1 March 2026

Contrary Virtue: Contentment (vs. Gluttony and Lust)

2 Peter 1:3-8

As I noted last week, every religion teaches moral behavior to its adherents, and Christianity certainly does as well. But there are certain pitfalls to be avoided in this business of teaching morality. In Christianity, the purpose of our moral teaching is to make those of us inside the faith better servants of God. It is not to criticize those outside our faith. The Old Testament laws were given only to the people of the covenant, and the Jews were never told to impose them on Moabites. In the same way, New Testament moral instruction is for the church, to help followers of Christ become more like him. Jesus makes this clear in his teaching about the “speck in your brother’s eye.” We are to correct ourselves, not outsiders.

Good thing Christians never do that, huh? 

Now, I’m not saying that our morals should be invisible to others or that they’re irrelevant in our engagement with the world. No, our values should be evident, and should inform our public lives. For instance, as long as we live in a democracy, we have the right and privilege and duty to express our values in voting. We should vote for people of good character, if we can find some, and we should vote for candidates whose policies align with our values, if there are any. No, all I’m saying is that we are not called to compel people outside our faith to follow our rules. And yet we Christians have a history of trying to do just that, with the result that we are less known for our own morals than we are for our priggish, judgmental attitude toward everyone else’s morals. It’s a problem. And we are especially famous for trying to impose our rules on other people’s sexual behavior. I don’t know if this is a holdover from our Puritan forebears or what, but Christians often appear to be more obsessed with sex than non-Christians are, which is also a problem.

Anyway, all that’s just a preface to today’s reflections on not one but two of the so-called Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony and Lust. I’m treating them together because, although there are some important differences between the two, they also have much in common. For instance, both begin as good gifts of God – the physical pleasures of food and sex – but both can easily become obsessions that take over people’s lives. Moreover, in our society, both temptations are everywhere. They have both been commodified so as to make some people very rich. And, in the process of becoming mass-market commodities, both have been cheapened and debased, transformed into fleeting, unsatisfying pleasures that add nothing of value to a person’s life. Thus the good gift of sex has been replaced for many by pornography, and the good gift of food has been replaced by Doritos. But let’s hear what the Bible has to say. We read from 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 3-8.

3His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants in the divine nature. 5For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. 8For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Last week I told you that I wanted to deal with the seven deadlies in reverse, not by just saying “Don’t do that!” but by asking “What is the opposite of this evil?” But what are the opposites of gluttony and lust? Your first impulse might be to say, “self-control.” and that surely is important here, but that’s not it. Self-control in this case implies having the will power not to do something, a negative, but the “opposite” I’m looking for is the positive thing that we can fill our lives with that takes the place that gluttony or lust might otherwise have. Besides, self-control by itself almost never works. Look at New Year’s resolution diets. In fact, self-control can become its own obsession. Gluttony is being obsessed with food, but that description applies not only to the person who eats immoderately but also to the person with anorexia. They are two sides of the same evil; either way, the person’s life is ruled by food – one expression leading to excess, the other to deprivation. So, to return to my point, the opposite of gluttony is not just self-control.

[A side note here. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis suggests that there’s yet a third kind of gluttony, which he calls “the gluttony of delicacy.” Today, we could use this phrase to describe that irritating foodie who always knows exactly what spice would have made the food you prepared better and which chic new bistro is the only place where they know how to make authentic couscous. It’s the person who is always banging on about how he can perceive “hints of smoky chocolate” in the cabernet and why genuine cascade hops are essential for a real American Pale Ale. Again, insofar as food rules a person’s life, becomes the basis of a person’s very identity, that’s gluttony.] 

Before we go on to what is the opposite of gluttony, let’s look at another desire: lust. Lust is different from gluttony in at least one important way. The person who abstains completely from food dies, but it is perfectly possible to abstain from sex. Untold millions, in fact, have made lifelong vows of chastity and have led happy and fruitful lives. Among these, apparently, was the Apostle Paul, but even Paul admits that such lifelong vows are neither necessary nor desirable for everyone. Here again, the opposite of lust is not just self-denial. Nor, I would add, is it crusading against sexual sin. Such crusaders – the people who get their shorts in a knot about miniskirts and yoga pants and nudity in films – are the ones I talked about earlier, who seem to be as obsessed with sex as any libertine or playboy. Such people are to lust as the anorexic is to gluttony: trapped by an opposite expression of the same evil. 

So what is the opposite of these sins of obsession? Look at what our scripture does. 2 Peter says we are to escape the corruption that is in the world because of lust, but his advice is positive, not negative. He says to “support your faith with what is good.” That goodness, which is a gift of God, leads to understanding, which then makes self-control possible, which leads to endurance and godliness and mutual affection and love. But it starts with embracing God’s good gift. And this gift, I think, is what I’ve already mentioned: the original good gifts of food and sex. Throughout scripture – in the Psalms, the Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and the Gospels – we are invited to enjoy the pleasures of this world with gratitude. So the opposite of the sins of gluttony and lust is to enjoy food and sex.

Now that may seem self-contradictory, but it’s not. The pleasure is not the sin; the sin is the obsession. In fact, you could argue that obsession takes away the pleasure. The obsessed person indulges not because they want to, but because they need to. By contrast, we are invited not to need these things, but to like them. Let me read another scripture, Ecclesiastes 9:7-9:

Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your … life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life. 

The opposite of gluttony is to enjoy your food, to appreciate a juicy hamburger, a spicy vegetable stew, green beans stir-fried in oyster sauce, a crisp piece of beer battered cod at a fish fry, a creamy square of chocolate. Things like this aren’t the most important things in life – far from it – but they’re pretty good. And the opposite of lust is to enjoy sexual intimacy with someone you love and have committed yourself to in faithfulness. Yes, there are parameters and limits to the appropriate enjoyment of these pleasures – that’s where Peter’s self-control and endurance and mutual affection and love come in – but when we begin by embracing the very real goodness of these gifts of God, not only are we not sinning – we’re overcoming sin.

Earlier, I mentioned Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. That book is an imagined collection of letters from a senior demon in Satan’s bureaucracy (I mean, of course Satan has a bureaucracy) to a junior demon on field assignment as a tempter. In one of those letters, Screwtape notes that despite all their best efforts, the scientists of Hell have never been able to invent a new pleasure. For the time being, then, all that they can do is take the pleasures that were invented by God and corrupt them – either by pushing them to extremes or by twisting them in some way to make them selfish or cruel. Gluttony and lust are corruptions of good gifts of God. Their opposite, then, is to enjoy the original gifts and be content with them.

So here’s your challenge for this week – and in this challenge, I’m going to stick to the food side of today’s sermon. This week, eat your favorite meal and enjoy it, ideally with someone you love. That’s the opposite of gluttony. 

God, we often thank you for the beauty of your creation, and we are grateful for it. It’s great.

But today I want to specifically thank you for the unnecessary frills you added,

Like colors. The world could have been black and white, or we could have been created without the ability to see colors. But we can, and they’re great. 

And smells. God thank you for the smells of baking bread and brewing coffee and roasting turkey. Thank you for the smell of a wild rose and the musty, hopeful petrichor of a world perking up in sunlight after rain. You didn’t have to give us that sense, but thank you.

And taste. Thank you for the taste of chicken curry and kway teow and a plum that is just soft enough to be juicy but not so soft that it turns to mush and runs down your chin, oh, and vanilla cream pie and a cold beer in July after mowing the lawn.

And sound – music and bird song and the rustling of trees,

and the voice of someone we love when they’re laughing.

And touch. God, thank you for the softness of a kitten, the warmth of a fuzzy blanket in front of a fire in January, and the smoothness of a beloved’s skin. 

You have given us more than a place to live,

you have given us the ability to love it as you do. Thank you. Amen.