How Do We Resist Temptation?

When our sense of identity is firmly rooted in Christ, change becomes a whole lot easier.

In this life, we will be tempted.

Sometimes, the temptation will be obvious. We'll be tempted to lie to our bosses, or to steal from our companies. We'll be tempted to cheat on our spouses. We'll be tempted to stab our coworkers in the back so that we can get ahead.

Other times, the temptation will be less obvious. We'll be tempted to skip out on spending time with our kids so that we can doom scroll social media. We'll be tempted to snap at our partner, because they said something that they probably meant to be innocuous but that poked at one of our wounds. We'll be tempted to try to craft our image to make sure that everyone around us sees us a certain way. We'll be tempted to hide out from life, to do the things we know we shouldn't, to shirk our responsibilities in a thousand small ways.

We'll be tempted to believe lies about ourselves—that we are unworthy, that we are defective, that we need to be terrified of the world or to live in a constant state of anxiety.

Maybe we'll even try to rationalize all of these things; and maybe we'll even succeed, except for a still small voice in the back of our heads that tells us that this isn't the life we were born to live.

So how do we resist temptation?

I think most of us in the West are taught to rely on an intellectual knowledge about good and evil, coupled with willpower. We are taught what is wrong, and then we exert our will to try to avoid doing what is wrong.

Maybe you're a lot stronger than I am; but for my part, this strategy never really worked. I cheated on my first girlfriend despite knowing that it was wrong. I lied to my bosses about what I mostly convinced myself were small things, despite being raised to know that lying was wrong. I skipped work to play video games and watch porn despite knowing that that wasn't the path to anything like the good life. I snapped at friends and burned bridges despite treasuring those friendships.

Theologian Bob Hamp says that this strategy for change is like arm-wrestling ourselves: no matter how strong we become, trying to muscle our way into transformation is just a way to end up tired and burned out…and still with the same bad habits (or new and equally bad ones that replaced the old ones) that we were trying to break in the first place.

So if willpower doesn't work, what works instead?

I think the key to real transformation lies in where we get our sense of identity from.

Most of my moral failings have been downstream from a flawed sense of identity. In college I got my sense of self-worth from feeling attractive to women; and so when I found myself in an unhappy relationship, I chose to cheat. Later, I got my identity from being good at my job; and so I lied to my boss to make myself seem better at work than I was. I watched porn or played video games for cumulative days because I believed the lie that I was worthless and defective, and so I sought out activities and behaviors that would reify that sense of identity.

This has even been true recently. I feel a lot of the traditional pressure to provide for my family, which can be tough as a freelance author. When my wife is frustrated that we don't have money to take a nice vacation, if I'm getting my sense of identity from my role as a provider, then I can feel wounded and snap at her.

But when I am firmly rooted in my identity as one of God's treasured sons, then a lot of the temptation goes away. I no longer get my identity from whether or not lots of girls like me, which means I'm no longer tempted to cheat on my wife. It's not just that I know that cheating is wrong; it's that I'm not tempted, because there's no allure there. I don't get my identity from how many followers I have on X or from how many big outlets I can reach, which means that I'm not tempted to jettison my morals in order to chase public acclaim. I don't get my sense of identity from providing for my wife; which means that, when money's tight, I experience that as a problem to solve rather than as a personal attack. As a result, I'm much less tempted to snap at her when we're talking about money.

The biggest temptation I face these days is to believe a lie about myself that I believed for decades: which is that I'm worthless and defective. I can try to use willpower to shake this lie until I'm blue in the face, but that only ever amounts to arm-wrestling myself. But when I am firmly rooted in my connection to God, and when I get my identity from my status as His cherished son, then that shame goes away. I realize, on a bone-deep level, that I can't possibly be defective; because God wouldn't make or love something that was defective. A perfect being does not create worthless things. When I stop believing the lie, it changes my whole life—including how I think and how I act, how I write, how I interact with my wife and my friends and strangers on the street—in a thousand wonderful ways.

To be clear, I'm not saying that I always live with my identity firmly rooted in Christ. Some days it's a battle. God can crowd out fear and guilt and shame (our false self); but our false self can also crowd out God. Some days, I still struggle to feel a connection to the divine.

But for all of that, cultivating a sense of connection with the divine, and getting my identity from that connection, has been the single biggest lever I've ever found to break bad habits, resist temptation, stop believing lies about myself, and change my life.

If you find yourself struggling to be or act a certain way, to cultivate a certain good habit or to give up a certain bad one, try this: stop beating yourself up. Stop the self-imposed river of guilt and shame that somehow never leads to meaningful transformation anyway. Instead, this may be an invitation to commune with God, to deepen your relationship with Him; and to let that relationship transform you into the kind of person you wish to become.

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