" Resist the devil and he will flee from you."
James 4:7
The path of purity isn’t an easy one to follow while living in a world filled with temptations at every turn. You may be armed with the greatest self-discipline and wear willpower on your sleeve, but the truth remains that the devil has a way of taking you by surprise when you least expect it.
Just like you never truly know who someone is until you see that person react under pressure, you never know how strong your commitment to your values is until life hands you a set of cards that poses a threat to your own integrity.
Weakness loves to put your best interests to sleep in order to satisfy its pressing needs. And that may just be the hardest thing to combat about temptation. It has a way of luring you to believe that your desire has to be satisfied at all costs. In a moment of weakness, the rational cost/benefit analysis gets too easily forgotten and thrown away.
What’s interesting about it all is how simply great human beings are at justifying their own fuckups when it comes to giving in to their sinful wants. No matter the magnitude of our mistakes, we’ll somehow always find a way around to convince ourselves that our messes aren’t as bad as they really are. Our capacity to create justifications is infinite. After all, we could not bear the pain of admitting to ourselves that we are a sinful and immoral human being. Our precious sense of authenticity needs to be kept in a safe. We know we’re inherently good after all, don’t we? As Sartre notoriously said, Hell is other people. Just like we seem incapable of owning our desires, we have proven to be unable of ripping off our fake sense of morality.
