On Vice, Wounds and Getting Fat

When we have a relatively pure conscience, informed by the truth about others and ourselves, we are able to fairly accurately discern good from evil. The beautiful thing about a well formed conscience is that it works just like pain receptors on the body. When you do evil, your conscience instantly strikes you with pain and remorse. Which, if followed properly, means turning back, repenting, and righting the wrong done. This is quite analogous to dressing a wound. With a good conscience, we are able to know when we are morally hurt, and so, heal ourselves, and hopefully avoid the same errors in the future. For in the end, all moral evil has something attractive to it. But the attractiveness is simply a disguise for poison. Do evil repeatedly without repenting, and it metastases. It becomes easier and easier to do.

Maintaining a good conscience is pretty similar to exercising regularly to keep a healthy weight. When your body is in good shape, it is pretty easy to exercise. It is easy to keep everything in good order, the way it should be. But fail to look after the body, going after temporary goods, like eating a diet of fairy floss and coke, and indulging in watching absurd amounts of TV, and slowly, little by little, you get fat. And then the disaster comes: you look in the mirror, horrified at the monstrosity you've become, but the body is now very resistant to making the necessary changes. It becomes harder and harder to repent, as it were, to get things the way they should be. So it is with vice. Do one bad thing, and get into the habit of it, and in time, it becomes a second nature - truly a vice. Do evil enough without heeding the pain of the conscience, and the conscience becomes "seared" - it loses its sensitivity to evil it should have. So, the tragedy is, people in an advanced stage of vice, can reach a level where they suppress their consciences - and turning back to healing, towards goodness, becomes nearly impossible. They become as trapped as someone who has slowly gained 200kg.

The point I want to stress here is that there is hope for us all, while we are alive. The very reason the Lord became one of us is to save us from our sins, save us from turning ourselves into human disasters! We are very good at becoming human disasters, monsters of vice. So, we need a savior. However, I want to point out that we have to do our bit in being saved. When we go to a doctor, we have to listen to what he prescribes. We cannot just simply wish we were healthy and not do what it takes to become that way. We have to do our bit, resolutely, every day of our lives. It is much easier if we make it a habit of accepting grace when we are not filled with vice!

 Salvation is a gift from Christ. But we need to open it up and use it. Reject it time and time again, and it becomes more difficult to take up the gift and get things back in order. Like a fat person struggling to lose weight, the soul rebels, just like the body. But, that is the price of healing. In the same way that we should encourage and help people who are struggling to lose weight and become healthy, rather than make fun of them, so we must be the same with our friends, fighting for the joy of complete salvation, complete healing. We are all on the same journey, if we choose to go on it. So let's help each other out. Don't condemn people when they fall. Encourage them, help them to take up the cross. Getting rid of vice and growing in virtue is tough! But it's how we become human gems. There are some in the world who are morbidy obese spiritually. They almost can't heal themselves on their own. They may even love the sins that are killing them. But that's why it's very important to pray for others. Not for judgment, but for mercy, healing. Because let's face it, it may well be us in the same position. Nobody is immune from making a disaster of ones life, both now and in eternity.