Winning the Fight

There’s a blog post that I wrote back in 2012.  I’ve republished it on my blog somewhere close to Easter every year since.  It’s not about Easter or Lent.  It’s about one of the most delicious foods ever created:  Cadbury Crème Eggs.  The basic thrust of the blog post is that, yes, Cadbury Crème Eggs are not good for you.  You should not make them a staple of your diet.  But on the other hand, no matter how healthy we try to keep ourselves, we’re all going to die sometime.  Therefore, we should not deny ourselves all the pleasures of life.  So, go ahead and eat a Cadbury Crème Egg once in a while.  It’ll be okay.

I’m not going to publish that on my blog this year.  I no longer believe it.

Let me explain.  Yes, Cadbury Crème Eggs are still delicious and no, it’s not a sin to eat one once in a while.  But as I thought about it, it seemed to me that this same argument could be made to encourage us to do all kinds of things that are not good for us.  In fact, it’s one of the ways sin enters our lives.  We tell ourselves, you know, life is short.  We’re all going to die sometime.  We should not deny ourselves the pleasures of life.  God wants us to enjoy our lives, right?  So, go ahead and do what you want to do.  It won’t hurt anything.  It’ll be okay.

It’s a dangerous way of thinking.  It’s a slippery slope.  Every time we do something we know we shouldn’t, because “it won’t hurt anything, it’ll be okay”, it becomes that much easier to do something else we know we shouldn’t.  And then, it becomes easier to do something else.  And something else.  Until, without even thinking about it, we find ourselves doing all kinds of things we know we shouldn’t do.

Now, don’t take this too far.  I’m not trying to argue that Cadbury Crème Eggs are the gateway drug to a lifetime of sin and perdition.  I’m not writing about Cadbury Crème Eggs, per se.  I’m not writing about food at all.  I’m writing about a method of thought that’s not helpful.  It seems to me that we should spend as little time as possible entertaining that method of thought.  We will be better off, in all circumstances, if we do what we know is right, rather than doing something because “it won’t hurt anything, it’ll be okay.”

Temptation is a difficult thing to fight.  I give in too it far too often, in all kinds of contexts.  After all, that’s why we pray “Lead us not into temptation”--because we know temptation is hard for us.  But every time we win a fight against temptation, even over something as trivial as Cadbury Crème Eggs, it makes it that much easier for us to win the next fight.

Let’s win as many fights against temptation as we can.  And if we need to start by resisting Cadbury Crème Eggs, well, it’s as good a place to start as any.