Aaron (and friends), I’d be real careful about this motivation:
“…as soon as I started thinking of myself as aspirationally high value, I no longer had any desire for things like porn.
One of the mindset shifts to escape porn is to recognize that it's beneath you.”
• If what is meant is that we are “above” certain things because we are made in the very Image of God, that’s fine
• If what is meant is that we might want to achieve a great deal in life, and cannot afford dissipation and decay, that’s (probably) fine.
My concern about seeing any moral failing as “beneath” us is best expressed by C. S. Lewis:
“Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity-that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride – just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense”
I appreciate Aaron's post. I wish more pastors spoke about the importance of wholesome living. How we act in our daily lives affects how we think. Corrupt, unhealthy lifestyles lead to corrupt minds.
Slight tangent, but on the topic of profanity, one of the silver linings of society becoming more secular is that you hear a lot less "G___ d___" and "J____ C_____" as profanities these days. Boomers and their predecessors used those a lot, but Gen Xers (especially the younger ones), Millennials, and Gen Z seem to prefer variants of the f-bomb.
Profanity amongst Christian men is something I'm seeing more and more of today. And I don't get it. Profanity to me displays a lack of self-discipline. And while I too consider it sin, I also think it indicates a lack of creativity.
This is evident in older films when profanity was not allowed. The creativity of writing and expression was fuller than today's stream of profanity.
It's important in my opinion not just to reject vice but to cultivate virtue. Otherwise, you can eliminate a vice and find yourself replacing it with another vice.
I think it was the medieval Jewish rabbi/philosopher Maimonides who said something like: You are morally responsible for the foreseeable consequences of your actions.
That means that a state government that promotes various forms of gambling, including lotteries, knowing full well that some minority of its citizens will do significant harm to their lives as a result, is an immoral government.
It also means that, when we buy lottery tickets, we are participating in the immorality, helping to normalize it, and hoping to redistribute money from others to ourselves, even though we know that the weighted average of "others" whose money we are getting is poorer than ourselves.
So, there need not be any reluctance to declare it a sin, and you don't have to become an addict for it to be a sin.
I've started developing a serious ham radio hobby. Part of that is learning morse code, a skill that I find difficult and rewarding. It's an extremely social hobby, I'm now a member of two local, in-person clubs. It develops and rewards skills around electrical engineering and building things and it gets me outdoors often. I find this scratches the itch that video games used to for me. But it's substantively different: playing video games is about sitting in the dark by myself and trying to master a simulation programmed by someone else. Amateur radio is a hobby conducted with real people in real time in the real world.
Amen! since the above to some may sound overly negative, allow me to humbly add a positive corollary: immerse yourself in the great art, music, literature, and movies of the past! The added bonus is these are all far superior to the products of today’s anti-culture. It would take superhuman effort to read/watch/consume all the latest vulgar trash and not get dirty. But I was blessed to grow up with TCM, classic lit, the great American songbook, etc., so to me that culture was normal and today’s stuff the aberration. If you’re new to this world a great place to start is Professor Esolen’s substack, which has weekly movie, song, and hymn recs. Immerse yourself in beauty for a while and soon you won’t even be able to tolerate ugliness:
Only thing for me here is video games. I played an absurd amount of them from about 18 to 25. I played them before that and even now I still play on average once a week with my college buddies. It''s so in my blood as a hobby that I think about them every day, whether it's a gaming news or whatever.
On the one hand, playing once a week and thinking about it through the week like other guys do story sports is far from the worst cases of video game addiction. And I don't feel guilty about it, which I think is meaningful because you should listen to your conscience.
On the other hand, the social aspect of playing with college buddies is pretty low because we never talk about anything meaningful when we play. As you might expect, we talked about the game mostly. So even the once a week is less value than other things I could be doing with my time.
Just thinking out loud. I'm not sure if I should be disciplined and totally remove it from my life or if it has become a mostly harmless thing that brings me joy and is fine to keep. Certainly the calculus was different in past years when I was completely obsessed.
Yeah, you and I are probably in a similar boat (I was born in the early 80s). Aaron is somewhat older than me, as are many of the readers here, and there tends to be a generation gap in this area. I played a lot of video games growing up and in college. I worked long hours in my early 20s while also studying for professional exams, but other than happy hour after work, I continued to let video games take up all my free time.
One thing I came to realize in my later 20s (keeping in mind that I married late and had kids late) is that video games seldom brought me any real fun anymore. It was mostly just a compulsion. At that age I developed another hobby, skeet shooting, which was fun once again and was social (as I would do it with a friend of mine). The video games didn't disappear, but they receded.
I think that video games as a social activity are a lot better than as a solo activity. I also think, as a social activity, playing them in the same room is a lot better than playing online. When I think back to really fun times playing video games in my past, up through college, they were always with a friend in the room, even if it was a solo game and we were just taking turns. Part of the reason they became less fun and more compulsive in my 20s is that element disappeared.
So that's the rule in my house with my kids (and my wife, who plays occasionally): we only play games together, with at least 1 other member of the family or a friend. I suppose our social family gaming is still a somewhat worse use of time than playing Jenga or something -- I believe developing real-world skills builds confidence, even if the skill is useless, while video game skills don't. But it's no worse and perhaps better than watching TV.
I actually think binging useless/"trash" TV also belongs in Aaron's list, except that it's a vice (or guilty pleasure) that applies more to women. I can't stand to passively watch TV/movies/sports for more than 2-3 hours per day, but I could still play video games for 12 hours straight. My wife is the opposite; can't play a video game for more than 30 minutes, but she could spend an entire day watching TV if she let herself. When it comes to the aging single ladies at church, my sense is that many of them watch a LOT of TV.
I'm glad to see someone taking this stance. It tends to attract pushback from all sides, so most aren't willing to say it. Many of my church friends have expressed concerns for my "legalism" in stating that not drinking, etc. is more than just a personal choice: I do it because it's good for everyone, not just me in particular. It's not about justification, it's about living the life God wants me to live.
The only one of these I would push back against is video games: I think non-gamers especially see all games as the same, when that simply isn't true. But gamers need to listen to these warnings. Many games are designed to be habit forming in a way that not only kills productivity: it actually kills enjoyment too. Think carefully about what you play and how often.
I agree with you. When men in my church get together, we sometimes make a big deal out of our consumption of alcohol and cigars. We look down on those who abstain from such things as legalists or fundamentalists.
A mature Christian can teach through his words and example that it is possible for men to enjoy each others' company without such things. There is nothing authentically manly about consuming intoxicants. We should resist the peer pressure that says we need to smoke and drink as some kind of proof of our superior Christian liberty. There's actually a subtle, ironic kind of legalism that pressures a brother to do such things and questions his faith if he refuses.
I do belong to an LCMS church. I've enjoyed much of that kind of camaraderie myself. My point is that Christian camaraderie should be possible without chemical assistance. If you enjoy this sort of thing (as I do) you may feel no pressure to conform but a guy who is abstaining from alcohol or tobacco or a teenager may feel unwelcome. I'm not calling it sinful, it is truly a matter of Christian liberty. No one should feel a sense of superiority to others because he partakes or abstains. As for myself, I want to consume less of this stuff. I think Aaron's article here is good advice.
It seems very odd to me that a Christian would look down on another for not consuming alcohol. Abstinence is the better choice. Drinking is a vice, and alcohol wreaks absolute havoc on society.
Cigars aren't destructive the way alcohol can be, but smoking them must be a sin since they are unhealthy. Don't know how anyone can not see this obvious fact.
"smoking them must be a sin since they are unhealthy"
I don't smoke and don't like to be around people who do, but if you carry your logic through to the extreme, then eating dessert is a sin, and failing to eat a lot of vegetables every day is a sin. Maybe some people can live life that way, but this doesn't strike me as a helpful way to think about sin. The word "gluttony" comes to mind, suggesting a lack of moderation, as the vice to avoid.
1. Everyone who takes mind-altering drugs takes some damage, even if everything looks fine (kinda like the vax). They're always impairing (putting you in the state of drunkenness), and they're most certainly a sin.
2. Tattoos are quite clearly revealed to us in the Bible as a sin.
3. Profanity is a sin.
The thing about all three of these is that they are or are getting culturally popular, so the churches are preaching less about them or even saying they're "ok". One of the responsibilities of the church is to teach how God would have us live, but you seldom hear sermons on these actual evils. They would lose those congregants who either commit those sins and don't want to change, or those who have been programmed by society and the media to accept those sins.
Whew, good quality bourbon was not on this list.....kidding folks kidding!
We all have time and productivity whittlers though. Mine can be news and especially political news commentary. Not a vice but an issue enough it is my Lent fast (and I have not perfectly kept it) but my screen time is down!
Aaron (and friends), I’d be real careful about this motivation:
“…as soon as I started thinking of myself as aspirationally high value, I no longer had any desire for things like porn.
One of the mindset shifts to escape porn is to recognize that it's beneath you.”
• If what is meant is that we are “above” certain things because we are made in the very Image of God, that’s fine
• If what is meant is that we might want to achieve a great deal in life, and cannot afford dissipation and decay, that’s (probably) fine.
My concern about seeing any moral failing as “beneath” us is best expressed by C. S. Lewis:
“Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity-that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride – just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense”
Confirmed what I had suspected for sometime and I am going to reject these vices. Especially the pot.
Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s not harmful.
I’d add: No getting drunk. If you can’t stop at one drink, no alcohol at all.
Hi Aaron - how do we get in touch with you?
Best way is to email me at aaron@aaronrenn.com
I appreciate Aaron's post. I wish more pastors spoke about the importance of wholesome living. How we act in our daily lives affects how we think. Corrupt, unhealthy lifestyles lead to corrupt minds.
Slight tangent, but on the topic of profanity, one of the silver linings of society becoming more secular is that you hear a lot less "G___ d___" and "J____ C_____" as profanities these days. Boomers and their predecessors used those a lot, but Gen Xers (especially the younger ones), Millennials, and Gen Z seem to prefer variants of the f-bomb.
I agree. J____ C_____ as a profanity makes me cringe, so I'm glad there is less of that.
Profanity amongst Christian men is something I'm seeing more and more of today. And I don't get it. Profanity to me displays a lack of self-discipline. And while I too consider it sin, I also think it indicates a lack of creativity.
This is evident in older films when profanity was not allowed. The creativity of writing and expression was fuller than today's stream of profanity.
It's important in my opinion not just to reject vice but to cultivate virtue. Otherwise, you can eliminate a vice and find yourself replacing it with another vice.
I think it was the medieval Jewish rabbi/philosopher Maimonides who said something like: You are morally responsible for the foreseeable consequences of your actions.
That means that a state government that promotes various forms of gambling, including lotteries, knowing full well that some minority of its citizens will do significant harm to their lives as a result, is an immoral government.
It also means that, when we buy lottery tickets, we are participating in the immorality, helping to normalize it, and hoping to redistribute money from others to ourselves, even though we know that the weighted average of "others" whose money we are getting is poorer than ourselves.
So, there need not be any reluctance to declare it a sin, and you don't have to become an addict for it to be a sin.
I've started developing a serious ham radio hobby. Part of that is learning morse code, a skill that I find difficult and rewarding. It's an extremely social hobby, I'm now a member of two local, in-person clubs. It develops and rewards skills around electrical engineering and building things and it gets me outdoors often. I find this scratches the itch that video games used to for me. But it's substantively different: playing video games is about sitting in the dark by myself and trying to master a simulation programmed by someone else. Amateur radio is a hobby conducted with real people in real time in the real world.
Amen! since the above to some may sound overly negative, allow me to humbly add a positive corollary: immerse yourself in the great art, music, literature, and movies of the past! The added bonus is these are all far superior to the products of today’s anti-culture. It would take superhuman effort to read/watch/consume all the latest vulgar trash and not get dirty. But I was blessed to grow up with TCM, classic lit, the great American songbook, etc., so to me that culture was normal and today’s stuff the aberration. If you’re new to this world a great place to start is Professor Esolen’s substack, which has weekly movie, song, and hymn recs. Immerse yourself in beauty for a while and soon you won’t even be able to tolerate ugliness:
https://anthonyesolen.substack.com/
Only thing for me here is video games. I played an absurd amount of them from about 18 to 25. I played them before that and even now I still play on average once a week with my college buddies. It''s so in my blood as a hobby that I think about them every day, whether it's a gaming news or whatever.
On the one hand, playing once a week and thinking about it through the week like other guys do story sports is far from the worst cases of video game addiction. And I don't feel guilty about it, which I think is meaningful because you should listen to your conscience.
On the other hand, the social aspect of playing with college buddies is pretty low because we never talk about anything meaningful when we play. As you might expect, we talked about the game mostly. So even the once a week is less value than other things I could be doing with my time.
Just thinking out loud. I'm not sure if I should be disciplined and totally remove it from my life or if it has become a mostly harmless thing that brings me joy and is fine to keep. Certainly the calculus was different in past years when I was completely obsessed.
Yeah, you and I are probably in a similar boat (I was born in the early 80s). Aaron is somewhat older than me, as are many of the readers here, and there tends to be a generation gap in this area. I played a lot of video games growing up and in college. I worked long hours in my early 20s while also studying for professional exams, but other than happy hour after work, I continued to let video games take up all my free time.
One thing I came to realize in my later 20s (keeping in mind that I married late and had kids late) is that video games seldom brought me any real fun anymore. It was mostly just a compulsion. At that age I developed another hobby, skeet shooting, which was fun once again and was social (as I would do it with a friend of mine). The video games didn't disappear, but they receded.
I think that video games as a social activity are a lot better than as a solo activity. I also think, as a social activity, playing them in the same room is a lot better than playing online. When I think back to really fun times playing video games in my past, up through college, they were always with a friend in the room, even if it was a solo game and we were just taking turns. Part of the reason they became less fun and more compulsive in my 20s is that element disappeared.
So that's the rule in my house with my kids (and my wife, who plays occasionally): we only play games together, with at least 1 other member of the family or a friend. I suppose our social family gaming is still a somewhat worse use of time than playing Jenga or something -- I believe developing real-world skills builds confidence, even if the skill is useless, while video game skills don't. But it's no worse and perhaps better than watching TV.
I actually think binging useless/"trash" TV also belongs in Aaron's list, except that it's a vice (or guilty pleasure) that applies more to women. I can't stand to passively watch TV/movies/sports for more than 2-3 hours per day, but I could still play video games for 12 hours straight. My wife is the opposite; can't play a video game for more than 30 minutes, but she could spend an entire day watching TV if she let herself. When it comes to the aging single ladies at church, my sense is that many of them watch a LOT of TV.
I'm glad to see someone taking this stance. It tends to attract pushback from all sides, so most aren't willing to say it. Many of my church friends have expressed concerns for my "legalism" in stating that not drinking, etc. is more than just a personal choice: I do it because it's good for everyone, not just me in particular. It's not about justification, it's about living the life God wants me to live.
The only one of these I would push back against is video games: I think non-gamers especially see all games as the same, when that simply isn't true. But gamers need to listen to these warnings. Many games are designed to be habit forming in a way that not only kills productivity: it actually kills enjoyment too. Think carefully about what you play and how often.
I agree with you. When men in my church get together, we sometimes make a big deal out of our consumption of alcohol and cigars. We look down on those who abstain from such things as legalists or fundamentalists.
A mature Christian can teach through his words and example that it is possible for men to enjoy each others' company without such things. There is nothing authentically manly about consuming intoxicants. We should resist the peer pressure that says we need to smoke and drink as some kind of proof of our superior Christian liberty. There's actually a subtle, ironic kind of legalism that pressures a brother to do such things and questions his faith if he refuses.
I'm an LCMS Lutheran, and there is a kind of camaraderie among men involving alcohol and sometimes cigars. However, there's no pressure to conform.
Do you, by any chance, belong to the LCMS?
I do belong to an LCMS church. I've enjoyed much of that kind of camaraderie myself. My point is that Christian camaraderie should be possible without chemical assistance. If you enjoy this sort of thing (as I do) you may feel no pressure to conform but a guy who is abstaining from alcohol or tobacco or a teenager may feel unwelcome. I'm not calling it sinful, it is truly a matter of Christian liberty. No one should feel a sense of superiority to others because he partakes or abstains. As for myself, I want to consume less of this stuff. I think Aaron's article here is good advice.
It seems very odd to me that a Christian would look down on another for not consuming alcohol. Abstinence is the better choice. Drinking is a vice, and alcohol wreaks absolute havoc on society.
Cigars aren't destructive the way alcohol can be, but smoking them must be a sin since they are unhealthy. Don't know how anyone can not see this obvious fact.
"smoking them must be a sin since they are unhealthy"
I don't smoke and don't like to be around people who do, but if you carry your logic through to the extreme, then eating dessert is a sin, and failing to eat a lot of vegetables every day is a sin. Maybe some people can live life that way, but this doesn't strike me as a helpful way to think about sin. The word "gluttony" comes to mind, suggesting a lack of moderation, as the vice to avoid.
I suppose if someone is pressuring someone else to eat more dessert or fewer vegetables, that would be an analogous situation to what was described.
Well don't carry it to an extreme then. Though probably technically eating dessert IS sometimes a sin.
1. Everyone who takes mind-altering drugs takes some damage, even if everything looks fine (kinda like the vax). They're always impairing (putting you in the state of drunkenness), and they're most certainly a sin.
2. Tattoos are quite clearly revealed to us in the Bible as a sin.
3. Profanity is a sin.
The thing about all three of these is that they are or are getting culturally popular, so the churches are preaching less about them or even saying they're "ok". One of the responsibilities of the church is to teach how God would have us live, but you seldom hear sermons on these actual evils. They would lose those congregants who either commit those sins and don't want to change, or those who have been programmed by society and the media to accept those sins.
Whew, good quality bourbon was not on this list.....kidding folks kidding!
We all have time and productivity whittlers though. Mine can be news and especially political news commentary. Not a vice but an issue enough it is my Lent fast (and I have not perfectly kept it) but my screen time is down!