lulls the unsuspecting into thinking that
the spiritual journey is an exception to learning from others.
Greed,
envy, lust, and gluttony destroy a person's own humanity. They are indeed
deadly sins. What is your path to freedom, your path to living more fully and
abundantly?
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