My Love for m&ms: A Need for Christ!

If you ask my sister Tina, I have one severe weakness: m&ms (she will also include semi-sweet chocolate chips)!  I can't stop eating them.  If there is recent purchase from Cost Co of a 1 lb. of m&m's, I can't guarantee that there will be any left the next day.  The trend goes as following: First I open the bag, pull a small  bowl out, fill the bowl and start watching a movie.  The bowl filled with heavenly goodness quickly vanishes and it's not even pass the opening scene!  So of course, another bowl of goodness is in order.  Self-justification comes in: I've ran 4 marathons - I'm still burning off those calories right???  (my weight and belly tells another story!)  Needless to say, you can figure the rest of the story.  The 1 lb. bag is finished much much too soon!  It's usually followed with a stomach ache and sugar crash. 

What does this story reveal?  Well, it reveals I have no self-control when it comes to m&ms, but it reveals something much deeper: it reveals that I'm broken!  I would argue it points to my need for a Savior and not just some anti-acids!  My disordered passion for m&ms is just one of many of my disordered passions.  St. Paul speaks about this disorder in his letter to the Romans: "but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... I can will what is right but I cannot do it.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do." (Romans 7:14 ff).  My goal when I first opened the bag of m&m was not to finish the full 1 pound bag of m&m's, but in a certain sense, I do the very thing I hate!  The very thing that is bad for my body!

My disorder passion for m&m is just one simple story of my many disordered and bad addictions.  I'm enjoying another disordered passion; I'm feeding my coffee addiction as I type this blog.  Before I get to my main point, I have to state the following: We all know m&ms in themselves are not bad, neither is the coffee I drink.  But with lack of self control seen in the story I just shared, we can see how something that is a good can become something bad!

This disorder speaks into the Anthropology of man!  The Church fathers would write about the 4 faculties of man in the following order:

1. Intellect

2. Will

3. Emotions

4. Passions

Before the broken relationship between God and Man, man kept his 4 faculties in the correct order.  The intellect would direct the will, and the will would control the emotions and passions.  But because the fall, what happened?  Well after being on 8 different University campuses over the last 14 years.  I can tell you the order goes as following:

1. Passions

2. Emotions

3. Will

4. Intellect (which is ironic because the university is supposed to be directed in forming the intellect)

Clearly, most college students are dictated by their own passions and emotions.   And it is to the detriment of the student, the University encourages the students to experiment with their sexuality (passions) and to have fun!  However, they don't mention the bad consequences of playing with their passions.  My friend just told me of story of guy bragging about how he had slept with over 60 women.  What a lie that has been fed to those pursuing higher education (the intellect).  Living a disordered life does not lead to a life of freedom and happiness, but one of slavery and bad consequences.  As Frank Sheed in Theology and Sanity commented: we are truly free to do what ever we want, however, because we live in an ordered world, we are truly not free from the consequences of our actions.   Like my story above.  I am truly free to eat the 1 lb. m&m bag, I'm, however, not free from the effects of eating a full pound of m&ms.  Or in the case of the guy who slept with over 60 woman, he is free to do that, but not free from the STDs or psychological disorders that may come from living such a life style.  

So it is clear: we have many disordered passions!  Why does God allow us to live in a life of disorder?  Why do we have to constantly struggle against our own passions and emotions?  Why do we do what we don't want to do?  St. Paul gives us insight to this as well!!!

St. Paul writes in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians: "a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being to elated.  Three times I besought The Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor 12 7:10)

It is in Christ we can correct this disorder.  It is in receiving the Sacraments, that we can receive the grace to live ordered.  But this desire to re-align our faculties can first begin by acknowledging our false passions.  It's in my false passions that I realize my own brokenness and that I personally can't realign them, but it solely in Christ that this can be done.  Sin has the ability to make us aware of our brokenness and a need for a savior.  For example; one needs to be aware of their illness before they can seek healing from a physician.  If I don't know I'm sick, I can't receive the necessary help.   Let us acknowledge our brokenness, turn to the Lord for healing and love, and realign our faculties!!!