January 25, 2012
Indulgence
Many of us struggle with our weight. One minute we’ll reward ourselves
with a dognut and then the next we are saddled with guilt for bowing to
temptation. I both love and hate Paul’s thought process as he sends me back to
reflect on the moment of indulgence. “What
benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?”
(Romans 6:21a NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----We do all that we do by the simple influence of incentives and restraints. If you reflect upon your donut moment, you will find conflicting thoughts and feelings there. They offered your will incentives for eating, or restraints for not. Your will chooses. Then by the fact that both the incentivizing thoughts and feelings as well as the restraining ones all welled up from within you, they are all a part of you. That means whether your will decides to eat the donut or not, a part of you will be satisfied with having ate it or not, and another part dissatisfied in the same. So realize that whatever you do, your poor will makes its decisions in the midst of a cheering, jeering crowd of inward onlookers, and in its decisions must live amidst the same. James says we must not suppose that a double-minded person, “...unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord.” (James 1:8)
-----Oh my!?!
-----There’s gotta be more to it than that! Fortunately, the eating a donut thing is close enough to the reality of needing to eat to see more. I would venture to say most things are neither good or bad in themselves. They are good or bad in contexts, for purposes, and such. Dismissing the probability that you didn't eat the donut within a moment of mortal starvation, such conflicting thoughts and purposes do not make a double mind. In fact, it evidences an experienced and well rounded mind offering an alternative to developing a well rounded body. That’s not a double mind. It is balancing legitimate purposes around a fulcrum to make a decision.
-----The fulcrum around which all these are weighed is your single mind. In order for the mind to be single, the fulcrum must be held to one unit of compatible beliefs. If I believed the more donuts I ate the healthier I would be and that many donuts will make me very obese, then I would be weighing my decision with two fulcrums. Since obese is not healthy, these two beliefs can not be held to one single spot of truth. It is easily seen which gives. Eating more of anything does not make one healthy. Eating sufficiently does. That adjustment unifies the beliefs of the mind’s fulcrum closer to the truth, “Eating sufficient donuts makes me healthier, and many donuts will make me obese.” Now a simple reference from the memory as to that day’s calorie count, etc. sorts all the conflicting thoughts and feelings into proper places. The will, being the fulcrum for your decisions, is far too important to be itself divided between conflicting interests. There is the true interest, or there are the others. For finding the true interest within any particular situation, there is the Truth, or there is, “Oh well, la-la, whatever.”
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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