Today, I felt direction to go a little deeper into some reasons to walk away from those little things. Some may not be a sin in and of themselves, but in the search for a life worth living, no chain is too small to break. Don't you mean to big to break? No. Those big ones that make us feel like Ebenezer in hell with his immobilizing heavy chain in the 1971 musical Scrooge (if you haven't seen it, you should) are easy to spot the need to escape. I can't move. I can't breathe. This chain is killing me. Help! But what about those little ones? The ones we just slide around our neck and sometimes even think make us look cool or smart or a valued part of culture but still are a reminder that we are slaves? What about the ones so small that they don't kill us as fast or hinder our breath and movement as much but are indeed still killing us?
They're doing more than killing us at a snails pace, trying to come across as harmless, they are making you unhappy and bored with life. Even those little things that aren't that bad, when we regularly indulge and give ourselves to the thing or activity, the comfort and relief it provides fades faster and faster, but the after effects increase. Those with even harmless bad habits have higher levels of anxiety and depression and lower levels of self esteem and more insecurity. There's not much that can be done to stop this trend, other than break the bondage, because we're wired that way. As we artificially stimulate the pleasure center of the brain with a particular pattern from a routine escapist activity it weakens the brain's ability to respond to naturally occurring situations of pleasure. Real life with real pleasure is forced to compete with fantasy and forced injections of false comfort, and it often loses. Which of course makes us run to the fantasy and false comfort once more, which increases the damage and continues the cycle perpetually.
These minor addictions incapacitate you and lead to impotence. I'm not talking about sexual performance, although, especially with certain issues, that could be a part of it. But impotence in life, the inability to take effective action. I know I need to clean, but I just can't get off the couch and turn off the TV and put away the snacks and it happens all the time. It goes deeper than laziness. It's not that I don't feel good today, it's that I never have the energy to be productive and I never feel good. My life has been reduced to inaction. I hate it, but it just seems to hard to change anything. That's bondage. That's a miserable way to spend the day, and it can happen in a lot of mostly harmless areas.
Studies show that those who commonly practice habitual and frequent escape from pressure, stress and life become more and more isolated from family and friends. Rest and recreation are not bad. We need time to recover and experience joy to balance the grind, but when we are looking to avoid the grind altogether and become stuck in R&R mode too often and too long, we also turn into hermits. We find it more and more difficult to connect with real people, even when we surround ourselves with a crowd, because we are connecting with real life less and less. It leads to constant battles with distraction and inability to focus on the present and reality. We are thinking instead how nice it will be to sit down with that bowl of ice cream, wondering what's happening on social media, planning strategy for when we can finally load up our game, remembering the porn we watched at lunch, etc. rather than focusing on our responsibilities. Work suffers right along with relationships, leaving us more anxious and overwhelmed by the problems of life with less and less energy and and knowledge of how to handle them.
Even minor addictions and regularly engaging in bad habits kill empathy. When we feed our selfish and self centered drives we starve our drive to care for and help others. Other people only matter in conjunction with meeting our own needs. Others are simply supporting cast in the story of ME.
But none of those are not the main reason to walk away from even the smallest chain. We are all going to struggle and fail as we follow Jesus, but habitual sin, even little harmless sins, is letting the enemy build a base of operations in our heart. It's one thing to have sin overcome us and win a little skirmish for which we repent, access grace and continue on pursuing God, but to kill the voice of conscience in an area, allow that sin to become entrenched and a regular part of our life and routine, makes us vulnerable in every area of serving God and others. When we leave a stronghold of self, then surrendering to the will of God becomes struggle and battle. When we starve empathy, we make it difficult to love like Jesus and see others through the eyes of God. When we drink and eat a little poison every day we weaken and become increasingly vulnerable in every area. Suddenly we find ourselves no longer wading in the surf of sin but caught in a rip tide being pulled helplessly out to sea to drown, unable to stop it, unable to navigate back to shore. We can stay safe by remembering that there is no rip tide and there are no sharks on the sandy beach. Walk with Jesus and throw away even the tiniest, mostly harmless sins, habits and selfishness, and you will, after initial adjustment, enjoy life so much more and feel so much more secure in your relationship with God.
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