Yeah.
That’s not good.
We really don’t want that flowing out of our lives in particular ways, now, do we?
What’s next on tap, issue-wise?
Envy.
“But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.”
James 3:14
This sucker is closely connected, perhaps, too connected, to anger.
I mean, come on? “Bitter envying and strife?”
Yeah, that sounds like anger to me.
At least, anger-adjacent.
It can be the revenge approach, the “I’ll show them.”
It can be strict defiance of “no one’s going to make me.”
These are just a couple of avenues you and I have stumbled down.
They can lead to some desperate choices and behaviors, with potentially devastating endings.
I mean, really, how many revenge fantasies-turned-reality have the outcomes that truly satisfy us or answer the problem?
Now, how many of these choices and behaviors can lead us to further loss, pain… and even jail time?
That’s more likely, isn’t it?
And it starts with seeing and wanting what someone else has…when we want it for ourselves.
And when we strive for it, and even strive to take it?
Well…
“There is a way that seems right to a man. But its end is the way of death.”
Proverbs 14:12
“For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.”
Romans 12:3
“The measure of faith,” I believe, speaks more to matters than just faith.
It speaks to what The Most High gives to each one of us.
Things meant uniquely, personally, and solely for us.
Things we disregard and disrespect, choosing to esteem envy of our neighbor’s stuff, instead.
And we all do it, in little ways, in big ways.
We envy. We esteem their stuff instead of appreciating our own.
I know that I’m doing it- and working through it- in about three or four different areas.
“Thou shalt not covet.”
Exodus 20:17
Yep. That’s a start.
The envy issue flourishes from there.
Moving on: the next deadly sin/issue…
Lust.
“For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.”
1 John 2:16
When we first think of lust, we associate it right away with sex.
And yeah, that’s there.
There’s lots of sexual sin we can get into.
But “Lust” deals more comprehensively than that, when it comes to “issues.”
Lust can be for anything: sex, power, money, fame, material possessions, any addiction or compulsion, image, or pleasure, just to name some examples.
Scripture, therefore, provides the antidote TO the Lust issue…
“I say then: ‘Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.’”
Galatians 5:16
Is that often fun or easy… or pleasurable?
Well, since we have these seven deadly sins in our issue pile, flowing, however clogged, out of our lives, then, I guess, “No” would be that answer.
Ugly truth about us mortals?
We would rather just slide into sin, lustfully going after what we want.
“But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”
Romans 7:23
We become impassioned about our lusts; we are at war. It is a merciless attack.
And yeah, it touches on something that you and I cannot get away from in life: food.
Gluttony.
“Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish.”
Psalms 73:7
Here is a big issue for me in my life. I have done plenty of alligator wrestling concerning it.
Having struggled with food, weight, body image, and disordered eating of all kinds, from the emaciation of Anorexia to the binge eating and subsequent obese weight gain of Bulimia and overeating, “Gluttony,” in one form or another, has been a lustful issue for me.
I have written and spoken about it, including in my book, “Thin Enough…”
