Tuesday, February 03, 2009
129th Movement

The post you are about to read is targeted at the Catholic society. If you are not a Catholic, you are still free to read on.

The horrible thing about us Catholics now in this modern age is that we do not acknowledge the power Satan has over us, althought the Catholic faith is indeed centered around the Holy Trinity and ultimately, God, we all should understand and know that Satan still has a part to play in this faith.

It disgusts me to see so many Christians (when I say Christians, I mean every denomination) that continue to focus on the secular world's reasoning on many unfortunate circumstances instead of acknowledging the presence of a demonic attack. Of course, not every situation in this world is driven by demonic forces but the fruit and root of evil is ultimately Satan, just as God is beginning and end.

The sad truth is, Satan is working in our lives as well, he is trying his best to cling onto you so that you will not be one with God. Why is that we do a lot of sin without thinking twice? One of my reasoning is that we are blinded by the advantages it can have over us. As to why we see those advantages, it is pure evil and thus pure evil can only mean the Devil himself.

Undoubtedly, not every sin we do may be because of bad intentions, sometimes we sin because we want to do good. For example, a woman pleads guilty in the place of her lover, so that her man will not be hung to death. This certainly is a good intention and is worthy of admiration for her bravery, but a sin is still sin, no matter what it is for. Stealing 10cents is no different from stealing $10, as both will result in sin. For the woman helping her lover, she should not have been a false witness (remember the ten commandments?) and protected her lover. Many of us have to accept the fact that a sin is a sin (which will be covered some other day) and one must be punished for it.

Now, how do we avoid the Devil? The answer: we cannot avoid him. In my view, as long as evil remains in this world, the Devil exists. The Devil cannot die, at least not yet, and the only thing we can do is to strengthen our defenses against him.

The first thing to do, is to know where he is attacking in our life. It could be an addiction to pornography or the urge to drive recklessly. It can even be as simple as not wanting to do house chores, not listening to parents or to big temptations such as forging a cheque or beating up someone badly.

Once we find the area we are under attack in, we avoid the source of it. For example, an addiction to pornography can be avoided by making use of the internet when others are around, you need not necessarily not use the internet forever, but using it when people are around will make one uncomfortable when viewing dirty sites. Sometimes you may have to totally throw the source away and not see it forever until the urge is gone. For example, the urge to beat up someone may be avoided by not seeing the subject of beating for a while, at least until you are cured of your motivation to beat him up.

If we find that prevention is almost impossible, we must be prepared to make drastic changes in our life.

Another method to prevent one from sinning is the use of time, what do we do in our free time apart from sinning? We could look for a better way to pass time, for example, I bought Fallout 3 a few weeks ago and it's helping me a lot. Another way is to meditate on the Bible more, and fill our time with prayer, thanksgiving and praise for the Lord. When we strengthen in faith, we are shielding the arrows of the Evil one. Attending weekday mass may also be some sort of help, and also allow us access to one of the most powerful sacraments ever, the Eucharist. The Body of Christ, as we know, is one of the most powerful tool in fighting the Evil one.

This is the most basic structure of fighting temptations, I do not have qualifications to certainly say that this method will work for everyone, but we should continue to find our own ways to fight off the Devil.

Labels: preachy