A Fat Drunk Pastor
I want to take you on a quick vacation in your mind. Due to the current economic turmoil, a mind vacation is the most I can offer at this point. I hope you enjoy it.
Since I am your tour guide, we are going to visit my families favorite vacation spot. You and your spouse have decided to go to Bethany Beach, DE for two weeks of rest and relaxation. The grandparents will be watching the children if you have any, so this will be two solid weeks of just you and your spouse enjoying life.
Saturday morning bright and early you pack up the car and are off. You arrive in Bethany on Saturday afternoon and set up residence in the house you have rented two blocks from the beach. You walk out on your patio and can hear the waves rolling in. This is a life you could get used to.
Sunday morning rolls around and you and your spouse decide to check out a local church. You always enjoy seeing the culture in different churches, and decide to find one in the yellow pages. The one you choose offers a 9 am service with light refreshments afterwords. “Perfect,” you think, we can enjoy the fellowship time, and still hit the beach early today.
You arrive about five minutes before nine and you and your spouse find a seat in the middle of the auditorium. The church family seems a little more rambunctious than you are used to, but this is why you enjoy checking out new churches. The worship leader takes you through the singing and offertory, and then the pastor steps up.
To word it nicely you are shocked. You can tell just by looking at him, the pastor weighs in at over 300 lbs. What is even more shocking is the fact that he is clearly drunk. Not just a little buzzed, but definitely smashed.
What is even more shocking is that no one in the congregation seems to care. The pastor slurs his way through his sermon. After a couple times nearly falling over, he finally wraps things up and staggers back to his seat.
When the service is finally over, you follow the masses to the refreshment area. Once more you are shocked. You are beginning to think that the biggest financial contributor at this church must be Budweiser. Everywhere you look, fat people are not only enjoying a beer, but getting drunk.
You and your spouse hastily exit this scene and head for your car.
Will you be back next week? Does this action and lifestyle of the Pastor and congregants bother you?
Increasing Faith Time
Lets rewind the story, and retell it that they were not drunk or drinking, just overweight or obese and eating. Would this bother you? Would you be equally offended? Judging by what I have observed in the many churches I have had the privilege of visiting, this is acceptable. For some reason in our minds and faith we seperate gluttony from drunkenness.
God does not, but we do. In the Bible, depending on your version, gluttony is mentioned approximately seven times. Of those seven times, five times it is coupled with drunkenness. God does not differentiate between overindulging in alcohol and overindulging in food. But we Christians give the food a pass and not the alcohol.
I think this is partially because most of us, including myself, are guilty of gluttony. How can I, a man whose BMI just fell below obese into the overweight category, speak out against this? Wouldn’t this make me a hypocrite? Yes it would which is why the silence of the church is deafening on this front.
The funny thing is, it is a lot easier to spot someone who struggles with gluttony than it is someone who struggles with drinking. So why don’t we do something about this? How can we?
Make A Difference
The first thing to do is to slay the demon in your own life. Conquer this weakness so you can help others with their weakness. Many of you who know me personally know I have recently embarked on this step. You can read more about it here.
The web is replete with resources to help you. A few I am aware of are-
We as Christians need to inspire each other to better health. We are caretakers of this temple, and we need to treat it as such. Pray for each other, pray for me as I work to conquer this, pray for the overweight pastors in America.
The time to change is now! Stop being drunk on food!
I never really thought of overeating in that way. But you’re completely right. God doesn’t appear to separate the two. Plus, sin is sin no matter what. He doesn’t place a different value on each type of sin. If you get drunk, it’s sin. If you have premarital sex, it’s sin. If you lie, it’s sin. And if you overeat, it’s sin. I don’t have a weight problem but there are times when I definitely don’t treat my body like the temple that God calls me to treat it as. I don’t do overeat at times and I get out of hand, just like so many out there. So that was definitely encouraging to help myself to remember to eat in moderation, eat the right things especially, and to look at overeating in the same way I would any sin.
I agree sin is a sin, but being obese is a level worse.
A person who gets drunk and then stops getting drunk is different than a drunk. A person who in a moment of passion succumbs and has premarital sex is in sin, yes. However, the person who is a regular partaker of the sexual sins is different.
One is sin, the other is lifestyle. It becomes whether or not you make a lifestyle of a certain sin. If you do, then you need to check your throne and see who is sitting on it.
Obese people make a lifestyle of gluttony.