Glittering Vices Quotes

“That I shrank back from all God called me to be and that I judged my own abilities as inadequate because I was not relying on God’s grace to grant me strength—these perhaps are insights so obvious I should have seen them for myself.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“Thomas Aquinas (1224–74) on the virtue of courage, I happened across a vice he called pusillanimity, which means “smallness of soul.” Those afflicted by this vice, wrote Aquinas, shrink back from all that God has called them to be. When faced with the effort and difficulty of stretching themselves to the great things of which they are capable, they cringe and say, “I can’t.” In short, the pusillanimous rely on their own puny powers and focus on their own potential for failure, rather than counting on God’s grace to equip them for great work in his kingdom—work beyond anything they might have dreamed of for themselves.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“If the ultimate measure by which society judges everything is its monetary or material value, then people who are no longer economically valuable are too easily seen as no longer valuable, period.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“They find detachment from the old selfish nature too difficult, painful, and burdensome, so they neglect to perform the actions that would maintain and deepen relationships of love. They harden their hearts toward any change that requires sacrifice or surrender on their part.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love [emphasis added].”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“When careers replace religion as a source of meaning, worth, and identity, laziness still carries significant weight. Our society measures personal worth in terms of productivity, efficiency, and the maximization of our potential. So we’d better get busy, or we’ll be good for nothing.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“Rather than wanting to be excellent—like the prideful—or to be honored for our worthiness—like the ambitious—in vainglory we seek only the “manifestation of excellence,” that is, we want more than anything to be well known and widely known.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“Lust is the habit of trying to engineer my own happiness for myself, on my own terms.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“Lust is a problem with the heart above your belt before it is a problem with the heat below it.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“The slothful like the comforting thought of being saved by love, of being God’s own, but balk at facing the discomfort of transformation—the slow putting to death of the old sinful nature—and the discipline it takes to sustain that transforming relationship of love over the long haul.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“It is worth pondering how much of our struggle with avarice is linked to a tendency to value things solely in terms of their usefulness. When the older generation laments that they are only a burden to society, since they are no longer capable of useful work or productive labor, and their medical care is a constant drain on others’ resources, have they internalized a system of value that measures people’s true worth in terms of a cost–benefit analysis? Time spent with children also becomes “unprofitable” in more than one sense, for we have precious little in the way of tangible payoff to show for such investments. The very use of metaphors of financial transactions to describe personal care for other human beings points to a conceptual framework tilted toward the distortions of avarice. The salary charts for the helping professions, especially compared to the salaries of those who work in financial fields managing investments, also point not so subtly to implicit assumptions of what is truly of value and worth. We are measured by our usefulness, and our usefulness is measured by the production of things and the possession of money. Greed now invades human life and its value in this subtler way as well.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“Virtuous people avail themselves of the things of this life with the moderation of a user, not the attachment of a lover.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies