What Is Your Vice??
My 6th birthday. The year I received my very first book as a birthday present. This was possibly one of the greatest gifts I have ever received because, from that gift, my love for fiction was born. Make-believe became my solace. The lion King and The Jungle Book were my best friends. I was convinced that Alice in Wonderland was a real-life character who could talk, and we had the best girl talk a 6-year-old could ever have with a fictional character. Fast forward years later, my make-believe game has become an obsession where reality is often blurred, and fiction has become my perpetual preoccupation. This state of mind has negative implications on my day to day and psyche. Over the later part of my adult years, I have come to realize that this preoccupation had developed into an unhealthy vice.
By default, I began looking for more ways that afforded me a means to escape my very morbid reality. these vices later translated to alcoholism, and cigarette addiction. I dulled the pain through using substances that only proved to be temporal fixes, that had detrimental effects on my mental and physical health.
What Is Your Vice?
A vice is a habit which is regarded as a weakness in someone’s character, but not usually as a serious fault. Vices are usually things that we cling to, but only give us temporary distraction from whatever unhappiness is plaguing us in a moment. At the center of all our vices, is an attempt to cover up a deep-rooted unhappiness that we simply don’t want to face. Clinging to vices allows us the illusion of control over that particular area, an escape, somewhat, to help you manage what is in actual fact managing you. Vices are like the gate of Alice in Wonderland. It’s place we can bury our heads in, to run away from an unpleasant reality, but beneath the allure, is a world that is fraught with danger and unpredictability. A world that is often difficult to come back from.
Not all vices start from a destructive habit, but they start from a pattern, a pleasure we repeatedly want, more and more, until we lose control. The question is, how do we get back the control we have surrendered to a vice?
What’s The Solution?
Not all vices are substance related. Vices can start from repetitive patterns that are not harmful at first and can be basically about anything. It could be shopping, people or simply flawed attitudes. We are pre disposed to look for quick fixes, repeatedly avoiding the solution that is always readily available to us through God and His Word.
God made all of us. We are all His creation. He gave us all strengths, abilities, talents, gifts, and virtues to advance His kingdom and to sustain our lives (2 Peter 1:3). However, if we are born with innate strengths, we are also born with innate weaknesses, inabilities, and vices. No matter how hard we try, there are some things we just can’t do, or naturally can’t without the help of God or one another. I think God does this to create interdependence and balance among those created in His image.
So, here’s the good news. God does not hold us hostage to the weaknesses that He gave us, He just expects us to acknowledge it, not as a defect, but as something that can be used to enhance our dependency on Him. Whether it be physical, mental, or even spiritual, God has made provision for our weaknesses through faith and relationship in Him and through His Holy Spirit (Romans 8:2).
God doesn’t hold us hostage to our weakness. He doesn’t condemn us for our weaknesses. He gives us power over them. The world is filled with things that are vying for our attention. False distractions that promise a fleeting reprieve but guarantee bondage. God understands we all need a way to deal with the unfair deck of cards we are often dealt with, but He doesn’t condemn us for it. So, when a vice that you are trying to defeat keeps tempting you to succumb to it, remember that your God is stronger than your weakness, and He is committed to making our lives better and vice free.
