Why do we do things we know are bad for us?

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Joab_Anias

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I find myself stuggling with this question.

Hope this is the right forum for it.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Thanks.
 
Because ‘we’ do things out of selfishness and self love.

When we act this way, we violate the greatest commandment. Mark 12:30 says;

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment.

It is only when we begin to truly obey this commandment (which can only be done with graces from our Lord), that we find that we detest our wretchedness and selfishness which only brings grief and sorrow to our Lord. When we begin to place His feelings and concerns above our own, then we find that our thoughts and actions begin to reflect the One we hold dearest. In short, our actions reflect where our allegiance lay. (Matt 6:24: No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.)
 
St. Paul can help us with this. He summed it up, so well.

“For I do not understand what I do, for it is not what I wish that I do, but what I hate, that I do. But if I do what I do not wish, I admit that the Law is good. Now therefore it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.” (Romans 7:15-17)

We are fallen. We are sinners. But a future saint will keep repenting and trying to do what is GOOD. A future saint wants Heaven, and so… will keep getting up. Keep going to the Sacrament of Confession; the Eucharist and the Mass. Keep praying the Rosary.

These are the “weapons” God has given us, for the very real spiritual battle we are in.

Hope this helps. May God bless you.
 
MarieVeronica said:
St. Paul can help us with this. He summed it up, so well.

“For I do not understand what I do, for it is not what I wish that I do, but what I hate, that I do. But if I do what I do not wish, I admit that the Law is good. Now therefore it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.” (Romans 7:15-17)

We are fallen. We are sinners. But a future saint will keep repenting and trying to do what is GOOD. A future saint wants Heaven, and so… will keep getting up. Keep going to the Sacrament of Confession; the Eucharist and the Mass. Keep praying the Rosary.

These are the “weapons” God has given us, for the very real spiritual battle we are in.

Hope this helps. May God bless you.
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I think about that verse a lot. I understand concupiscience is the result of the fall. Knowing this usually doesn’t make it easier to overcome the self. The question then becomes, why do I not love God or self enough and how far His mercy will extend to my weaknesses if there is some flaw I have given up on trying to correct.
 
Joab_Anias said:
I think about that verse a lot. I understand concupiscience is the result of the fall. Knowing this usually doesn’t make it easier to overcome the self. The question then becomes, why do I not love God or self enough and how far His mercy will extend to my weaknesses if there is some flaw I have given up on trying to correct.
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God’s Love and Mercy are without end. As long as you continue to get back up, take up your cross and ask for forgiveness you need not worry. God wants us all to be great Saints. As it is often said on these forums, a saint is a sinner that gets back up grabs his cross and gets back on the narrow past behind Christ as he leads us to his heavenly glory.

If you are not familiar with The Chaplet of Divine Mercy or St. Faustina. I suggest you do some research along these lines. 🙂

– Cadian :knight1:
 
St Augustine taught that we are attracted to sin because we are seeking good and aim for a lesser good than the greater good.

For example, if we have sex outside of marriage we are seeking love, and we get used.

What we are really looking for is the love og God, it is the deepest desire of our heart, we choose a lesser good.
 
We do them because it is a temptation of the flesh and human condition We are human ,so we err, and plead for forgiveness, because of our inability to resist temptation at times.
This is why the Lord gave us confession and the ability to atone for our sins.
 
Joab_Anias said:
I find myself stuggling with this question.

Hope this is the right forum for it.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Thanks.
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STM it’s the perfect forum for it.​

Because we are attracted by the good in what is bad, maybe ? Gluttony is a sin - food and drink are good. So they are used - and we are apt to use good things so that they become sinful for us. Yet the evil is not the food.

Adam and Eve did not fall because of the forbidden fruit - they were fallen when they turned the fruit into an occasion of disobedience to God; the evil was in the disorder of their wills, not in the fruit. St. Anselm said something to the effect that they would have sinned if God had told them to look in one direction, & they had looked in another. Evil is in disobeying God - not (or not primarily) in how we use created things.
 
Joab_Anias said:
I find myself stuggling with this question.

Hope this is the right forum for it.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
when our tastes are educated to discriminate between what is good and bad.

analogy is with food. the uneducated palate thinks fast food tastes good, but someone who has been taught to appreciate fresh vegetables properly prepared, the difference between local grown & organic vs mass produced and shipped, held in cold storage produce, the dfference between quality and sub-standard grade meat, how to properly prepare food for maximum flavor w/o bad stuff, the dangers of highly processed food etc, they have much more basis for choosing good real food over bad ersatz food, between a health supporting diet vs a damaging diet.

We have to educate ourselves in the virtues, not just in the sins, to differentiate between them. We have to learn the beatitudes and works of mercy alongside the commandments to make the proper choices. We have to learn to recognize the presence of Jesus in the poor, needy and broken, and to recognize the action of the Holy Spirit.

We do this through the traditional practices of prayer, fasting and acts of charity.

We learn to recognize the good by meditating on the life and mission of Jesus our Redeemer, and turning away from all that is bad or damaging in our mental and spiritual lives. So we learn to discriminate, to recognize evil for what it is when it masquerades as good, because we know the Real Good. That is what is meant by rejecting “the glamour of evil”. Glamour in its old, first sense is the glitter and shimmer of false gold and jewels, put there by counterfitters to tempt the greedy.

We study the Truth in God’s Word so we can recognize the falsehoods of the Deceiver.
 
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