An Excerpt from Whose Voice Are You Listening To? How to Fight and Win the Daily Spiritual Battle by Colleen Orchanian
Satan’s Rule #16
We prefer, of course, that humans have nothing to do with the Enemy’s Church. But that is often not realistic. If a human is getting involved, the next best strategy is to encourage him to say yes to everything. He wants to be at church and volunteer a lot, which means he must neglect the home front. That’s perfect. You can also prompt him to resentment because he is so active while others are not. At some point he burns out and gives it all up, even leaving the church, which is an excellent result. Let his churchgoing days be short-lived.
My dad was an all-or-nothing kind of guy. If he was interested in something, he never started slowly. When he began running, he ran marathons. When he heard about intermittent fasting, he began by fasting for three days at a time. He never tested the water first—just jumped in completely.
I am a bit like him when it comes to spiritual matters. When my faith journey was ignited in my forties, I read a ton of books, listened to countless CDs on apologetics, attended Bible studies—anything to feed what seemed to be an insatiable thirst for knowledge. When I began volunteering at church, I didn’t just join one group; I became part of ten groups. Then I took a part-time job at the church, which was supposed to be ten hours a week, but I typically worked thirty or forty. I also had a family at home to care for, but I loved what I was doing at church and wanted to do more and more. I was a spiritual glutton.
Spiritual gluttony is the opposite of sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. Sloth is when we don’t pay attention to our spiritual life. We are bored with it. Spiritual gluttony is the opposite extreme: we overdose on it.
You might wonder how it can be bad to pay too much attention to our spiritual life. After all, isn’t that what we are called to do as Christians? Put God first? Yes, it is. But sometimes when we fill our plate with these spiritual activities, we are actually chasing after something that is not God.
Here are some examples of spiritual gluttony:
- Devouring information. This was my failing when I had a renewal of faith. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to be able to defend my faith when questioned by those who were doubters or anti-Catholic. I wanted to know how to find things in the Bible. I wanted to understand what the Church taught and why. And so I fed my mind. This was good, but my desire was not God. It was knowledge, information, ammunition for a debate. I could argue with the best of them, but there was little charity in my approach. I was filling my head with wonderful information, but my heart was not being transformed, and it really needed some transformation. Satan uses this “information junkie” phase to keep us from growing closer to God.
- Chasing feelings. Sometimes we have an experience of God that is visceral. We feel God in our hearts, in our bodies, in our minds. We experience the Holy Spirit’s presence like the apostles did on Pentecost. The energy we experience here is real, and we want that feeling back, so we seek experiences, techniques, and people who can help us get that feeling again. We try to manipulate God to give us a mystical experience, but we cannot manipulate God. Satan wants us to focus on our feelings because feelings can deceive. God never does.
- Feeding our appetites. We chase after the things we like, our preferences, when instead we should desire to be led by the Holy Spirit. For example, when I go to a Catholic bookstore, I don’t buy just one book; I buy ten. I will not read ten books, but they all look so good. I don’t discern which two or three books God wants me to get and grow with for now. Then I get frustrated because I have so many books and not enough time to read them. Or I skim a book that is meant to be read slowly and absorbed so that I can be transformed. I have a banquet of rich food, and I’m gorging myself and wasting so much. That is a form of gluttony.
- Disordered use of time. This has always been my struggle. I keep adding things to my plate without discerning if they are God’s will. That is how a 10-hour-a-week job became full-time work. My priorities were out of order. My pastor sat me down and ordered me to cut back, or else. I wanted to work less because I had family responsibilities, but I didn’t know how to get free of the things I had taken on. I needed a wise boss to set me straight.
When we are pigging out spiritually, we must reorder our lives. There is a proper order, and it looks like this:
- Worship God and pray. This differs from serving God or going to Bible study or reading about God. It is the reason the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt: so they could worship God. That is how important it is.
- Focus on your primary vocation. If I have children, a spouse, or an ailing parent, they need to get the majority of my time and attention. If I am the breadwinner for the family, work is my next priority.
- Serve others (your apostolate). If our primary vocation is being met, we can serve others. When you are in a spiritual growth spurt, you may want to be involved in everything. Learn about your gifts or talents and the opportunities you have to use them. Pray about where God wants you to serve. There will be many more needs than you have time available, so choose wisely.
- Seek personal growth. We want to grow spiritually, and that takes attention—going on retreat, attending workshops and studies, reading, listening to podcasts, getting spiritual direction, and going on pilgrimage. But note well: this is fourth in line. You are worthy of spiritual growth. The key is to balance your own growth with the other duties of life.
The attack of spiritual gluttony leads us to put these four areas in the wrong order. When I was hungry to learn, that was all I did. When I wanted to serve, that was all I had time for. God wants things rightly ordered. The devil doesn’t.
How do you know when you’re experiencing this attack? According to Fr. John Bartunek (spiritual director and contributor to SpiritualDirection.com), spiritual balance should lead to internal peace and external generosity. If you are not experiencing these things, you may be under attack. God wants to transform us, and we desire that as well. Spiritual gluttony will never achieve that transformation.
If you are pigging out spiritually, slow down. Discern what the Holy Spirit wants for you right now. What is the next step on your journey? You don’t have to take it all in today. Christian maturity is a slow process and a good one, but it can only happen when we let God lead the way.
God’s Voice
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 1:5–8)
“All their time is spent looking for satisfaction and spiritual consolation; one minute they are meditating on one subject and the next on another, always in search of some gratification of the things of God. God very rightly and discreetly and lovingly denies this satisfaction to these beginners.” (St. John of the Cross)
Questions for prayer
Where do I have a tendency toward spiritual gluttony? Why is this attack working on me? What might Satan’s goal be in attacking me in this way?
How well-ordered are my priorities? If they are not properly ordered, what can I do to set things right?
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