Acceptable Offering: Gluttony and Greed

When my Sweet Girl was four, she snuck into the pantry to get after the Easter candy.  She crept into the privacy of the bathroom and dove into the contraband.  Her father sensed something was amiss and asked through the door what she was doing.  “MMmmm, nothing”, but upon further inspection, the evidence was there on her face and wrappers littered the floor near the trashcan.  She had been tempted and gave in.  Been there, done that…recently!  In fact, over-indulging led me to make a goal this year…to “not to”…and instead to live in moderation.  But this year, so far…not so good. 🙁

Lately, gluttony is like my own personal and spiritual kudzu infestation – I can’t seem to get rid of it!  As I make headway on one front, it gains the advantage on another.  And, as the kids and I are talking about how our hearts are like a garden and God is the gardener (I know, that’s another post, another time), I can’t think of a better analogy than kudzu.

Once when we were in the middle of an awful drought in Texas, we drove home to New Orleans to visit.  I almost cried when we hit Houston and I saw all the kudzu—it was such a beautiful, brilliant green after all the brown, dried-up vegetation we’d had that year in San Antonio!  But the truth of the matter is that kudzu is considered a major nuisance.  And it is actually worse than a “nuisance” because it crowds out any other plant growing in the same area.  It covers plants, trees, and yards, choking out the native vegetation.  Kudzu is a botanical disaster in the South.

Gluttony (greed/excess) is a sinful response to man’s emptiness.  It tries to creep into the holes in us.  Gluttony attempts to meet our needs, to fill our stomachs, hearts, thoughts, closets, time…and in its’ wake, it creates more and more emptiness.  It is a weed in the garden of your heart, re-seeding itself.

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.  For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (Gal 6:7-8).

The emptiness and futility of gluttony makes it self-perpetuating — it is constant craving, a vicious cycle, a perfectly evil design that leaves us vulnerable. “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Prov 25:28).

For some people, gluttony digs a deeper hole with every bite, every drink, every dollar spent.  For others, gluttony overtakes them with every extra hour at work, every extra hour at the gym, every penny saved; because fanatical self-control is NOT the ultimate answer to the sin of gluttony.  It is just another kind of gluttony.

If most of our thought-life and our time is consumed with counting calories, tweaking our budgets, getting in our workouts, and checking everything off our to-do list, we are NOT better off than those people who gorge and binge and squander.  Rather we are just like them.

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.  My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil.  Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun (Ecc. 2:10-11).

Godly self-control is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22).  Substituting human self-control for overindulgence is just a deception.  The problem is not the behavior, it is in the heart, in the thought-life.  Gluttony and human self-control take over your thought-life and your real life too sometimes.  Godly self-control frees you from your thoughts and leads you back into relationship with God, seeking Him first in your life.

Man’s antidote for emptiness is the Word of God.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”  

But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matt 4:1-4).

Over eating?  Over spending?  Over working?  What can fill that hole?  What can bring us resolution and answers?  The Word.

For the Word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.  Heb 4:12-13.

So Jerry McGuire got it wrong.  As much as we ladies loved to hear that line in the movie, and then elbowed our significant other sharply, another human cannot “complete” us; and neither can another bite, another pair of shoes, another promotion at work or another exercise goal achieved.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim 3:16-17).

We are complete in the Word.