A brief reflection: so, here’s the thing. Your besetting sins, that is, the ones you will struggle with over years and years, with increasing victory and surprising onion-peel moments where you discover there is more rot to get rid of and more virtue to grow? They aren’t necessarily going to be obvious. They are going to be tangled up with your greatest virtues.
Consider this: you have been wronged, over many years, and you cry out for justice. You begin to lose hope, and you become desperate; then you begin to strike out. You discover that this can be a strategy. You discover that you are relying on anger and vindictiveness to achieve your goals. You rationalize this as pursuit of justice. Because this is rationalized revenged, egged on by every evil influence, you are not in fact just; you are far in excess of the virtue of justice.
Ashamed when you are unjust, and attracted by virtue, and desiring to mend, you reason still more closely about justice and truth; you seek love, and shelter in Christ. You become more just, and in fact you are likely to be somewhat more careful in your thinking about justice than some.
But here’s the trick.
From outside, your reasoning can be evaluated and corrected; in good society, you improve.
From the inside, however, there is a basic problem: on each level of complexity and responsibility you gain, each level of friendship with God and care of others you are drawn to by love and suffering, you will still discover a basic problem: until you reason carefully and prayerfully about it, vindictiveness and justice look the same to you.
Alcoholics know what I mean. A basic part of your “automatic sensors” has been burned out, and you have to keep learning how to go on “manual override.” You will have to sacrifice some of your autonomy to others who will correct you, leave a great deal at the altar of one who suffered more and sacrificed infinitely, in order to gain your freedom again.
And He gives more grace.
And giveth.
And giveth again.
Whatever yours is–whatever it is–it’s not just “the temptation is strong.” It’s the material of your holiness. And it’s going to take careful thought and earnest prayer to see the difference between your potential for heroic virtue and your besetting sin.
Many may drive life on automatic (but probably that’s just how it looks from the outside).
You are driving stick.
Pop the clutch.