christian-fiction

If we must tempt to Pleasure, how do we tempt to the least amount of Pleasure? Or better yet, tempt them to its opposite? But how to tempt them to pain.

And so, wish becomes pang; the crave, an ache; pleasure, pain. Losing all its pleasure, anticipation cuts the opposite direction and becomes merely a constant, painful reminder of what they__e lost, forever.

With addiction, a client__ fears can be ripened into some very pleasing fruit: Irritability, suspiciousness, isolation, paranoia, and finally on to that grand banana __he fear of Fear itself.

The trick here is, while the actual pleasure begins to recede and blur, we simultaneously bring the imagined pleasure more fully into focus. And when we do, even the memory of the pleasure becomes more and more heightened and imagined, thus anticipation is increased. This kind of anticipation is the spiritual equivalent of a Cheeto and we want them to eat the whole bag.

Denial makes it easier to keep an addiction progressing smoothly along and, being a lie, it__ just better form.

No wonder being a real Christian isn't popular. Who wants to suffer so they can find joy?" ~ Dianne Simmons

Their guilt plus their repentance should have equalled forgiveness. But they don__ feel forgiven, so they failed, which makes them feel guilty, which was why they repented in the first place, so they__e stuck right where they started: Guilty.

Guilt, if cultivated in a Christian client, can render their Christianity worthless to themselves and others.

As a motivation __or humans, but Christians especially_ guilt is always wrong and can never move them to do anything He wants of them. Never let them realize that.

If we can keep the Christians thinking of themselves as sinners not sons and daughters, we can make them view their relationship to The Adversary as a negative-sum-game: They fall in a hole, He pulls them out, they fall back in, etc... That way they never get anywhere; they__e always either standing next to a hole or down in it.

Even if their guilt actually does produce a good action, it will be the saddest good action you__l ever see, and it will be of no use to them because their goal is not to obey, but to feel less guilty, thus nothing about their souls will be reshaped.

You see my point? The average person has a very average notion of goodness to which they aspire averagely. To aspire to goodness in any remarkable way would be __ndemocratic_.

If they ever envision Goodness as a thing that exists outside them, some real thing they__e been called to participate in by their actions, well then, we__e headed right back toward The Virtues.

For example, your man might think: I don__ steal. Maybe on my taxes, everyone does that, but not in the way I heard so and so stole from his company. See? Those men for whose opinion he cares approve of embezzlement in one area, not the other. He uses them to maintain a claim on goodness while at the same time stealing.

You're not so tough. No tougher than the man whose blood will spill from your veins.

You need time for the grief to heal, for the memories to fade in sharpness, time to adjust your expectation for the future. Be gentle with yourself, you'll make it.

As far as he was concerned, there were only two all-important laws on earth:1. Don__ murder people.2. Never swear in front of Lilly.

Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight.