Moderation

In 2021, my daughter and I went to Egypt for two weeks. In part because of Covid, my daughter ended up homeschooling, so this became her senior trip. It was her first time out of the country. It was my first time out of the country in years. It was awesome and life-changing. It gave her a perspective on the world she had never had before, and it awakened something in me that had been sleeping for a long time.

At the end of the trip, my daughter said to me, “When I have more money, I want to travel.”

I responded immediately, “That’s not the way to think about it. Make it your goal to travel, and you will find the money.”

That’s how the 3rd cardinal virtue works. It’s about deliberate living. It’s about organizing our lives around the best things.

The word often used for this virtue is “temperance.” But that word doesn’t really capture what is in view. It makes people think merely of avoiding something bad or not using good things too much.

But that’s not really the point. The point is not the means. It’s the end. When you aim at good and big things, you begin organizing your life to get there. That’s the point about travel. When you have a clear goal to take a big trip, you start thinking about how you spend money everywhere because you want to gather the resources you need to do something bigger.

That’s the real meaning of temperance—or deliberate living.

How the Apostle Paul Expresses This in 1 Corinthians
In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he returns to this theme again and again: clarify how you spend your time by orienting your life toward better things.

In the ancient world, there was often discussion about what was good and what was useful or helpful. You can find this, for example, in Cicero’s On Duties (read about here). Paul takes up this same theme: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

So how are we to judge? We look at our goal. Not everything is useful for achieving it. Continue reading “The Cardinal Virtues for the Christian Life, Part 4: Deliberate Living (Temperance)”

There are so many good things to enjoy in this life that we can readily make them the focus of our lives: food, sex, alcohol, movies, etc. These pleasures are so powerful that Jesus warned that “life’s worries, riches and pleasures” are like weeds and thorns that choke the good plant of the Word of God in our lives (Luke 8:14). We easily become “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim. 3:4).

Pleasures easily become our masters. Paul describes the life before Christ as one in which we were “deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures” (Tit. 3:3). People become slaves to pleasures. They sacrifice their health, their relationship with God, their relationship with people, and their fortunes to these things.

Because of the power of these pleasures, some people make the opposite error. They get focused on rules prohibiting these pleasures. The problem is that this often produces a focus on these pleasures just as intense. Religion becomes all about avoiding these things rather than a change of the heart.

In addition, God created these pleasures to be enjoyed. Enjoying the good things of this world is not just an option. It is a commandment. The Apostle Paul wrote that these are things “God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer” (2 Tim. 4:3b–5).

How do we learn to receive these pleasures in a good way that doesn’t make us lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God? How do we avoid becoming enslaved by them? Continue reading “Loving God the Most: Lovers of God Rather Than Lovers of Pleasures”

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