Vulnerability and Triumph Over Life's Vices

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). 

Sometime ago, there were two brothers in the urban area who were awfully trouble makers: breaking things, stealing valuables, lying, and fabricating all sorts of general trouble. The parents have unsuccessfully changed the boys’ choices.

Lastly, the parents asked their Priest’s assistance. The clergy said that he will talk to the boys individually. The parents dropped off the youngest and went home, with the promise to return to get him soon. The boy seated in a chair across from the Priest’s desk while both of them just look at each other.

The Priest said, “Where is God?" The boy just seated there and did not respond. The former started to look unyielding and piercingly said, “Where is God?” The youngster shifted in his seat, but still did not reply.

Turning the Priest’s patience to be lost, he began to explode at the boy's refusal to speak and screamed “Where is God?” To his shock, the trouble maker boy jumped up out of his chair and run swiftly out of the cleric’s room.

The young boy exited the church and rushed all the way home, up the stairs and straight into his brother's room. He padlocked the door and wheezed, “We're in big trouble. God's missing and they think we stole Him!”

In reality, humans are like this with the inclination not to recognize who really God is because of so much pre-occupation on the gratification of vices.

"The chains of bad habits are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken!" 

Conquering life’s vices

Vice is a habit inclining one to sin. It is the result of frequent sinful acts of a given type and when developed, is in some sense also their cause.[1]

People believe they are unchanging and transformation is impossible. Can’t you stop overeating? Can’t you control your drinking? Can’t you put the cigarette down? The real answer is “of course you can.”[2] The issue is will you? Otherwise, St. Paul would not enjoy the state of grace as he pondered:

“So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.  Now if (I) do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand. For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin.” (Romans 7:17-25)

Everyone’s dark side, which enables the vice, will answer the same way every time. “No, you can’t do it. It’s too hard. You’re screwed.” The dark side is persuading everyone to keep the vice and stay small in one’s life. Stop listening to your dark side, which is fighting for the vice but not your bliss. 

Admission, support system & avoidance of vice steps towards change

What are these disproportionate choices that make human’s life bad? Alcoholism? Overeating? Cigarette-smoking? Mismanaged anger? Everybody has a dark side and it is evident through one’s vices. As management skills, one has to consider these tips to conquer vices:

Admission of vice

Most people can’t instinctively say quickly their issues to significant others with a sense of pride - especially when it comes to vices or negative traits. Instead, they hang onto their vices concealed, confounded, bewildering, unhappy, guilt-ridden and thrilling. Why? Because dark side has an agenda - it doesn’t want to abandon the vice. One has discovered a means to get used to vice and live with it, even though they’re aware that it’s bad for them and they would recommend it to no one. Why would one allow her/himself to do it if one wouldn’t teach it to her/his children?

Go for a life without the vice

Many people don’t want to be responsible for the choices that they make, and habitually don’t want to admit that their decisions whether good or bad have real life consequences.[3] As Winston Churchill says, "The price of greatness is responsibility."

Anyone who really wants to remove a vice must want a life without it. There’s  a form of suffering that occurs wherein one is spiritually and physically wedged; there are things that one won’t let happen in her/his life brought by vice which robs of aspects of her/him that they don’t even recognize. 

Be aware of the effects of vice

It’s important to bring a new assessment once anyone has picked a life without the vice. Refrain from defending the vice. Instead, gain control on how it has been influencing life. Relate agony. The more upbeat an individual can be about it, the swifter the vice will liberate its grasp. Telling the truth about a struggle reduces power of the vice. Likewise it uncovers what one has to avoid in her/his life.

Create an oath to do something concerning this

There are two alternatives when addressing a vice: Choose it to be afflicted with cancer, or lose it as a response to preservation of good health 

Make a promise to stop doing it. Mean it, write out the promise and read it everyday. Create a life without that vice.

Be transparent about it with your friends

Telling everyone closest to you who know about the vice is significant to establish a support system, make you responsible to others about your vice, and makes it real.

Apply a consequence system while keeping an oath

The excellent method to keep a promise is to put in a consequence every time  a promise is broken. Say, if tempted to smoke a cigarette, give 100 pesos to a poor or do an extra exercise the following daylight. When lured to cheat on diet,  cut a night out with friends on weekend. Pick a consequence that works. The exact consequence keeps one from breaking the oath. 

Everybody is vulnerable to bad habits 

Everyone has habits, both good and bad.[4] Anything that one does routinely without willfully thinking about it, or without specifically deciding to do it, is a habit. Good habits/practices like good hygiene, good manners etc. are a real blessing. However, if the habits that one has picked up are wicked or damaging, and find them difficult or almost unmanageable to change, they turn to be vices.

In one area or another, humans are all weak and imperfect, and subject to many different difficulties which can turn into bad habits and vices.

Vice or a bad habit is often more than just a deep-seated natural reaction. If one has a particular weakness and she/he entertains and concede to it for a continued period, very often evil spirits are behind these habits, amusing and trying to keep one addicted to them, especially if they are bad habits which jeopardize one’s health, or relationship.

The Scripture discloses that there are definitely evil spirits (pride, covetousness on illicit wealth, lust on pre-marital sex and homosexuality, anger, gluttony on drugs, cigarettes and alcohol, envy, sloth – the 7 capital sins) who turn spotlight on particular sins and vices, attempting to destroy humans through them.

There are demons that attempt to harm and destroy anyone in almost every phase of their lives if they allow them, especially one has the propensity or a troubling sin along some line, say, a strong susceptibility to be envious or to critically judge others. The demons being the enemy can play on these and tempt anyone with it continually.

The demons of drugs are also very addicting and very harmful. (In fact, the as the Philippine National Police (PNP) continues its anti-narcotics crackdown, the number of drug offenders killed has reached nearly 3,000.[5] This includes both the illegal drugs and the "legal" prescribed drugs that millions of people buy across the pharmacy counter. Many are addicting, and whatever "benefits" they give, whether running away from reality or relieving from pain, almost all of them have bad side-effects, are detrimental and costly.

The demons of gambling is a vice as addicting as alcoholism or drugs, which evidently a case of deceptive evil spirits inducing someone to gamble hard-earned savings away at a toss of the dice, the turn or a wheel, the speed of a horse or a chance good hand of cards. In fact, the lost of a Philippine bank’s president and CEO and its managers’ careers had rooted from a depositor whose generated $81 million stolen from the Bangladesh Bank was perpetrated by gamblers. [6]

The principle behind gambling is that one can make easy money without hard-work, opposing the values on industriousness, persistence and prudence.

Conclusion

There's a true to life story about a man who had an eagle pet. For many years he had chained the bird to a palisade. Through the years, the eagle had walked around and around that palisade so much on the end of its chain that he'd worn a pothole in the ground. Years had passed and the eagle got old and its master felt regretful and thought, "These are my eagle’s last days, so I'm going to unleash it!" So after taking the metal ring off the eagle's foot, he took him up in his hand and tossed him into the air. Surprisingly, the old eagle had almost completely forgotten how to soar, flip-flopped right back down to the ground, walked back over to the old palisade and started walking around the pothole like what it did for years! No chain or bird band that held the eagle - just the habit!

It has been said that "The chains of bad habits are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken!"- except by the Lord, and through the Lord, through His values, His words, His reminders!

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References: 

[1] Joseph F. Delany, Vice, A habit inclining one to sin, http://www.rc.net/wcc/virtues/scripvir.htm

[2] Lauren Zander , Co-founder and Chairman, Handel Group Quit Your Vices and Find Happiness, 10/24/2011 01:17 am ET | Updated Dec 23, 2011

140,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-zander/how-to-quit-a-vice_b_1026593.html

[3] The Choices We Make Have Consequences. Change Your Life One Decision At A Time

Peter Anderson, http://www.biblemoneymatters.com/choices-have-consequences-change-your-life-one-decision-at-a-time/

[4] David Brandt Berg, Overcoming Vices!, http://www.deeptruths.com/treasures/overcoming-vices.html

[5] Jaime Laude, Drug deaths near 3,000, (The Philippine Star)| Updated September 11, 2016 - 12:00am, http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/09/11/1622597/drug-deaths-near-3000)

[6] RCBC president and CEO resigns in wake of money laundering scandal

Published May 6, 2016 6:26pm, Updated May 6, 2016 7:42pm, http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/565295/money/companies/rcbc-president-and-ceo-resigns-in-wake-of-money-laundering-scandal)