Moderation is a critical practice for those who court health, just like all of the rest of the 8 foundational natural healers: nutrition, exercise, water, sunlight, fresh air, rest, and trust in divine power. Taking anything to excess is one of the most potent destroyers of health. Extremes throw our lives out of kilter and create stress in our system. Health pioneer and reformer, Ellen White, said that “our danger is not from scarcity, but from abundance. We are constantly tempted to excess.”
Most of us have eaten the whole box of donuts before and know exactly what it means to being tempted to excess.
Violations of Moderation
Moderation brings a synergy to life, a balance between all other daily habits. An imbalance here can very well undo a lot of good effort. Immoderation has many faces.
Extremes are the most subtle. For example, you’ve heard the saying, “He’s so heavenly minded he’s no earthly good.” It’s not that being heavenly minded is bad. The problem is a fanaticism that is so focused on godly things that it ignores practical life.
This works both ways. Not only should we practice moderation in good things, but we should also be moderate with “bad” things. For example, I know parents who will not take their kids out for an ice cream cone because it’s bad for them. In my view, this is a violation of moderation. Our emotional and relational health is as important as our physical health. Our kids shouldn’t eat a bowl of ice cream every night, but a family DQ outing on the weekend is an emotional tonic that can heal our children for a lifetime.
Then there are the more obvious violations of moderation such as addictions and relational disconnection (such as rebellion).
Chaos Ever Beckons
We are ever tempted to excess, even in the most wholesome areas of our lives. Indulgence ever seeks to throw us off the tight wire of life and hurtle us to the rocks of addiction or fanaticism below. Moderation, then, of all of the foundational healers, is perhaps the one most fraught with danger. Many a life has been ruined for want of moderation.
Learning Moderation
So how do we gain this self-control, this ability to discipline ourselves and balance our lives? I have often said that the fruits of the Spirit would be a cakewalk if it wasn’t for self-control. Self-discipline is, perhaps, the hardest virtue to incorporate into our lives.
When we look at the effectiveness of child training programs like The Total Transformation, it seems to me that self-control is not a virtue that we can create within ourselves. It is, rather, a response to a healthy relationship, particularly between a child and a parent or student and a mentor. It seems that we are only able to successfully learn self-discipline if it is modeled to us within a loving relationship.
In my experience, addiction—the inability to discipline myself—wasn’t overcome by focusing on eliminating it. Years of fighting with my immoderate demons only set them more resolutely in my life. It wasn’t until I took my eyes off of my performance and focused them on loving mentors that I was successful in moving in a more balanced direction.
Relational Repair
Turning from addiction to moderation is more about healthy relationships than about white-knuckling it. Thus it is important to seek loving mentors in our lives. The trust and love within these relationships are what heal us and bring us back to homeostasis in life.
I have seen children transformed by a parent that cared. I have seen men changed by their interaction with a beloved mentor. And I have been changed by delightful and trusting interaction with God. Thus I believe that any healthy relationship has moderation-moderating potential, helping us to become more self-disciplined.
Love Is the Antidote
A great gage of how moderate our lives are is how peaceful they are. Balance and self-discipline bring with them an inner harmony. One would expect this if moderation is based on healthy relationship. So the next time your addictive or rebellious demons tempt you to eat that whole box of donuts, remember that love is the antidote. Then find or return to that relationship that warms your heart, delights your mind, and makes your life worth living.