Judge not, that ye be not judged

10th August 2007

Judge not, that ye be not judged

posted in Fat Bias, Health, Nutrition & Fitness, Pop Culture |

Apparently accepting Christ as your personal savior, following his teachings and reading your Bible isn’t a free-ticket ride into the pearly gates.

If you’re overweight, you’re just one fat step away from plunging into the bottomless depths of eternal damnation.

Or so says Jared Binder, a graduate student at Dallas Theological Seminary and an intern for the Dallas Observer, where his article appears on the site’s blogs.

There’s this thing in the Bible called gluttony. The Bible says it’s a sin. But we don’t like to talk about that particular sin. We prefer to point a pudgy finger at others and decry the evils of drugs and alcohol, pornography, abortion and homosexuality. Compared to those, gluttony is just a little sin.

But the wages of this “little sin” can end in hellfire and brimstone, says Binder, who automatically equates obesity as the result of overindulgence despite numerous studies which indicate otherwise. He echoes the tired jingle we hear so often in the media who quote studies which are backed by multi-national corporations who have a direct, financial interest in seeing obesity stigmatized and classified as a disease.

This “little” sin of gluttony is killing people by the hundreds of thousands every year. Obesity has now surpassed smoking as the No. 1 health threat in America. It can be directly linked to high cholesterol, high blood pressure, Type II Diabetes, acid reflux, sleep apnea, heart disease and many forms of cancer.

It’s enough to make one wonder if they teach critical thinking skills at the Dallas Theological Seminary, for Binder seems to have swallowed the myths of the “obesity epidemic” hook, line and sinker.

And not only is obesity a “health issue,” says Binder, but it’s also a spiritual and moral one. The majority of fat people are fat, he concludes because they’re greedy, slothful and make poor choices, all of which make them somehow less virtuous than thin people.

I know that given the choice we would all choose fit, healthy bodies over sick, flabby ones. But the truth is we want to overindulge more than we want to go through the hard work of losing weight and staying fit.

Now while I will agree with Binder that many people – fat and thin – make poor food choices, making overarching assumptions equating fatness with avarice is exactly the sort of condemnation and judging Jesus himself railed against:

Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

Or how about:

John 7:24, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”

Perhaps Binder ought to reread his New Testament. And while he’s at it, I can recommend a few other good reads by Gina Kolata, Paul Campos, and J. Eric Oliver to name a few.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Fat Bias, Health, Nutrition & Fitness, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On August 10th, 2007, galnoir said:

First, let me say that as a nonpracticing Unitarian, I’m iffy on the whole “sin” concept to begin with, and I don’t really believe in hellfire and brimstone. I also agree that Binder is making a simplistic assumption that all obese people are gluttons and that no thin people are, while we know it’s perfectly possible for an obese person to eat “normally” and for a thin person to eat like … well, a glutton.

That said, I find this article a teeny bit refreshing. I think that fundamentalist Christianity spends a lot of time obsessing on the sex sins (like abortion and homosexuality) because those are considered deviant in the population at large and the Christian feels comfortable assuming that sh/e will never have an abortion or have a partner who has one (never mind that a third of women do—including many who consider themselves “pro-life”) or be gay (never mind that as much as 10% of the population is). But gluttony … gosh, well almost all of us overeat from time to time, so that can’t be as big a deal, right? But it is true that the Bible doesn’t differentiate between the “deviant” sins and the more run-of-the-mill sins like envy, gluttony, sloth, and pride. So it’s kind of nice to hear from someone who has an opinion about something besides Teh Gay and Teh Fetuses. Even if I, personally, think his opinion is full of crap.

posted on August 10th, 2007 at 5:51 pm

2 On August 10th, 2007, iflurry said:

I don’t got no fancy theology degree, but I’m pretty sure the Bible is mostly mum on gluttony. First thing Noah did when he rolled off the ark was make wine and get drunk (isn’t that a kind of gluttony?), and yet it’s his son and grandson who are the bad guys in that story.

Ezekiel does finger point some nasty gluttons in 16:49, but guess where they lived? Sodom and Gomorrah! And that was just the tip of their sinful iceberg, according to Zeke. I guess maybe God’s not as homophobic as some would make us think.

posted on August 10th, 2007 at 8:49 pm

3 On August 11th, 2007, Sarah said:

So, he’s studying religion? But yet, nobody taught him the definition of “gluttony” in Biblical times? Basically, withholding food from the needy is consider gluttony too. He didn’t seem to address that in the article.

posted on August 11th, 2007 at 4:35 pm

4 On August 12th, 2007, wriggles said:

“We found that people who consume lots of religious media, TV and radio were more likely to be obese and actually to develop obesity over the study period.”

Does that mean that fattliness is next to Godliness? And thinness a sign that the devil is winning! Surely not!!!

posted on August 12th, 2007 at 12:56 pm

5 On August 12th, 2007, wriggles said:

“We found that people who consume lots of religious media, TV and radio were more likely to be obese and actually to develop obesity over the study period.”

Does that mean that fattliness is next to Godliness? And thinness a sign that the devil is winning? Surely not!!!

6 On August 12th, 2007, wriggles said:

Apologies for my boo boo.

posted on August 12th, 2007 at 1:03 pm

7 On August 14th, 2007, Deirdre said:

How about Corinthians 1?

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,
but have not charity,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing.

Mr. Binder sounds like a noisy gong to me.

posted on August 14th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

8 On August 17th, 2007, oakeshott said:

Rachel,

Nice post. Couldn’t agree more and you said it better than I could have.

I’m also a fan of Gina Kolata’s book. I just finished it and then found out she’d done an interview with Stephen Colbert. It’s hilarious.

posted on August 17th, 2007 at 9:11 pm