On my mind as I consider avoidance. A second attempt, to clarify the thought:
The essence of every temptation is that it contains within itself the evasion of a fact.
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Temptation (Ctd.)
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This entry (permalink) was posted on Tuesday, February 9, 2010, at 12:30 am by jbkuhner. Filed in Comments on Life, Right Thinking, The Inner Life. and tagged evasion of a fact, temptation.
3 Comments
not sure i understand. i am tempted by ice cream. what fact am i avoiding?
This is hard to explain, I’ll admit. There’s a lot of behind-the-scene thinking that led me to phrase it this way.
If there weren’t something unsuitable about it, it wouldn’t be a temptation, would it? You’re not tempted to “drink water,” though drinking water is pleasurable. But it’s an entirely “proper” pleasure. And ice cream within moderation is entirely proper too. For something to be a temptation, there has to be something you’re not confronting… i.e. “I’m ruining my teeth & my digestive system with Coca-cola… but I like it and I hate thinking about the decay of my body and my own slow (self) destruction and so I will drink it anyway.” If that’s not true, then I think the pleasure involved is probably good and not a “temptation” at all.
that makes sense. so thus resistance is an essential element of temptation, and why would you be resisting anything that wasn’t harmful in some capacity.
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