Article
Creed
Eating
Seven Deadly Sins
Sin
7 min read

Gluttony’s unconscious self-image of emptiness

In the seventh of a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, Graham Tomlin digests gluttony’s distorting obsession with food.

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Ramen

A recent report highlighted the problem of obesity in our society. The percentage of British adults who are overweight has risen by 11 per cent since 1993 to a whopping 64 per cent of the population, with almost one in four British adults classified as obese. In the USA it is even worse with 36 per cent of people classified as obese. And that has a knock-on effect on an already creaking NHS and healthcare systems elsewhere in the western world. The bill for the taxpayer for obesity is rising to unsustainable levels.  

There are many causes of obesity, some of them physiological, some genetic, some economic, with poverty often linked to poor diet. Eating healthily costs. Yet Christianity has always seen a spiritual side to the problem, relating to our relationship with food. As part of this diagnosis, Christian moralists have typically called out the sin of gluttony. 

Strange though it may seem, in the earliest lists of the deadly sins, gluttony used to head the list as the worst of them all. Pope Gregory in the sixth century wrote: “unless we first tame the enemy dwelling within us, namely our gluttonous appetite, we have not even stood up to engage in the spiritual combat.”  

Later assessment of the rank of gluttony in the list of deadly sins has taken a kinder view. Thomas Aquinas was easier on gluttons, because, for him, like lust, overeating mainly concerns the body rather than the soul, and as we have to feed ourselves anyway, it is understandable and less serious than the other sins. When Dante’s pilgrim arrives in hell, he finds the gluttons in the third circle of upper hell, not far from the top, tantalisingly within sight of the most succulent tree whose “crop of tempting fruit ambrosial odours spread”, but unable to climb to taste them. For him, gluttons are certainly better than the prideful, the envious, wrathful, slothful or covetous. The only sin that seems less harmful to him is lust.   

Obsessive dieting can be just as much a sign of gluttony as overeating. 

Our image-conscious society tends to look down on people who are overweight. Yet gluttony denies a simple rule that the fat are sinful and the thin are virtuous. When we think of gluttony, we maybe think of stuffing food into our mouths with no thought of tomorrow, over-indulgence to a huge degree. Yet the sin of gluttony has always been seen as wider than that, including that fastidiousness about food that obsesses over what you can and cannot eat. C.S. Lewis writes about the kind of old lady who simply asks for ‘a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, the teeniest, weeniest bit of really crisp toast’, adding, ‘Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it is to others.’ Obsessive dieting can be just as much a sign of gluttony as overeating.  

Gluttony then is an inordinate obsession with food, drink or plain consumption. It is allowing food to take up a distorted place in our lives, just as lust is allowing sex to become an unhealthy obsession. 

We have a fascination with food. A TV advert lingers slowly over a picture of a chocolate sponge, soaked in brandy, with rich cream being poured over it, all with a soft, seductive voiceover describing the scene – a culinary striptease. The cookbook section of my local bookshop is far larger than the religious section – who had ever heard of celebrity chefs thirty years ago? Now they are everywhere. The politics of food is also an area of tricky choices and legislation. Fine food and wine costs both time and money, and poorer families tend to eat less healthily. Should they be banned from doing so for their own good? Should we replace chips and hamburgers with healthy salads in school canteens despite what the kids and their parents want? Where does the health of the nation override personal freedom to eat what you feel like?  

There is one story in the Bible that sheds some light on gluttony. It is the one where Jesus was tempted by the devil. During the temptations, Jesus deliberately goes without food. One of the enticements of the devil is to persuade Jesus to feed himself by the magic trick of turning the desert stones around him into bread. After all, that should be no problem to the Son of God, and it would of course demonstrate his true identity by a display of miraculous power. Jesus replies with some words from the Old Testament:  

“It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”  

The point is that when food becomes a god it becomes dangerous. Food, like sex, has the ability to skew things, and so it must be kept in its proper place, and the evidence of that is all around. The irony of our western problem with obesity is that it occurs at a time when still half the world, three billion people can't afford a healthy diet. one in ten people worldwide go to bed hungry at night and nearly half the deaths of children across the world under 5 are related to undernutrition. In 2006, for the first time, the number of overweight people in the world (1 billion) overtook the number of malnourished people (800 million). First world gluttony is anomalous when related to third world poverty and hunger. 

Gluttony is trying to fill a spiritual vacuum with a physical remedy. It is like taking penicillin for a broken heart. 

But overeating is not the only way of abusing food. Obsessing about quantities is also a sign of bad soul health. Bulimia and Anorexia are not as common as obesity, but they still blight the lives of around 10 per cent of college-age girls in the USA, and in the UK, more young people than ever before are receiving treatment for eating disorders. Suffering from Anorexia, Bulimia or a Compulsive Eating Disorder are not sins, but they are an indicator of something that has gone wrong. Food is not a neutral thing, and in a complex way, our attitudes to food are all bound up with our spiritual and emotional health.  

This begins to point us to the reasons why Christianity has found gluttony a sin. Why do people overeat, or starve themselves? Many studies suggest that these disorders often emerge from a sense of lack of worth. We all know the pattern of comfort eating. When you feel a bit low, a slice of chocolate cake or apple pie can make you feel a whole lot better. Ten pints of lager or a couple of stiff whiskies can help you forget why you felt bad in the first place. Similarly, anorexia or bulimia often emerge out of patterns of unhappiness or self-dislike. The Eating Disorder Association says that such patterns of self-abuse are usually caused by such things as “low self-esteem, family relationships, problems with friends, the death of someone special, problems at work, college or at university, lack of confidence, sexual or emotional abuse. Many people talk about simply feeling ‘too fat’ or ‘not good enough’”. 

Now these of course are extreme cases. Yet they point to the ease with which we use food and drink to fill something missing in our lives, to comfort us when we feel lonely, to satisfy us when we are not just physically, but also spiritually hungry.  

The Ethicist Peter Kreeft puts it well:  

“The motivation for gluttony is the unconscious self-image of emptiness: I must fill myself because I am empty, ghostlike, worthless.”  

Gluttony is trying to fill a spiritual vacuum with a physical remedy. It is like taking penicillin for a broken heart – there’s nothing wrong with penicillin, but it doesn’t do much good for a restless soul, and too much of it can lead to all kinds of problems.  

Gluttony strikes when the connection between food and its proper purpose is broken. Food is given to sustain the body, to enrich our communal life and to give pleasure to the taste. It is not there to comfort the isolated and lonely, to bolster a fragile self-image or to substitute for mediation or prayer. If you begin to recognise that you are regularly eating alone for spurious reasons, for reasons that seem different from the purpose of food itself, that may be when you need to watch out for the place of food in your life, or to get some help.  

Gluttony rears its head when we begin to get food out of proportion. They key issue here is control. The overeater loses control over how much she eats. She is unable to stop herself taking the extra large Coke, the extra cream on the pudding, to finish off the packet of biscuits rather than stop at one. She believes the lie that it is impossible for her to control his eating. For the anorexic or bulimic, the issue is the other way round. For many sufferers from such diseases, or those who might have a tendency in that direction, the problem is too tight a control over what they eat, and their very identity becomes bound up with their illness. So here, the remedy is to learn to give up control, to re-form their identity around something other than eating habits, so that food can take its normal place as something to be enjoyed.  

If the abuse of food often comes from a deep sense of dis-ease, a loss of self-worth, then the Christian answer to finding a true sense of being worth something can come only from the source of life himself, the one described in the Bible as the ‘bread of life’ - the one who gives food for the soul. Speaking of the emptiness that gluttony tries to fill with food, Peter Kreeft goes on to give the Christian answer to that emptiness:  

“Only a knowledge of God’s love for me can fill that emptiness, make me a solid self, give me ultimate worth.”  

When our desperate search for love is met by the deepest and most satisfying love of all, the love of a God who is Love, these deepest hurts can begin to be healed.

  

Essay
Aliens
Belief
Creed
Film & TV
10 min read

Who do you think Doctor Who is?

Why the Doctor is (and isn’t) like Jesus

Barnabas Aspray is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at St Mary’s Seminary and University.

Doctor Who and River Song converse
Doctor Who and River Song ponder metaphysics.

After two series with Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, the future of Doctor Who is uncertain. It may be time for the world’s longest-running sci-fi show, with 892 episodes to date, to come to an end. Or it may not.  

Doctor Who is one of the few sci-fi shows with an appeal that reaches beyond typical sci-fi fans. It ranges across every conceivable genre – romance, horror, period drama, epic – to name but a few. The Doctor’s time-travels may take you to Elizabethan England or the year 400,000 C.E. on a planet made of diamond – you won’t know until you start watching. The secret to the show’s longevity is the Doctor’s ability to ‘regenerate’ whenever he (or she) dies, reappearing with a new body and personality. Gatwa was the fifteenth actor to play the Doctor since William Hartnell’s inaugural performance on 23rd November 1963. (However, I secretly suspect that C.S. Lewis was the ‘zeroth’ Doctor, since he died the day before the first episode was aired. Coincidence?) 

Science fiction has the unique capacity to do thought-experiments without limits. What if you could go back in time and kill Hitler before he rises to power? What if we could transfer our brains into machines that would enable us to live forever? What if one small act of violence was the only way to save the human race from destruction?  

This article draws attention to just one of the numerous metaphysical and ethical lessons that can be drawn from the show’s stories. I do not discuss the compatibility of its moral ideology with Christian morality, or the place it gives to religion in a world with a scientific explanation for everything. My focus is on a single feature: how the Doctor’s immeasurable power places him in a position like that of Jesus according to the Christian tradition. I shall point to three ways the Doctor reminds us of Jesus, and one way in which the Doctor does not look like Jesus, going down a path that Jesus was tempted to take, but refused. 

A bloke who puts everything right 

In ‘Twice Upon a Time’, Bill Potts asks the first Doctor why he first left his home planet, Gallifrey, to embark on his many adventures. After a few false starts, the Doctor responds like this:  

Doctor: “There is good and there is evil. I left Gallifrey to answer a question of my own. By any analysis evil should always win. Good is not a practical survival strategy. It requires loyalty, self-sacrifice, and love. And so why does good prevail? What keeps the balance between good and evil in this appalling universe? Is there some kind of logic, some mysterious force?” 

Bill Potts: “Perhaps there’s just a bloke.” 

Doctor: “A bloke?” 

Bill Potts: “Yeah. Perhaps there's just some bloke wandering around, putting everything right when it goes wrong.” 

Why does evil never get the upper hand? That is the Doctor’s fundamental question. Is there some logic, some mysterious force, or is there just a ‘bloke’ who keeps putting things right? All three, from a Christian point of view.  

The ultimate triumph of good over evil, according to the Christian story, is thanks to a ‘bloke’ named Jesus who conquered death and rose again so that we might rise again with him at the end of all time. But for Christians, Jesus is not only a ‘bloke’. The Gospel of John equates Jesus with the Logos, a Greek word (where the English word ‘logic’ comes from) to name the rational principle that orders and upholds the universe. The Apostle Paul, in the letter to the Corinthians, also describes Jesus as one ‘by whom all things were created’ and ‘in whom all things hold together’. A ‘mysterious force’ indeed! 

To answer the Doctor’s question, then: there is only one thing that stops evil from getting the upper hand. It can be called a logic, and it can be called a mysterious force. But the logic and the force are not impersonal. They are other names for a bloke named Jesus who wanders around putting everything right.  

A better way of living your life 

After an encounter with the Doctor, nobody is ever the same again. It is not primarily the thrill of adventure or the sight of things more wonderful than can be imagined that changes the Doctor’s companions. It is the example of someone who has devoted their life to save, to heal, to confront evil, and to sacrifice for others. 

These features are brought into sharp focus in a moment when Rose Tyler, one of the Doctor’s companions, believes she’s lost the Doctor forever. Her mother tries to comfort her, and this leads her to reflect on what had been so amazing about her time with him: 

 “It was a better life. And I don’t mean all the travelling and… seeing aliens and spaceships and things… that don’t matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. That you don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no. You have the guts to do what’s right when everyone else just runs away.” 

Like his other companions, Rose saw something in the Doctor which challenged her to live up to a higher moral standard, a standard of courage, compassion, and self-sacrifice.  

Being with the Doctor puts you in extreme situations where your character is tested and refined. You are forced to face your fears and make crucial decisions about what kind of person you are going to be. Those extreme adventures are rarely the end, however. When his companions return to their lives on earth, they have to decide how to handle normality. Will they wistfully pine after the thrills of the past, seeing normal life as dull and boring, or will they use the wisdom and virtue gained from their adventures to bring peace and justice into the world amidst daily life. 

In a similar way, Jesus called his disciples to a higher moral standard, one that prioritises humble, loving service and self-sacrifice. Life with Jesus can be an exhilarating adventure, such as when he calls someone to move and live in a foreign land or to embrace poverty as a lifestyle. But many Christians feel called to follow Jesus in ordinary ways that do not draw attention, and to put his teaching to practice in ordinary everyday life in a way that slowly transforms the world.  

The ultimate sacrifice for the least important 

The Doctor not only calls his companions to live this way – he leads by example. When Wilfred, the grandfather of one of the Doctor’s companions, gets trapped in a control room about to be flooded by radiation, the Doctor realises that there is only one way to save him. He must replace Wilfred in the control room and be exposed to the radiation instead. Wilfred protests that the Doctor should let him die instead of sacrificing himself to save him, and the Doctor responds with frustration:  

Wilfred: “No really, just leave me. I’m an old man, Doctor. I've had my time.” 

Doctor: “Well, exactly. Look at you. Not remotely important. But me? I could do so much more. So much more!” 

Wilfred is not a national President, a scientist about to make a breakthrough in cancer research, or a famous artist whose paintings will enchant the world. The Doctor complains that Wilfred is not worth saving – not by a logic that looks at the worldly ‘importance’ of an individual. Why, then, should his life be spared, especially in exchange for the life of someone far more powerful and ‘important’? 

The Doctor’s frustrated words reveal the moral battle within him. But it does not last long. He knows his duty: to give his life for anyone, no matter how small or unimportant. Every life is worth saving simply because it is a life. He enters the control booth, enabling Wilfred to go free. 

This story combines two features central to Christianity. First, it shows the principle that every human life has equal value. God does not measure people by their ‘importance’, their ‘potential’, or their ‘talent’. There is only one measure for a life: the fact that it is created in God’s image and is therefore loved by God. Every life matters, from the greatest down to the very least.  

Secondly, this story shows the Doctor giving his life in exchange for another. Christians believe that this is what Jesus did for every human being on the cross. Many wise Christians over the centuries have said that Jesus died for each of us as if there were only one of us. As the Doctor did for Wilfred, so Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf. 

The temptations of unlimited power 

Doctor Who often raises the question ‘how should good people wield power?’ The Doctor’s time machine gives him the ability to prevent all catastrophe and evil from ever occurring, yet often he refrains from doing so. At times his companions get angry with him for not using his almost limitless power to save, cure and free everyone throughout history. Once, a companion tries to coerce him into going back in time to prevent the death of her boyfriend. He frequently tries to explain that “some things have to happen this way.” There are fixed points in time that cannot be changed. 

That may sound like a cheap explanation – an escape clause for the script writers. But sometimes the show goes deeper, and then we find out what happens when the Doctor gives in to the temptation to fix everything by force. In one episode, compelled by the desperate need of his closest friends, the Doctor for the first time engages in warfare. After a violent and bloody battle, he saves his friends, but it becomes clear that he has done so at the price of his innocence. When River Song arrives at the end, she accuses him of compromising his moral values to save his friends. He responds defensively: 

Doctor: You think I wanted this? I didn’t do this. This… this wasn’t me! 

River: This was exactly you. All of it. You make them so afraid. When you began, all those years ago, sailing off to see the universe, did you ever think you’d become this? The man who can turn an army around at the mention of his name? Doctor? The word for healer and wise man, throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know. But if you carry on the way you are, what might that word come to mean? To the people of the Gamma Forests, the word “Doctor” means mighty warrior. How far you’ve come! 

This powerful speech reveals two important things. First, using violence against evil is a path that leads to ever-increasing violence. Eventually the once innocent, pacifist Doctor has become a tyrant, imposing his will on the universe. In a similar way, the Gospel of Matthew describes how Jesus, after fasting for forty days in the desert, was visited by the Devil who tempted to use coercive power to establish his kingdom of justice and righteousness: 

The devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’  

Where the Doctor gave in to temptation, Jesus resisted. He refused to impose his kingdom of peace by violence, because to do this is ultimately to worship a principle and force in direct opposition to God’s will and his ways. Instead of raising an army and conquering the world to save those he loves, Jesus chose the way of the cross. The path of self-sacrifice is painful and slow. But it is the only way to bring about an everlasting kingdom built, not on coercion, but on free and loving submission. 

Secondly, River Song’s speech shows that the Doctor’s actions change the very meaning of his name. Will that name come to mean ‘mighty warrior’ instead of ‘healer’ or ‘wise teacher’? Likewise, those who bear the name ‘Christian’ have the power to determine what that name means to the world. The actions of Christians shape the meaning of the name ‘Christ’ to those around them. Christians do not always live in such a way as to make the name of Jesus mean what Jesus would have wanted. What does Jesus want his name to mean? 

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