Raise your hands if you scroll on your social media before going to sleep? I do. Often I would catch myself scrolling for an hour to over an hour then I would feel bad for wasting my time that could have gone to reading or doing other chores.

Raise your hands if you have been to a buffet then ate more than your limit so you get your money’s worth. I do as well.

How about gossiping? Raise your hands if you promised yourself not to tell your friend’s secret yet you could not help yourself but tell other people.

I would ask the same thing for anger. Raise your hands if at one point, you were so made that you could not control your emotions anymore.

Why, what is wrong with over eating, doom scrolling, or gossiping about friends to other friends?

It is not a question whether your actions are good or bad but rather am I being enslaved by my emotions, or am I still in control of my actions?

I would like to introduce you to temperance. Temperance is the virtue that moderates our attraction to human wants or desires and helps us maintain a balanced use of created goods. Temperance doesn’t say, ‘desire is bad.’ It says, ‘desire is human but it must have its proper place.

Temptation doesn’t always begin with evil. It begins with something good that becomes excessive or disordered. Here are some examples.

Food is good. But eating because you are bored is different.

Rest is good. But avoiding responsibility because you want comfort is different.

Friendship is good. But needing everyone’s approval is different.

Technology is useful. But being unable to put your phone down is different. 

The devil doesn’t always have to make us desire evil. Sometimes he only has to make us desire a good thing in the wrong way, at the wrong time, or in the wrong amount.

Can you say no to something you really want? If the answer is no, then despite having the freedom to choose, you aren’t really free in that area. 

“If I can eat chocolate, that’s freedom.

If I can eat chocolate but can also say, ‘No, I don’t need it,’ that’s greater freedom.

But if I cannot say no, then chocolate has begun to exercise control over me.” 

So, temperance makes desire obey reason rather than making reason obey desire. 

Christian temperance isn’t simply about becoming disciplined people. It is about making room for something greater. 

Christ doesn’t ask us to become people who don’t enjoy life.

He asks us to become people who are free to love, because a heart constantly distracted by appetite, pleasure, approval, or entertainment has difficulty seeing what truly matters. 

Temperance is not saying no to desire because desire is bad. Temperance is learning to say yes to what is truly good.

Because the person who cannot say no to himself is not truly free.

And Christianity is not ultimately about having fewer desires. It is about having desires ordered toward something greater: toward truth, toward love, and ultimately toward God.