 Temptation. How can you resist it? Let's find out. So I get more and more of these kind of lifestyle questions nowadays. And there's a genre, a particular genre, I think I can respond to every single question in one single video. And it all amounts to how do you resist temptation? So the question can be, you know, from different people in emails or live streams in different formats. It'll be, oh, I really want to stop watching porn or playing video games compulsively or scrolling through social media all the time or, you know, some more traditional vice like tobacco, alcohol, something like that, right? People ask me these kind of things. They get themselves into vices. How do I get out? Okay. Now usually, you know, maybe I'm a little ashamed to say, but on live streams and stuff, when I get this kind of question, I'm a little condescending about it. Because I think a lot of people have this idea. I mean, it's weird to even ask someone about that because all of the solution to all of these problems are, you know, directly within your moral agency. They're all, I mean, this isn't like, how do I achieve something great? It's like, how do I stop doing something? Okay, you don't have to do it. You can just stop doing it, right? You know, I or no one else on the internet, we are not going to be Santa Claus jumping around the world knocking on your door, making sure you're not watching porn. Okay, it's not our responsibility. It couldn't be, if you wanted it to be, it's yours. And it's something that you have control over at all times, you know, you always, you know, there's you always have this ability to stop doing this kind of stuff. When I was younger, actually, there was a youth pastor I had. And there's one particular thing just he said off the cuff that I remember, because well, it's actually very un-Protestant. It's nearly Pelagian. But he said something like this, he said, I think that in truth, everyone out there is perfectly loyal, without any wavering, without any disobedience, perfectly loyal to their own moral convictions. Now, they might not be consistent moral convictions, but they're perfectly loyal to them. And what I mean by that is, a lot of times when you get, you know, people who say, oh, well, oh, I, you know, I watch porn, but I really want to stop. Oh, the temptation is just too hard to resist. I can't do it. Please someone else help me blah, blah, blah. It's just melodramatic nonsense, because if they were really serious about that, they would have stopped. What they really, you know, the fact that they're, they're having to talk about this just indicates maybe they see pornography as something that's going to be bad for them in the future, they can already see that it's getting pretty bad. But, you know, if they really were serious about it, they could just stop, they could just stop now, but they really, oh, I can still get some enjoyment out of it, right? It's just there's a kind of hypocrisy in that. And no one wants to voice that hypocrisy. So instead, even, you know, they don't even want to want to admit it to themselves. So they instead pretend to be victims of their own psychology, victims of their own behavior. Oh, I just can't. Oh, I can't help myself. I mean, if you can't help yourself, who else can? Okay, it's you. It's you or no one else. You can resist all temptation. God has given you grace sufficient to resist any temptation. Okay, that's just how it is. Get over it. You can stop. So now, now that said, I mean, that's one of the reasons I mean, when I look at my the temptations I've quote unquote struggled with, it's always, you know, I as time goes on, I look back at it and be like, Oh, yeah, I could have just stopped whenever I wanted, you know, same thing when I was a kid, I used to play video games all the time, right? And I just stopped, I was like, Oh, this is a bad habit. I'll stop. That's it. Same thing with porn. Okay, when I was younger, I did that thing was like, Oh, I really wish I just wish I could resist this temptation, man. Oh, help. I'm being oppressed by my own behavior. But once I got serious about it, I just stopped and I stopped cold turkey. Like it's not even something that like tempts me anymore. I mean, well, I don't know. I don't want to say that and, you know, evoke temptation, but you know, it's not something that is really on the table. You know what I mean? So that's definitely my perspective. And now I will say, because a lot of people have been, Oh, Luke, you're just dabbing on us. Oh, I really, oh, I really just have no agency. I can't solve this kind of stuff. Now, first off, you have to realize any of these kind of addictions. They they're not just it's not like picking your nose. Okay, it's not like biting your fingernails. It's not like something you can just reflexively do all the time. Okay, so it's not really can't really be that compulsive to you, no matter what it is. I mean, in the case of smoking, like smoking is something that actually carries physiological addiction to it. Frankly, I think all of these habit forming things have some kind of physiological addiction to I mean, just by definition, like, you know, your mind is reflected in the physical reality of your brain, right? There's always going to be something physiological about it. It's stupid when people actually make that distinction, but whatever. What was I going to say? So like even in the case of smoking, right? Smoking is not just something you just think about smoking and you start smoking. It's a chain of behavior. You get up in your car, you go to the gas station, you put money down, you get cigarettes, you make sure you have a lighter, you light them up and you smoke. Okay, all you have to do is break one link in that chain and the addiction, quote unquote, is broken. That's all you have to do, right? And the rest of it is just you pretending, oh, to be oppressed by your own circumstance or whatever. Now, I will say, let me give you some actual let's let's assume that I'm totally wrong here though. Okay, because in reality, like I know that what I'm saying, like this, you know, they hated Luke because he said the truth, right? You know, you don't necessarily, it's not a comfortable thing for people to believe that they all like subtly actually like their addictions or something like that. I'm not necessarily even arguing that, but let me give you some other pointers. Okay, if you actually want to resist temptation because it is within your power, it is within your power to resist them, but I'll give you a couple pointers regardless. Okay, number one, it's actually a very biblical, biblical recommendation. Flee temptation. Physically, flee temptation. Okay, that is what, you know, in the New Testament, that's what you're told to do, especially around sexual temptation because, you know, men, it's very hard for men, especially to resist the sexual temptation, but you can always resist it by fling. In the case of, you know, let's say pornography, good sexual temptation, right? If you get home every day after school or work and your first reaction is, oh, I'm just gonna go, I'm just gonna go sit at my computer desk. We'll see what happens, right? And really, you're in a state of boredom or you have nothing, even if you have nothing else to do, you're putting yourself in the line of fire, right? It is very easy to just not be there. It's very easy to find something else to do. It's very easy to, you know, unless you have something specific to do on your computer, don't use it or your cell phone or whatever, right? It's a temptation very easy to resist, okay? And a lot of people who, I know a lot of Zoomers, you know, they might not even have computers, they just have phones and all this kind of stuff. Separate yourself from your phone. You don't need your phone all the time. You don't need Instagram. I would say all the time. You don't need Instagram at all, okay? You don't need any of this crap, right? And you know you don't. Oh, I know those, all this rational is, oh, I need this because of my friends. Oh, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. Okay, whatever. You don't. Separate yourself physically from temptation, digitally from temptation. Same thing, right? Same thing in the case of cigarettes. Like, make sure you're not in a place where you are being tempted by those things. That is the easiest way to resist temptation. Separating yourself bodily from the thing that tempts you. Very easy. Like, go to a public park. You're not going to watch porn. I hope you're not going to watch porn in a public park, however you do it, okay? But put yourself in a public library, something like that, right? Put yourself in a place where you're not tempted to do that kind of stuff, okay? Number two, okay? So separate yourself from temptation. Number two, what was number two? Forgot about, oh yeah, number two. Learn how to be bored. One of the most important life lessons you could possibly have. Learn how to be bored. You know, I am actually an old boomer. In fact, I was born in the 1980s, barely, but I was born in the 1980s and I remember the world before internet. I remember the world before social media. I remember all this kind of stuff, okay? I even remember, we used to not have cable TV, okay? I remember what it's actually like to be bored, okay? I know you Zoomers, you have this thing you call boredom, but it's not boredom. You don't know what true boredom is. You don't know the definition of the word, okay? Boredom. Learn to love it. Learn to enjoy boredom because here's my theory, okay? Most of the reasons that people play video games all the time, that people, you know, scroll through social media, watch porn, all this kind of stuff, the reason they do these things is not actually because they really find them that entertaining, okay? In the case of pornography, I think most people who consume pornography actually hate the thing. It's just like an addiction for them. And I think what originally draws them to it is the fact that it's just there. They're bored. They're on the computer. Here's something stimulating, okay? Same thing with all these other things. Here's something that's just stimulating. So learning to be bored, and this actually goes hand in hand with the first recommendation, physically separating yourself, learn how to be bored, learn how to like literally, instead of when you get home and play five hours of video games, try going five hours doing nothing. That is not even, don't be on the computer, do nothing. Try to do that. Try to read something. Actually, nowadays it's, it's, I bet it's legitimately difficult for anyone to pick up a book and read a single page. Okay, that's my theory. I think it's very cognitively difficult for most people to do that because that is something that is so like you don't have this constant stimulation and it's hard for people to do. Now, why is it important to learn to be bored? Because all of these things that you're addicted to, they are hyper stimulation. You only need them because your standard for what entertains you is extremely high. You can't just go out in the middle of nowhere and enjoy life. Okay, you can't just do things. You can't, when you hang out with your friends, you know, oh, it's not exciting enough, let's do stuff on our cell phones, right? That's pathetic. People are so in addictive, you know, a lot of people nowadays, they say, Normie and Normie YouTube, they'll say stuff like dopamine detox. A dopamine detox. What is a dopamine detox? It's supposed to be, oh, well, normally we're in this hyper stimulated modern world where we constantly need to consume product to just have stimulation to, I don't know, just feel good or something like that. You just, once you separate yourself from that, your addiction to dopamine, your addiction to constant stimulation decreases and you learn to enjoy going in the middle of nowhere. You learn to enjoy reading a book or something like that. You learn to enjoy just sitting there and being in your thoughts, which is actually far more productive than sitting on your computer or something like that or even doing something that seems like you're getting something done. A lot of people will ask me, oh, how do you have so much time to accomplish things? And oh, how do you, I don't know, how do you get stuff done? That's like an abbreviation that people have like GSI or GSD, whatever it is, whatever, get stuff done. That's like a meme abbreviation because the concept of just sitting down and doing something is so difficult for people to understand because they just need constant stimulation to survive. So separating yourself from all of that, going through the painful process, painful, it's not even necessarily painful, but going through the process of just not being stimulated by this kind of stuff is going to, it's not only a temporary solution, it's a permanent solution. It's the same thing, you know, in China, in China, they brought Oreos to China, Nabisco or whatever company does Oreos. And when they brought Oreos to China, the Chinese people were like, these things are way too sugary. Okay, no one bought them, they were disgusting, like they had all this sugar in it, way too much, I mean enough sugar for an American to like, but Chinese people, they hate that amount of sugar. It's like absolutely, absolutely disgusting. So what Nabisco did is they were like, okay, we'll sell Oreos, but we're going to tone down the sugar. Okay, so it has way less sugar. And Chinese people love the stuff. Okay, I'm sure they enjoy it just as much as Americans enjoy their extremely sugared Oreos. And a lot of people have this idea that, oh, if I'm not constantly being stimulated, I'll have less fun. That is not the case. That is absolutely not the case. Instead, you learn to enjoy actual life rather than pretend life, rather than hyper-reality on the internet or something like that, right? You learn to, I mean, how many, how many guys actually on pornography, on pornography, right? This reminds me, how many guys out there have watched years and literally years and years of pornography, and then they have sex for the first time, and they don't like it. Okay, that's a normal thing for guys nowadays, because they're so gassed up on this hyper-reality that they don't know how to, you know, they don't know how to do the real thing. They don't know how to enjoy the real thing. And that's, that's modernity for you. Okay, so anyway, how do you resist temptation just by resisting it? But I gave you two pointers, physically separate yourself, learn to be bored. All right, see you guys next time.