We’re All Cookie Monsters
Recently my nephews have started watching Sesame Street. I know my brother was excited at this development. “This is great,” he thought. “It’s not just entertainment. They’ll actually learn some good life skills.” What he wasn’t prepared for, however, was their new obsession with cookies. They love Cookie Monster. After a show finishes, they run around the pantry like little monsters themselves, screaming, “Me want cookie!” It’s gotten so bad that some mornings the first thing they ask for when they wake up is a cookie.
As I pause to think about it, their behavior is no surprise. Cookie Monster himself has a problem. A problem with cookies. A couple of weeks ago, in a Valentine’s Day episode, Cookie Monster’s obsession is front and center. In a spoof on the popular teen series Twilight, Cookie Monster is dressed up as a vampire and has a decision to make. Does he marry his true love Bella, or does he obey his inner thirst for cookies? Every time he gets close to love, he’s tempted by the smell of cookies and abandons Bella altogether. It’s funny…because it’s true. We’ve all been there. All of us have habits, pleasures, temptations, that distract us from what matters most. In a sense, we all have a bit of Cookie Monster in us, whether it’s cookies we turn to or something else.
“All I’m Living For”
Consider Bob, as he fidgets on the couch, waiting for his therapist to look up from her computer and begin their session. Finally, she lifts her head and smiles. “So, how have you been, Bob?”
“Worse than ever,” he responds. A cascade of grievances quickly follows. “My manager at work has been a real jerk lately. I swear, he’s completely forgotten what it’s like to work on the floor. Or maybe he remembers, and he’s just taking pleasure in making us suffer.”
“Hmm. How is he making you suffer?
“Well, for example, our lunch breaks are only thirty minutes long, but it takes five minutes to cross the campus to the cafeteria. I feel like I’m being cheated out of a real lunch.”
The therapist nods, “I could understand that feeling. How do you deal with it?”
“I don’t know. Lately, I’ve been chewing gum on the job, or sometimes even tobacco—just to feel like I’m eating. I mean, I deserve more than twenty minutes.” The therapist nods but stays silent. Bob continues, “Leaving work and going home is no better. My wife is constantly nagging me about our finances and asking when we can afford a move out of our current dump of a home.”
The therapist gives another sympathetic nod. “Hmm…I imagine that’s hard to hear. Do you find yourself avoiding her now?”
“We still eat dinner together,” Bob says in feeble protest.
“How are your dinners together?”
“I don’t know. I find ways to tolerate them. I enjoy a beer. Sometimes I grab an extra handful of chips or whatever snack we have around.”
“Hmm. You don’t enjoy what your wife is saying, so you find other things that you do enjoy?”
Bob shrugs. “I guess you could put it like that.” After another silence, he says, “Only after she goes to bed do I have any real peace. I mean, I should probably go to bed too. I’m always tired. But that little sliver of the day that I have to myself—it’s all I’m living for right now. I grab another beer and another handful of chips, and I sit down in front of the television where I can laugh at some other people’s problems for a few minutes. It may not be much, but I wouldn’t give this time up for anything.”
Feeding Our Face,
Starving Our Heart
Long ago, in the third and fourth centuries, a number of Christ-followers in Egypt and the Near East left civilization and went to live in the wilderness. They recognized that the world around them lived according to some unhealthy patterns of thinking, and they took seriously the call of Christ to repent, or “think again.” They wanted to unlearn unhealthy thought patterns and learn instead what Paul calls “the mind of Christ.” These Desert Christians developed a rich tradition that identified eight “deadly thoughts” (which would eventually become popularized as the “seven deadly vices”). Over this season of Lent, we will explore each of these deadly thoughts: how they distort life and disconnect us from God and others, and how Jesus shows us the way back to God and our true selves.
This Sunday we’re exploring the deadly thought of gluttony. Today, many people think of a glutton as someone who eats excessively. But that idea can be a convenient way to avoid or deny our own struggle with gluttony. In the Christian tradition, gluttony has nothing to do with our weight. It has to do with our heart. Gluttony is any preoccupation with food. A picky eater, an anorexic food-avoider, a compulsive snacker—all of these people struggle with gluttony. The common denominator is an obsession with food. Gluttony is thinking that our appetite is the key to becoming happy and whole.
Think back to Bob for a moment. He is not a glutton in the popular sense of the word. What is so insidious about gluttony is how innocent it can appear. (“Just turn a few rocks into bread,” the devil tells Jesus. “Escape reality for just a second. What’s the harm?”) For Bob, gluttony isn’t even on the radar. But for the therapist who is listening closely, it is the common thread in how he responds to all his anxieties. He’s unhappy with his boss and his lack of lunch time, so he compensates with chewing gum or tobacco. He finds conversation with his wife difficult, so he offsets the struggle with a little extra junk food. He’s tired and run down, so he seeks peace in a solitary beer in front of the television. Bob may not even realize it, but his compulsive snacking reveals a repeated thought, namely, “I am having some difficult feelings, but the pleasure of eating will solve them. If I satisfy my appetite, I will be safe and happy.”
But as Bob’s own testimony makes abundantly clear, he is feeling neither safe nor happy. Why? Because as he is feeding his face, he is starving his heart.[1] Gluttony thinks that pleasing our appetite will satisfy our soul. The irony is that when we act on this train of thought, we often find ourselves deeply unhappy. Not only does the food itself become less and less of a pleasure, but we are also neglecting the things that really matter. Bob has given up on his relationships; he’s not taking care of himself and allowing himself enough sleep; he is living without any meaningful purpose. In a word, he has lost his sense of self-worth.
He is the opposite of Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus has struggles of his own, not least of which is going without food for forty days. But when the devil confronts him and suggests turning a few rocks into bread, Jesus recognizes the idea for what it really is. A rejection of reality. Those are stones, not bread. Jesus can say no because he is nourished by more than just food. His heart is already full and satisfied as with a rich feast. Just moments before being led into the wilderness, he hears a voice from heaven at his baptism, saying, “You are my beloved son” (3:22). What gives Jesus life is not a momentary pleasure, a small escape from reality. What gives Jesus life is God’s love. He knows he is God’s beloved child and trusts that God will care for him.
Hungry for Love
Traditionally, the Christian tradition has proposed fasting as the remedy for gluttony. Abstaining from food can remind us of our physical limits and our needs. And our needs can turn our attention to God—as it did for Jesus, when he was famished but told the devil that he trusted in God’s provision, not his own.
But I find it curious that after Jesus fasted in the wilderness, he soon developed a reputation as a glutton. “Look,” people would say, “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34). Of course, Jesus was not really a glutton. He was not preoccupied with food. He was preoccupied with something else. Every time we find Jesus eating, he is always in the company of other people. He is not hungry for food. He is hungry for love. He desires to be in relationship with others, especially those who are hurting or unloved.
The real remedy to gluttony is not just turning away from food. If that is all we do, we will be deeply unhappy people. The real remedy to gluttony is turning toward others in love.
For Jesus, turning away from gluttony meant not only going without food for forty days in the wilderness, but also feasting regularly with sinners and showing them God’s favor. For Bob, letting go of gluttony might mean putting away his gum and having an honest conversation with his boss; or refraining from the extra helping of chips and asking his wife how her day was. For Cookie Monster in the Twilight spoof, turning away from gluttony means turning toward his true love Bella. For me, repenting from gluttony means reminding myself of what I really want. It’s not that extra coffee or ten more minutes of munching before I get back to writing. What I really want is to know and be known.
What might repenting from gluttony mean for you?
Prayer
Who smiles on us
And calls us his children—
Wean us off the temporary pleasures
That keep us preoccupied
And turn us away from others.
We are hungry for your love.
Help us to trust in you
And to turn toward each other. In Christ, our teacher: Amen.
[1]
Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung uses this expression in Glittering Vices: A New
Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies (Grand Rapids: Brazos,
2009), 139.
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