Temperance - Avoiding Sin

Temperance as avoiding sin

Temperance moderates the attraction of the pleasures of the senses and provides balance in the use of created goods. Temperance keeps us from doing what is wrong (sin) even when we have strong feelings for it. To resist sin, we must know what sin is.

Sin or a moral evil is choosing a good in a disordered way which means choosing a good in a way that harms other goods and the ultimate good, union with God. If I pursue achievement or work to the harm of my relationship with my family, that is a sin. It harms the good of my family relationships and it also harms my relationship with God. Work is good but being a workaholic is a sin that ruins the good of relationship with others and with God.  

A sin is a thought, word or deed contrary to the way God designed the human person; therefore, it is self-destructive.

All evil is a lack of a good

There are two parts to sin. First, the lack of conformity to reason and God’s law, meaning, the way he designed us.

Cancer is evil because it lacks a conformity to the rest of the body’s operation; cancer makes cells chaotic and in places they do not belong or cells that do the wrong thing.

Likewise, with sin, there is a lack of order to reason and to the way God designed the human person to flourish and become happy. Sin is stupid because we are choosing our own ruin.

Attraction to a perceived good

Second, the act of sin is caused by an attraction to a perceived good. All evil is a lack of a good that should be there. And what is not there cannot cause anything. So, what happens when we sin? We are attracted to a good thing and we allow that motivation to cause an action that is out of sync with the way God designed us as human persons to become happy.

We are always acting out of a desire for what we perceive to be good, but we act in a way that is disordered, out of sync with reaching happiness.

Damaging our capacity for a greater good

First, by sinfully pursuing a lesser good we damage our capacity for a greater good

By pursuing achievement in a disordered way will damage one’s capacity for family life.

The more a person pursues sexual gratification in a perverse way the more he diminishes his desire and capacity for the greater good of marriage and family. This is one of the reasons men are not committing to marriage and the birthrate is under 1.7 children per woman.  

By pursuing any created good in a disordered way will damage our capacity to receive God.

Diminish our capacity to appreciate

Second, in sinfully pursuing a lesser good we also diminish our capacity to appreciate, delight in the lesser good.

The more intemperate a person is with food, drink or sexuality, the less able they are to appreciate these goods as God designed them.

Intemperance to a pleasure causes  one to become accustomed to it and therefore, less able to appreciate it. We must increase the amount until we become addicts. There is the law of diminishing return.

Sin not only involves a forfeiture of a greater good but diminishes your appreciation of the lesser good. We begin with disordered desires for things that result in us despising the thing we desired and, in the process, become enslaved to them.