Living Balance? No thanks, I’ll stick with Order.

A lie flying around in our culture – one that is very prevalent, and common-language for many – is the encouragement to “Live a balanced life.” (or other variations of it.)  It’s sneaky in the way that it is extremely mainstream while still flying under the radar.  It’s subtle, yet dangerous.  I’ll explain.

Living balance is the commonly held idea that — if a person does things in a balanced way, or at least in a way that doesn’t emphasize something too much or too little, that he’ll be living rightly.   And thus, by living rightly, he will become happy.  If everything in a person’s life is “just right”, and nothing tips the scales one way or the other, the balance they experience will make all things right.  —  There are many problems with this idea.  First, living balance isn’t rooted in anything tangible, ie: what does ‘balance’ even mean?  Doing merely what I want to do (balance), even if in a moderate fashion, doesn’t mean that I’m doing what I ought to do (order.)  What we ought to be doing, regardless of who we are or what our state in life may be, is to live virtue.  Living virtue allows us “not only to do good acts, but to give the best of our self.”  (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1803.)  Giving the best of myself is what I ought to do.

The “balance lie” would state that as long as the individual isn’t negating some aspect of his life, or at least not too much, he can do each activity in a balanced fashion.  The truth about order is that, I’m called to living a life that is worth the very best.  Choosing activities merely because I want to do them, isn’t necessarily pointing me towards that very best.  Depending on what activities I’m doing, they may or may not be evil in-and-of-themselves, yet they may not be quite what I ought to be doing.  Here, the question must go deeper (again, more than simply what I want to do) and ask the question, do I possess the virtue of temperance?  Am I exercising justice?  What about fortitude?  Am I living prudently?  Are my actions pointing towards charity?  In attempting, however, to live virtue and do the greatest good, I’m challenged to order those things, along with others in my life, so that ultimately, I’m able to possess the virtues and live as closely to the example set by Christ as possible.

Here’s a video where I explain this idea a bit further.  Live order.

TrueMan up!

Porn Proves Deadly

As if our human reason wasn’t enough to tell us that pornography has deadly effects, here’s a story that surely will.

Picture this… An Ohio truck driver was barreling down the highway in upstate New York.  The driver, at this point sleep-deprived, is distracted.  “What is distracting him?” you ask.  The answer: Porn, being streamed on his laptop.  The driver’s rig hit a disabled car on a New York State highway.  The truck driver, a one Thomas Wallace, has been sentenced to three-to-nine years in prison for killing the driver, Julie Stratton, a 33-year-old mother of two.  Stratton’s vehicle was disabled because she had hit a deer and was waiting for assistance in the passing lane shoulder.

Wallace pleaded guilty in May to second-degree manslaughter. Authorities say he’d slept no more than four of the 27 hours before the Dec. 12, 2010 crash that killed Stratton.  The trucker tearfully apologized to the victim’s family at Wednesday’s sentencing.  Sorry bro, your apology isn’t enough.  Your apology doesn’t bring back a woman, a wife, a mother.

I was tempted to include a picture I came across that had “Fatal Accident” spelled out on top, with a graphic of an ambulance, the road and broken glass.  However, I didn’t.  This was no accident.  An accident is when a bird poops on our head, or when we bump into someone walking around a corner.  Wallace should have taken responsibility for his (extremely selfish) actions and disregard for humanity.  “You can stuff your sorrys in a sack, mister.”

Let’s get one thing straight here – pornography kills.  Sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally.  Most of the men, women and children that view pornography every day won’t end up being in a situation like Wallace, unfortunately, some might.  However, THEY ARE ALL in danger of killing their souls, their relationships, their ability to love, their ability to give, their ability to reason properly.  Pornography kills.

Aristotle once said:  “the angry man listens to reason, though not perfectly, but the lustful man does not listen to reason at all.”

TrueMan up!