What does it take to satisfy a physical appetite? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
In Ecclesiastes 6:7-9, we read this:
7 All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. 8 For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? 9 Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind.
Why do people work? Ultimately, so that they can eat. You can say we do many other things, but the eating is often primary. If you can’t put food on the table, it doesn’t matter what else you can do.
In the West, especially America, we have an obesity epidemic. Think fast. When was the last time you heard a sermon about the sin of gluttony from the pulpit? I haven’t heard one. I have heard sermons about many other sins, but never about gluttony. Could it be the pastor knows that he will likely lose half his audience on that one? Could it be he might be one of the biggest violators? (No pun intended, but it works out.)
Part of our culture never being satisfied does center around food. We have more of it that most people can ever imagine. My former roommate grew up in a small town and when we moved to Charlotte together, he was absolutely stunned the first time he walked into a large grocery store. If it didn’t spoil, you could likely have enough food in a grocery store to care for many people the rest of their lives.
We often have so many fads for diet fixes and we want instant results, but the solution is often simple. Eat better and exercise more. For those interested, while I am actually underweight, I do get in at least 10,000 steps every day. Yes. I have apps that measure this.
The Teacher also tells us that it’s better to enjoy what we see right before us instead of having our appetites move about looking to find more. If we get something and then we want to move on to the next fix, then we have a problem. Our culture is often built around meeting our own desires and people are just a tool to bring that about.
I realize it’s not necessarily the most pressing issue, but the church does need to do better when it comes to issues of gluttony. Many people have a hard time listening to a pastor who has a weight problem telling them how they ought to live their lives. I do realize we’re all hypocrites to some extent, but any chance we can take to improve ourselves should be taken.
Yet in the end, what is the Teacher saying? Enjoy what is there before you right now. I have said that Ecclesiastes is not really a book about pessimism. In a way, it is actually a book about joy and embracing it here and now.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support Deeper Waters on Patreon!
