Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony, Lust … Is Anyone Paying Attention?
Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony, Lust … Is Anyone Paying Attention?
Jul 9, 2025 7:15 AM

. I imagine there are a lot of those. But Ms. Adams’ work focuses on attaining marriage rights for people like herself: those living in polyamorous living situations. To get a sense of this:

Along with her primary partner Ed, she is currently romantically involved with several other men and women.

An interview with Ms. Adams is currently featured in The Atlantic. She was asked, after stating that we humans have a “hard time with monogamy,” what the consequences of a traditional married lifestyle are.

I think it’s interesting to see the way that when people get into a monogamous couple dynamic, they often have to neuter their sexual desires.

“Neuter” is an interesting choice of words. It’s not the one I’d choose, although I tend to agree with Ms. Adams here: marriage requires holding our appetites in check. This, then, brought to mind a show featured on TLC, “My 600-lb Life.” The show focuses on morbidly obese people struggling to lose weight. Often these folks are bed-ridden, literally trapped in their own flesh. pletely lost control of their appetites.

Christina is a young married woman who weighs over 650 lbs. She eats about 7,000 calories a day – mostly fast food. She cannot walk more than a few steps at a time. The food she eats is provided by her mother and husband. The doctor treating Christina gives her some good old fashioned advice: “When they bring you that food, you have to say no.”

Well, where’s the fun in that?

Christina and Ms. Adams highlight our culture’s inability to say no. Three slices of pizza? Don’t mind if I do. Three lovers? Sure, sign me up. There’s nothing new here, of course; we’ve been dealing with the seven deadly sins for a very long time. The Christian faith has plenty of remedies and suggestions for ing the seven deadly sins, but one writer (echoing the doctor’s dictate to Christina) sums it up: “It mon sense.”

Ms. Adams is working hard to figure out how to deal with a kid who has three parents, how to get healthcare proxy for two husbands of one woman. Christina is struggling to figure out how to get healthy food when all that is offered to her is high caloric junk. Ms. Adams says we are suffering from having to “neuter” our desires, but there is a more positive (and healthier) way of looking at this: we have to – in order to preserve our health, sanity, and our society – rein in our desires. We cannot simply have everything we want, whenever we want it. It creates chaos, illness, dysfunction; in short, we sin ourselves to death. This isn’t “neutering;” this is health, sanity and salvation. mon sense. It’s self-preservation. To lose control of our appetites brings us to the Gates of Hell, as Dante knew:

I am the way into the city of woe,

I am the way into eternal pain,

I am the way to go among the lost.

Justice caused my high architect to move:

Divine omnipotence created me,

The highest wisdom, and the primal love.

Before me there were no created things

But those that last forever–as I do.

Abandon all hope you who enter here.

Dante’s “Inferno”

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
The limits of fiscal policy
Note: This is post #126 in a weekly video series on basic economics. The best case for fiscal policy happens during a recession caused by an aggregate demand shock, says economist Alex Tabarrok. Even so, it’s hard to get it right because the U.S. economy is massive plex. In this video by Marginal Revolution University, Tabarrok highlights the three factors for an ideal stimulus—Timely, Targeted, and Temporary—and notes that all of these characteristics present some problems for enacting fiscal policy....
Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization is . . . . AVAILABLE!
After a long gestation, I’m happy to report that my book, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization, published by Regnery Gateway, has just been released and is available for purchase at Amazon. Over the past two weeks, it’s been listed as #1 New Release on Amazon in 5 categories – History of Civilization and Culture; Science and Religion; Ancient Early Civilization History; Church and State; and History of Christianity. The book has already been reviewed in The Stream...
From folkways to institutions: Why culture matters for the economy
In our efforts to reduce poverty and spur economic growth, we can be overly consumed in debates about top-down policy tactics and the proper allocation of physical resources. Yet, as many economists are beginning to recognize, the distinguishing features of free and flourishing societies are more readily found at the levels of culture—attitudes, beliefs, and imagination. According to economist David Rose, for example, “it is indeed culture—not genes, geography, institutions, policies, or leadership—that ultimately determines the differential success of societies.”...
3 Ways to explain religious freedom to an American
This week is “Religious Freedom Week,” a time set aside by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to “pray, reflect, and take action on religious liberty, both here in this country and abroad.” In honor of the Religious Freedom Week, here are three explanations about what religious freedom means in America. 1. Basic Explanation Religious freedom is a right, given by God and guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, that allows individual people or groups to...
Common grace, community, and culture
Earlier this year I had the honor of moderating a panel discussion, “Common Grace, Community, and Culture,” at the Kuyper Conference at Calvin College and Seminary. The discussion featured J. Daryl Charles, with whom I have the pleasure of coediting the Common Grace volumes in the Kuyper series, Vincent Bacote of Wheaton College, and Jessica Joustra of Redeemer University College and TU Kampen. It was a wide-ranging and substantive discussion. The video is now available and mend it to you:...
6 Quotes: Supreme Court justices on the ‘Peace Cross’ case
Earlier today the Supreme Court issued its ruling in American Legion v. American Humanist Association—also known as the Bladensburg Cross case. The Court ruled that the 40-foot-tall stone and concrete “Peace Cross” memorial displayed on government-owned property in Bladensburg, Maryland outside Washington, DC does not violate the Establishment Clause. The Court said retaining established, religiously expressive monuments, symbols, and practices is quite different from erecting or adopting new ones. Here are six quotes from the ruling you should know about....
7 Figures: How Americans spend their time
Every year the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities, such as paid work, childcare, volunteering, and socializing. Here are seven figures you should know from the latest report: 1. In 2018, 89 percent of full-time employed persons worked on an average pared with 31 percent on an average weekend day, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Full-time employed persons averaged 8.5 hours...
The Laffer Curve vindicated…in Canada
On September 14, 1974, economist Arthur Laffer and three friends had the most productive cocktail discussion in U.S. history. On that day, Laffer famously sketched his U-shaped theory of taxation on a cocktail napkin. It came at the height of the Keynesian ascendancy, just three years after President Richard Nixon proclaimed, “I am now a Keynesian in economics” and as his successor proposed a tax increase. Laffer argued that higher tax rates produce higher tax revenues, but only up to...
2019 G20 Summit: Tariffs and forbearance
As world leaders from a select group of the largest national economies meet in Osaka at the end of this week, they face increasing volatility and uncertainty around some of the basic principles and institutions that bring together their various peoples in the global marketplace. The World Trade Organization may undergo serious reform in the face of hints from President Trump that the United States might withdraw amid broader dissatisfactions. The ongoing tariff battles between China and the United States...
NHS forces mentally challenged Catholic woman to have an abortion
If it were possible to localize all the pathologies undermining the West into a single incident, a court ruling handed down on Friday might serve as the one. A British judge has ordered a young Catholic woman with “moderately severe” learning disabilities to have a second-trimester abortion against her will, in a case filed by the publicly funded National Health Service. The circumstances are horrific. The mother, who cannot be named, is in her twenties with a mental parable to...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved