Our Savior is Born! Now Bring Me Some Figgy Pudding!

by Chandin Persaud, Mars Hill Member & Cupcake Conquerer in Christ

I love celebrating Jesus’ Birthday.  I love His beautiful birthday tree, His birthday songs and His birthday goodies, oh yes, the birthday goodies.  Christmas cookies, truffles, candy, hot coco, chocolate, nuts, chocolate covered nuts, and sweet pastry bread, all of the delicacies that one could desire.  And this is why I have grief around Jesus’ birthday.  It is terribly difficult to not use the birth of my Savior as an excuse to sin.  For me, resisting gluttony is more difficult this time of year than any other.
The partaking of food is a huge part of our celebrations, and it is biblical, but it is often used as a justification to “let loose’ and indulge for months.  This overshoots celebration and winds up in selfish gratification rather than God glorification.  The average American gains multiple pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas.* Repentance usually doesn’t come until the New Year, where 45% of women’s New Year resolutions are to lose weight.**  Food has become the god of our nation.  At the heart of all of this is sin and it needs to be treated as such.

One of the many problems with gluttony is that it is seen as a “small issue,’ if at all seen as a sin, even in the church.  While studying this subject I found a plethora of Christian weight loss resources, complete with photos of smiling women resembling girls on the cover of Fitness or Shape magazine with captions of out-of-context Scripture: “I can do all through Him who strengthens me!”  (Actually, those resources are a great way to lose weight because I lost my appetite just reading about them!)  Not a mention of sin or Christ or righteousness or repentance.  Yet Scripture repeatedly tells us the dangers of over indulgence.   Proverbs 23:2 tells us to “put a knife to [our] throat if [we] are given to gluttony” and to not join those who drink much wine or gorge themselves on meat (v.20).    Gluttony is a big deal and is a spiritual decay that slowly devours our righteousness.
Paul says in Philippians 3:19 that for enemies of the cross, “their end is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.” Their problem isn’t just overeating, but rather having seriously mixed up priorities.  Their mind set is on the temporal and not on the eternal.  They live for instant self-satisfaction and self-gratification rather than eternal satisfaction and God’s glorification.  They seek pleasure, not God. 

Thomas Aquinas, one of the very early church fathers, is best known for his writings and beliefs on gluttony.  He prepared a list of 5 different ways gluttony can be committed: Eating too soon, too expensively, too much, too eagerly, and too daintily.  Why?  Because gluttony never looks to heaven in the feast; but is obsessed with his stomach, unthankful and never satisfied, and blasphemes his Feeder.  Is expensive food bad?  Is eating an early lunch bad?  No, it is the motive behind these actions that causes gluttony.

Gluttony is a spiritual cancer because it spreads to other areas in our lives.  When we lose control in a “little” area, such as our plate, how are we to have self-control or discipline in other areas of our lives like our worship, ministry, money, sex, and temper?  It may take a long time for it to spread into these other areas, but by the time we realize we’ve lost all self-control the damage will have already been done.  But it is important to remember that nothing is beyond the redemptive hand of Christ. 

I didn’t begin to struggle with food until I met Jesus in the spring of 2005.   I stopped partying and doing drugs when I came to Christ and I felt pretty proud of myself, which was a sin I noticed much later.  But, strangely, my temptation had become food.  I could hardly control myself around a plate of cookies at a community group and at dinner I found that I was obsessed with the plate in front of me.  I hadn’t been like this before.  I noticed other areas where I had been disciplined were weakening.  I struggled to control my temper and would blow up at many of the people I loved.  But the truth of it is that I had traded “big” sins for a “smaller” one.  I traded the sins of drunkenness and drug use, which aren’t accepted by Christians, to gluttony, which often is.  My appetite hadn’t changed much from when I was a non-Christian.  I still craved things outside of Christ more than Christ himself, which was so utterly disgusting. 

It has been a long battle with this sin and I am learning how to fight.  If I were to be honest I would admit that the reason I want to fight gluttony most of the time is not because I want to be holy, but because I do not want to gain weight.  My eyes were opened to what was going on while studying Romans 6:12-14. 

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.  Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.  For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace.

This shows there is a fight in the life of a believer for the throne in our bodies.  The interesting thing is that this throne always belongs to something out side of ourselves; we are always a slave to something-either to Christ or to sin (John 8:34, Lk 13:16). It shows there are challengers to this throne.  Sex, appetite, comfort, laziness, and many other bodily passions are contending for this spot in our bodies.  It is interesting that Paul here is talking specifically about our body.  There is not just “the throne of our life” but the throne of our bodies.  Once the rebel sin takes the throne, it controls our passions — our desires (v.12).  Paul is using warfare imagery here, and our bodily members are weapons.  They are used for unrighteousness when sin is on the throne and are weapons for righteousness when the rightful King is ruling.  For example, the desire for food when we are hungry serves us well.  We know we need nourishment and can care for our bodies in a healthy way.  But when sin takes the throne of our bodies, the desire becomes gluttonous or can evolve into disordered eating.  The enemy is ruling.  And our lips, tongue, mouth, and stomach become weapons of unrighteousness, waging war on the kingdom of God.  The fight begins at desire. 

When I am tempted by my desire for more than my fill I ask myself, “who reigns?” or “who is on the throne in my body?  Am I going to allow this cupcake to kick King Jesus off His throne, which He purchased with his own blood?  Is my stomach going to be a weapon against the kingdom of God or is it going to fight against the enemy?”  I still struggle in this area, but most of the time I meditate on these verses and ask myself these questions, and then I am able to put down the food and walk away.  Not so much for the sake of my hips, but for the sake of holiness and His kingdom. 

Please keep your weak brothers and sisters in mind this Christmas season.  If they say no one of your homemade cookies, candies, or pies that you slaved over, do not feel personally insulted and insist and guilt them into having another: they could have already had their fill of goodies.  This is a time of celebrating the gift of our Savior who graciously forgives our sin and cleanses us of our filth, which includes too many of his birthday cookies.  There are always times for celebration and enjoyment of God’s good gifts throughout the year, but the time for holiness and sanctification is now.

*www.healthguidance.org 
**www.associatedcontent.com