Gluttony

We have All-You-Can-Eat restaurants, we jumbo-size everything, $1.00 drafts and happy hour is now 4 hours long and yet we still want more.  We live in an “instant-gratification” world.  How much is enough?  Tens of thousands of people die each year from alcoholism and obesity.  I could have been one of them on a hundred different occasions.

There are so many diseases caused by our gluttony; diabetes, heart disease and cancers of all types, depression, etc..  We are so judgmental of the gluttony we see in others.  It has become such a huge problem in our society.  Look at the millions that tune into watch “Biggest Loser”.  The number of obese children is rising at staggering rates as our lives become more sedentary and our eating habits more unhealthy.

And while the dictionary defines gluttony as, “excessive eating and drinking“, it is really about an excess of anything.  We watch too much TV, spend countless hours on the internet, have too many toys, work excessive hours, etc..  Of course it is easy to say drinking and smoking are sins, but eating?  We need to eat to survive, right?  Everything in moderation is the key.  We want more of everything.

We want more news on Tiger Woods sex life, John and Kate, Casey Anthony and the list goes on and on.  We fill our minds and bodies with useless garbage.  Reading about a famous person’s shortcomings will not enrich my life anymore than eating only sweets and drinking beer will make me physically healthy.  So why do we do it?  If I focus on someone else’s gluttony, I don’t have to look at my own.

The answer, while it sounds simple, is more difficult than we think.  The answer is to limit the amount of time we spend on temporary things and focus on the quality of time we spend with family and friends, neighbors and in our community.  Set limits for yourself.  If you spend fours hours a day on the internet (not job-related), start cutting it by 15 minutes a day.  In a weeks time, you will only be spending two hours and fifteen minutes.  That is an hour and forty-five minutes you have to spend with your kids, mow your neighbors yard, finish a project you have been putting off.  The possibilities are limitless.

I challenge you to start cutting down on the gluttony.  Smoke one less cigarette a day, drink one less beer or soda.  Turn the TV off and play a board game with the family.  Cut back on the amount of food you intake if that is your area of excess.  I challenge you to choose life, don’t merely exist.  Get out there and live in moderation.  I challenge you that if you must do something in excess, let it be love others.