[Edited on March 10, 2026 for theological clarity. See below in the body of the text]
A note: This piece followed on the heels of writing a cathartic exercise in pointing fingers at the cultural moment. Somewhere in the middle of that one, it occurred to me that while one finger was aimed outward, three others were quietly curled back in my direction. It’s always easier to write about the sins that photograph well. The ones that don’t are usually the ones worth sitting with. That piece will see sunlight someday. Today, though, the mirror was closer.
My name is Darrell. And I’m a glutton.
There. It’s out. Not the easiest thing to say, especially when we tend to reserve our public confessions for the more photogenic failures. Pride sounds almost noble in a small group. Doubt reads like depth. But overeating? That one doesn’t get a lot of airtime, maybe because the evidence isn’t tucked away somewhere private. It shows up on the waistline, plain as a Louisiana August.
And there’s nothing quite like your own personal “fat Elvis” period to bring you to a posture of full reflection.
I’ve wrestled with this most of my life. Growing up where food is something close to a love language, where a proper Sunday spread is considered an act of hospitality and crawfish season borders on sacred, excess was always easy to dress up as culture. And the church, if I’m honest, didn’t complicate it much. We drew hard lines around drinking and dancing, but nobody ever asked too many questions on the way out of the fellowship hall. Pass the potato salad and mind your business.
That silence has cost something, I think. Not just in the obvious ways, the health issues and the self-doubt, but in what it quietly communicates: that some sins are serious and some are just background noise. The Bible doesn’t quite see it that way.
Scripture treats gluttony as a symptom of something deeper than appetite. It touches on lack of self-control, which Paul names in Galatians 5 as a fruit the Spirit produces in us, not something we manufacture through willpower. And it touches on idolatry. That one stings a little. Philippians 3:19 doesn’t soften it: those whose god is their belly have set their minds on earthly things. Food as comfort, as escape, as the thing you turn to instead of turning somewhere else, that’s not a minor vice. It’s a disordered affection, and it displaces something that belongs to God.
Paul himself put it plainly in 1 Corinthians 9:27, writing that he disciplined his body and kept it under control, lest after preaching to others he himself should be disqualified. That’s a serious word. The body matters. What we do with it reflects what we actually believe.
And yet, here’s where it gets interesting, at least for me.
Paul also wrote about a thorn. Second Corinthians 12 describes something he pleaded three times to have removed, some persistent weakness or affliction he couldn’t shake. God’s answer wasn’t healing. It was this: My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Whatever the thorn was, it stayed. And it became the very thing that kept Paul dependent, humble, and close.
I’ve been turning that over lately. What if gluttony is my thorn? Not an excuse, not a hall pass, but a persistent weakness that has a way of driving me back to the same place, recognizing that self-mastery isn’t the point and never really was. A culture convinced that discipline is the highest virtue doesn’t have much use for that idea. But Paul seemed to think that the weakness itself, offered to God, could become something other than just a failure.
[March 10, 2026: A note on the theology here: A careful reader will push back, and rightly so. Paul’s thorn was something suffered, not something committed, and James 1:13-14 is clear that God doesn’t use sin as His instrument. I want to be precise about what I actually mean. The thorn isn’t the gluttony itself. It’s the weakness underneath it, the place where self-reliance keeps collapsing, the recurring reminder that I cannot fix this on my own. That’s what keeps driving me back to the only place that actually holds. God doesn’t engineer my failures. But He does seem to meet me in the humility they produce. That distinction matters, and I didn’t land it cleanly the first time.]
That’s not comfortable theology. It doesn’t resolve into a clean victory story. But it’s honest.
There’s something else worth naming. Of all the struggles a person can carry, gluttony is one of the few that can’t be kept quiet. Lust lives in the mind. Greed hides behind a decent suit. But this one is visible, and that visibility, as humbling as it is, might be where grace gets some traction. James 5:16 puts confession and healing in the same sentence for a reason. What’s brought into the light can actually be dealt with.
So I’m not pretending it’s gone, and I’m not dressing it up either. I’ve tried the diets and the plans and the fresh starts. Maybe the more honest prayer is the one Paul landed on: Let the grace be sufficient. Let the weakness be the point. Let whatever power shows up here be Yours, not mine.
If that’s where the thorn leads, I’ll take it.
That’s it for now. Thanks for showing up. It matters.
Photo by Jahanzeb Ahsan on Unsplash
Veni. Vidi. Scripsi. 