The Gluttenous West

Friday evening we went out for a meal as we seem to be doing of late – for reasons I needn’t go into here. Thinking about where we should go that didn’t entail hanging around too long for the food we made our way to TayBarns. This is a chain of eating establishments modeled, so I’m told by Wikipedia, on the US Golden Corral chain. It’s a very popular ‘all you can eat’ place and we were very soon making our way to the feeding troughs.

I decided to go for the carvery with all the vegetable trimmings. It was OK. I decided to go and then have another meal – this time a spicy selection. The staff are so good at clearing away the plates that I found myself thinking ‘it doesn’t matter if I can’t eat it all they can just throw it away’. I couldn’t believe I was thinking like this and was pretty disgusted with myself. on looking round it wasn’t a surprise to find a lot of overweight people. Now, I’m under no illusion that my food waste was going to help anyone in the developing world but it just seemed all wrong. My mind went back to the Asterix and Obelix books that I read to our kids and the mythical ‘vomitorium’ where Romans would gorge themselves, vomit it all back up and start again. Taybarns has that flavour to it.

So, Taybarns is not the sort of place I really want to go for meal even though it’s relatively cheap and you can have a much – or as little I guess – as you want, but all in all it’s pretty disgusting. I know, no-one is forcing people to gorge themselves stupid but as a selling point (all you can eat) it obviously works. It’s actually immoral, and in the words of Proverbs ‘If you be a glutton put a knife to your throat’.

More importantly, how good is it for my soul to stuff my body stupid? It isn’t. Behind this is a philosophy that believes the self must be fed at all costs. Me. I am the centre of the universe. Wrong! I’m a sinner that must have a Saviour. I must give up my autonomy and bow the knee to King Jesus and find my satisfaction in Him.