Endure Chapter 7: Temperate

Welcome to Chapter seven of Endure. My name is Ben Greenfield, and every week I will be releasing to you a chapter of my book Endure, which you can find@getindor.com in its full entirety and physical and digital version. But I'll also be releasing to you snippets from each chapter here each week on the podcast. So let's dive in Chapter seven Temperate I've been enjoying my morning time with God quite a bit recently. Perhaps that's because at the time that I'm working on this chapter, it's almost summer. So rather than being holed away in my basement flipping through the pages of God's Word, which there's absolutely nothing wrong with, of course, especially during the cold, dark mornings of fall and winter, I've of late been stepping out on my back patio as the bright morning sun peeks over the horizon and reading the Bible and speaking with and listening to God while bathed in the glory of his beautiful daytime star in the sky, surrounded by lush green forest and early morning birdsong, you too will likely find that pairing nature with the morning spiritual practice, or if time doesn't permit for that, an evening spiritual practice, say, under the stars, can prove even more meaningful or inspirational in reading, praying, meditating, or journaling indoors. After all, as Romans 1:20 tells us, God's invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, which of course seems to be most loudly and vigorously exclaimed in nature. But I digress from the topic of this chapter, which is actually something called temperancy. See, during one of those recent morning times with God, I was reading in my Bible and came across a passage in First Corinthians 9:25 27, in which the apostle Paul, one of the leaders of the first generation of Christians and a missionary, philosopher, and author who is often considered to be the most important person after Jesus in the history of Christianity, says, and everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus not with uncertainty thus I fight not as one who beats the air, but I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified. Paul seems to think of himself as being in something very much like a physical competition that requires focused and careful training, and as a result understands the importance of being temperate in all things. Just as an athlete who is striving for mastery, he like many exercise enthusiasts you may run into these days, also emphasizes his priority placed upon discipline his body and bringing it into subjection. Literally pummeling his body and making it his slave. Not in a masochistic self harming sense, but rather in the same way you might imagine when you picture Apollo Creed preparing to fight Rickley Conlan in the recent Rocky film, or even Rocky himself preparing in the harsh Russian winter to fight the Russian fighting phenom Ivan Drago, in the same way that getting hit in the face during a boxing match means that the stakes are significantly high in that scenario, Paul also knew the stakes were high in his scenario, an uphill operation to spread the message of salvation Salvation to a world that so desperately needed hope at this point in his life, Paul had suffered much in his missionary journeys. He'd been beaten, stoned, hated, mocked, shipwrecked, snake, bitten and imprisoned. But yet he seems to find a strange joy in each of these afflictions because each trial strengthened his faith in leaps and bounds and allowed him to become an even stronger missionary and champion for the message of salvation. In other passages of Scripture, Paul describes how he considers his body as a living sacrifice for God's kingdom and says that because he had faithfully run the race set before him, and that he knew God would be honored not not only during his life but also at his death. Paul also knew if he opened himself up to temptation towards excesses of food, sex, money and otherworldly pleasure if he didn't practice self control, self discipline and temperancy, and if he let his body get the upper hand, he was going to be lost because he couldn't accomplish his epic journey in a broken, a lazy and unfit, or an unhealthy body. He knew that he couldn't let his body just go to sleep, that to support his soul he must keep his flesh awake and watchful because, as Mark 14:38 says, the Spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. Yet this passage from 1 Corinthians also actually made me scratch my head a bit. Why? Because in First Timothy 4, 8 Paul says, for bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and that which is to come. So which is it? Should you discipline your body and bring it into subjection, or should you accept the fact that bodily exercise profits just a little and prioritize godliness over self care or self control and temperancy? Well, let's dive in and answer this question along with addressing what temperancy actually is and why you should have a good understanding of it if you want to enable yourself to be fully impactful with your unique purpose and skill set in this life. So let's start here. What is temperancy exactly? Well, temperancy is, simply put, a state of temperance. There, now you know. Seriously though, more specifically, According to Webster's 1828 dictionary, since I of course insist upon using very old, brown and wrinkled reference texts, temperance itself is definitely defined as moderation, particularly habitual moderation in regard to the indulgence of the natural appetites and passions, restrained or moderate indulgence, as temperance in eating and drinking, temperance in the indulgence of joy or mirth. Temperance in eating and drinking is opposed to gluttony and drunkenness, and in other indulgences to excess, also known as patience, calmness, sedateness and moderation of passion. While you may be familiar with temperance as a reference to a late 19th and early 20th century Social movement that advocated the moderate use of, or for some proponents, the total abstinence from the consumption of alcoholic beverages, the concept has of course been a familiar component of human self discipline long before that. For example, in the Pocket Dictionary of Ethics, temperancy is defined as an ethical term that is used in two ways. First, the term denotes a virtue prevalent in both Christian and Greek ethical thought that is associated with moderation and self control, especially with respect to desires and appetites, particularly related to the restraint of desires and the mastery of passions. The Greek philosopher Plato actually considered temperance to be one of the four cardinal virtues and spoke of it as the virtue of self control. He described temperance as the use of reason and will and the mastery of the appetites and the passions. Philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas viewed temperance as both a general and specific virtue. In the former sense, as a general virtue, temperance moderates the other moral virtues, whereas in the latter, as a specific virtue, it controls the bodily pleasures. So temperance is associated with both proportion and moral discernment. Several quotes from notable religious figures in history highlight the importance of temperance related to the overall positive character of a human being, including Tyron Edwards, who said, temperance is to the body what religion is to the soul, the foundation of health, strength and peace. Or John Erskine Temperance is the control of all functions of our bodies. The man who refuses liquor goes in for apple pie and develops a paunch is no ethical leader for me. St. Gregory, if we give more to the flesh than we ought, we nourish our enemy. If we give not to her necessity what we ought, we destroy a citizen. C.S. lewis One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the word temperance to the question of drink. It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things. A man who makes his gold or his motor bicycle the center of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog is being just as intemperate as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does not show on the outside so easily. Bridge mania or golf mania do not make you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by externals. William Temple Temperance that virtue without pride and fortune without envy, that gives a vigor of frame and tranquility of mind, the best guardian of youth and support of old age, the precept of reason as well as religion, the physician of the soul as well as the body, the tutelar goddess of health and universal medicine of life, the Apostle Peter. Add to your faith knowledge and to knowledge temperance and temperance, patience and of course the Apostle Paul, who wrote that those who sleep sleep at night and those who are drunk get drunk at night, but since we belong to the day, let us be sober. That was in 1st Thessalonians, and he also said in 1st Timothy, Deacons must be respectable, not double tongued, moderate in the amount of wine they drink. Similarly, a woman must be respectable, not gossips, but sober and wholly reliable. The prevailing theme throughout each of these notable tributes to temperancy is a sharp contrast between temperancy and the opposite of temperancy, a lack of sobriety and self control, not just in the realm of, say, substance abuse with a compound such as alcohol, but also a a abuse of one's body in general, including excesses of food or absences of physical exercise, and b addiction or attachment to any object in life, both helpful or hurtful. And yes, not to throw any particular demographic under the bus. But this means that the fellas mowing down on Twinkies and Cheetos at a church potluck, their paunches rolling with laughter as they share a six pack of Coke, and the ladies who spend two hours in front of the mirror getting ready for that potluck are just as intemperate as the drunk stumbling down the sidewalk across the park from them. This phenomenon of a lack of physical temperance, even amongst those who appear to practice a great deal of spiritual temperance, carries with it hints of Gnosticism, which is a philosophy originating in the late first century amongst Jewish and early Christian groups, based upon a belief that the body is inherently bad, but the Spirit is good, that all physical matter is basically evil, and that only the spiritual matter is what demands our primary care and attention. But as Genesis 1 and beyond in the Bible points out, we humans are created as divine image bearers of God. Our bodies, albeit broken from sin and far from the perfect state they will be restored to in heaven, are not nasty, brutish, evil, dirty things, certainly living only for the flesh, with neglect of the spirit, which is the entire topic of my last book, fit soul is a sinful practice. Yet it's also important to understand, as Paul did, that the body is the house or the temple of the soul. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes, it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become in the body of Christ a temple of the spirit. So we are a body and soul together. The body is not just a shell. As I'll tell you in chapter 18 of this book, the Bible does not describe eternity in the afterlife as some kind of disembodied existence in the heavens. Rather, as Romans 8 says, and not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. This verse demonstrates the hope we have in the eventual redemption resurrection of our physical bodies, the very bodies we live in now. God values these physical bodies and we are care for them. I'd even go so far as to say that because we are all made in the image of God and likeness of God, when we look at our body in the mirror, we're seeing an image of God Himself. In a way, when temperance is good and when it's not. But of course, temperancy and a prioritization placed upon physical self care does have the potential to spiral out of control into selfishness and OCD like tendencies. For example, think about any category of a healthy life that may lend itself well to temperance. Like running for heart health, or intermittent fasting for longevity, or lifting heavy stuff to get stored strong, a yoga practice for mobility, or a strict diet of vegetables and chicken. Those all sound like reasonable methods of passion, mastery, desire, restraint and self control, right? But when these habits and thoughts of temperancy spin out of control, becoming so intense and intrusive that they seem to take over against our will, or what we know would be a more sane and normal approach to our routine, they can turn into all consuming rituals that are irrationally and often selfishly performed to rid us of an overwhelming sense of fear, dread and anxiety. This signifies that we may be on a slow slide towards excessive control tendencies, more obsessive compulsive personality disorder like tendencies. In other words, temperancy can fast become obsession that detracts from our spiritual health and often even our physical health too, including that lunchtime run you insist on taking each day. So much so that when a co worker who needs encouragement, compassion, empathy or friendship asks you if you can have lunch with them and you politely decline because you know how crappy you'll feel about yourself if you don't run, even if you're tired and sore. That insistence upon a strict daily 16 hour fast dictating that when your daughter wants to go out to breakfast with you, you watch as she awkwardly shove porkfuls of eggs in her face and you dutifully sip a black coffee, wishing inside that you could just share a nice meal with your daughter but not wanting to break your streak of fasting that weight training appointment or yoga class you've systematically planned each morning, causing you to cut your meditation, prayer time, journaling and time with God quite short or even occasionally cut it out altogether so you can maintain the hypnotic rhythm of your morning routine. That refusal to indulge in high calorie meals or any dish served in rich fattening foods such as butter, causing you to sit somewhat forlorn and sad at thanksg having dinner, munching on a stick of asparagus dipped in cranberry sauce while gazing wistfully at the coconut cream pie on the table. See, temperancy is not this act of prudish self denial or holier than thou self care or guilt tripping yourself or others for not, say, exercising perfectly and eating perfectly. But rather temperancy is the ability to moderate and self control your desires and appetites, and specifically the ability to be able to restrain desires and master passions. So if you know that you possess the mastery to get up every morning to lift the weights, then you also have the mastery to set the alarm clock 50 minutes earlier to allow for more spiritual care prior to your physical care. If you can restrain yourself on the regular from eating a cinnamon roll slathered in bacon sauce each morning for breakfast as you stroll by the downtown cafe, then perhaps you also have the ability to be able to enjoy one of those same rolls on a Saturday morning with your family without fearing a fast sticky slide into heart failure. If you have the fortitude to run every day at lunch, you also have the fortitude to trust God. The skipping couple those runs so you can be there for others. More isn't going to suddenly transform you into a couch lounging epicurean the hut. So enjoy God's creation. Savor it. As I told you in chapter five, eat the fat, eat the milk, eat the honey and lay on your back and gaze at the stars. Sip a glass of wine while watching a sunset and skip a stale gym workout to go for a stroll in green and lush nature. But if there is any habit, enjoyment, staple, pleasure, pastime, or even necessity in life to which you cannot say, as Anthony Demello so eloquently describes in his book Awareness, I really do not need you to be happy. I'm only deluding myself in the belief that without you I will not be happy. But I really don't need you for my happiness. I can be happy without you. You're not my happiness. You're not my joy. Well, if you can't say that, you risk that temperancy has become your God might sound familiar to you if you already listened to my chapter about honey. Now, I don't know about you, but I personally enjoy the thought of being a temperate Christian hedonist, soaking up and savoring all of God's creation with responsibility, self control, moderation, and a noble and proud mastery of my desires and appetites because I know that my body is a divine image, bearer of God. So let's move on to how to be temperate. Well, there's one last thing that's important to understand. When I throw around words like self control or moderation or mastery, there's a risk that I give you the impression you can simply will yourself into temperancy as the captain of your own ship and master of your own soul. There are certainly several effective means of equipping yourself to eat better, move more, break habits or build new habits. The most effective, in my opinion, is the type of subconscious reprogramming taught in a book such as Joseph Murphy, Power of the Subconscious Mind. The first step in that subconscious reprogramming process is making a purposeful decision to be temperate. Very similar to Daniel in Daniel 1:8, who purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. But the fact of the matter is that to build true and lasting temperance based upon a worldview, perspective and life purpose of loving God and loving others, you cannot simply, as Benjamin Hardy describes in his book willpower, doesn't work will yourself into temperance. Nor can you go it alone with even the most powerful of mental habit breaking or habit building strategies. Instead, you must first eliminate those temptations in your life that draw you away from temperance. Jesus, who I firmly believe was not only a deity but also the greatest philosopher that ever walked this planet, said in his epic Sermon on the mount in Matthew 5 if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perishes perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. This means that if you're snacking on too much chocolate peanut butter ice cream after dinner, you should duct tape your mouth and also consider hunting down a hacksaw to lop off your ice cream. Grabbing fingers. I'm just kidding. But it does mean that ice cream probably shouldn't be in your freezer until you've built adequate temperance to control that craving that vape pen you're hitting too hard at night for relaxation. Toss it in the trash if you can't resist porn. Install blocking software and I'll give you some good options on the resources webpage for this chapter@getendure.com Chapter 7 Install that on your browser. There's one that me and my kids use called Canopy, for example. You want to prioritize time and Scripture. We'll hide away any books by your bedside except the Bible. You get the idea. Number two. Understand that any ability to control your appetites, emotions and attitudes is not based on your own strength or will, but rather is rooted in God's power, a topic I address later in chapter 16 when I'll tell you about the atomic power of tactics like prayer and fasting. Ephesians 5:18 says, and be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. In other words, it is the power of the Holy Spirit that increases your capacity to resist sin and strengthens any resolution towards temperancy. No matter how hard you try, you can't work or will yourself into full mastery of your carnal desires. You'll eventually crash and burn if you attempt to fight sin based on your own strength. Strength. Think again to the words of Mark 14:38, which says, the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. So temperance is not a skill you develop through blood, sweat, tears, and self denial. It's instead a byproduct of a spirit filled life. If you have accepted the simple message of salvation and have cast all your heavy burden, shame, guilt and sin of the past at the foot of the cross, then allowed the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control to subsequently pour into your life. And finally, you've soaked yourself daily in the spiritual disciplines of devotions, prayer, meditation, gratitude, journaling, worship, love for God and love for others. Temperance transforms from a teeth grittingly difficult and ultimately futile attempt to fight against your own flesh to a joyful process of responsibly caring for the divine body that houses your eternal soul so that your body, your brain and your spirit are prepared to make maximum impact with the life that you've been blessed with with. Does this mean that when you eliminate temptations that surround you and rely upon God's power, that everything will be smooth sailing and that resistance to temptation will come effortlessly with pure ease and flow? Well, not exactly. I personally still have to check myself and often find myself saying no, but with hesitation when I'm at a steakhouse and the waiter asks if I want a second or third cocktail. I still struggle when a scantily clad woman walks by me on the sidewalk and I'm taking tempted to mentally cheat on my wife when things get stressful on a long workday. I sometimes find myself around 4 or 5pm Thinking of ducking out for kava or weed or wine or the soft lounger chair in the living room rather than putting my nose to the grindstone and maintaining focus, productivity and purpose filled activities for the remainder of the workday. It's often hard to push myself away from the table when I want to keep stuffing my face but know the health and temperancy values of the concept of hara hachi boy, which is a Japanese term meaning eat until you're 80% full. I still struggle too with selfish forms of temperancy like spending too much time focused on my self care or squeezing in just a few more minutes at the gym or spending a disproportionate amount of morning time on physical care versus spiritual care. But ultimately through one intelligent elimination or hiding away of those temptations, I know I'm most pulled towards temptations that I know will pull me away from being most impactful with my life's purpose and 2 reliance upon God and his power. With deep focus placed upon the spiritual disciplines, I'm slowly mastering the fine art of sabering and embracing God's creation while simultaneously being what I described earlier a temperate Christian hedonist. After all, as First Corinthians 10:13 says, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. Summary Look, God made all things good. Yep, all of it. Even those things were tempted to abuse, and even those things that threatened to rip us away from temperancy if you hadn't yet listened to it. Listen to chapter five where I tell you more about it. But you know, like I said there, God loves honey. He loves the sticky, sugary, syrupy and thick and creamy all at the same time. He also loves fat, fat dripping with salty, savory, greasy goodness. And milk. Milk. Buttery, frothing, sweet milk. Fresh milk wine? You bet. God adores a Biden aged Bordeaux in a bold California cab, accompanied by a moist slice of sourdough bread dipped in spicy aromatic olive oil or salted and slathered in fresh blueberry preserves. As a matter of fact, the richness and value of drink is all over the Bible. Proverbs 24:13 gives sage advice from a father to a son My son, eat honey because it is good, and the honeycomb which is is sweet to your taste. The Song of Solomon 5:1 weaves honey, milk, spices, and wine into one of the greatest love poems of all time. I've come to my garden, my sister, my bride. I've gathered my myrrh with my spice. I've eaten my honeycomb with my honey. I've drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends, and drink. Drink freely, O beloved. In Deuteronomy 31:20 God blesses the Israelites as he brought them to the land flowing with milk and honey, of which I swore to their fathers. And Deuteronomy 32 reveals a similar blessing with fruit, honey, honey, oil, curds, milk, fat, wheat, and wine all woven in. He made him ride in the heights of the earth, that he might eat the produce of the fields. He made him draw honey from the rock, and oil from the flinty rock, curds from the cattle, and milk of the flock with fat of the lambs and ram of the breed of Bashan and goats with the choicest wheat. And you drank wine, the blood of the grapes. Nehemiah 9 describes how the Israelites took strong cities in a fat land and possessed houses full of goods, wells, digged vineyards and olive yards, and fruit trees in abundance. So they did eat and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in Thy great goodness. Lest you wonder whether corn chips, polenta slathered with meatballs and cheese, a pint of beer, and a handful of salted almonds also fall under God's love and blessing, consider the words of James 1:17, which tells us that every good gift is from God. And in John 3:1 we learn, all things were made by him, and without him was not anything that was made. And I go on and on in in chapter five about honey and tell you all of this. But you got to be temperate. You got to check yourself regularly to ensure you're not being intemperate with your temperancy. At the same time, enjoy God's creation and don't live a life saturated with glum self denial. Finally, understand that willpower is not going to grant you temperancy. Instead, a temperate life is achieved through the removal of temptations that you know you're drawn towards, combined with reliance upon upon the power of the Holy Spirit to provide you with restraint of desires and mastery of passions. So how about you? Are there areas in your life in which you've identified a need for greater temperance? If so, what are those areas and how do you plan to tackle temperancy? Do you find yourself selfishly pulled towards excesses of temperancy, often manifested and imbalanced, time placed upon self care or health optimization? How do you deal with that? How do you plan on dealing with that? Well, if you visit get indoor.com you can get the physical or digital version of this book with comprehensive note taking sections that will allow you to to record your replies to those questions I've just asked you. Because interacting with this book is a really, really great way to continue to build your endurance and your spiritual stamina. And also if you go to get Indoor.com chapter 7 chapter number 7, you can get resources, references, links and additional reading and listening material for this chapter. Again, that's@getindoor.com Chapter 7.