There is a famous prayer of St Augustine, which I think almost every one of us has prayed our in our actions agreed to.
“Lord, make me holy, but not yet”
Augustine had a mistress he put away to become a monk when he converted to orthodoxy. His salvation came at a cost. He had to give up things that were very pleasant, very pleasing, and very comfortable.
So we go puritanical. We deny that we are fallen, that we will have these sins, and decide we are going to cover up, remove any temptations
As if that legislation will deal with our instincts. Men, including this one, are visual, and we dislike people who try to make us better by legislation. Instead we push back.
One of the difficulties is that we like our sins. There is a tendency to justify what we do — from eating that industrial food to following Roosh and bedding that cute body — because we like doing these things and they give us considerable pleasure, as they do to the person who we take to that restaurant which will make you gain five kilos and instantly clog your arteries.
For it is not food or sex or sport or politics or patriotism that is wrong. All these things are legitimate: but all these things are bound, and have their place.
And without that place we err.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 6:12-23 ESV)
I do not believe that we are going to have our desires removed in this life: our lust, our greed, our jealousy, our envy, our sloth (I could continue: but the Scholars have already classified our sins, etherized them, and put a very Roman, organised, precise classification around them).
What we have to do, me included, is rediscover the boundaries. Today, I have to use my body for righteousness. I will let tomorrow look after itself. Continually taking up my cross, and deny instincts, because it is for Christ, and it is for my own good.
In NZ, there are chocolate biscuits… that I like. That were delivered by the boys Aunt last night because she went to “Frugal Friday” at one of the supermarkets and bought them goodies. But I weighed myself this morning, and I need to tighten the diet.
Most of us understand that.
What we forget is that our body matters to Christ, and we are accountable for the this. We all need to not only exercise and watch what we eat (and if you don’t yet: listen to your elder: I once was skinny and could eat anything. I am now fat and cannot. Moderate your appetites while you can), but we need to be careful.
This is why I think one should delay intercourse until marriage, and be careful beforehand. It is not from lack of desire: in fact, if you are both not struggling with this beforehand you are probably not a match. It is that waiting will make it better.
And the world will see how you life your life. Our bodies get damaged by what we let ourselves do because we fall into the error of the Gnostics and forget that it is not our soul that matters, but it is our body that will resurrected.
And here we all need prayer. Because we all have our favourite weakness, and our secret sins. Those are what we need to deny: those are the cross we daily have to take up.
