self-denial

• historically › food saving was man’s first s.-d.

68:2.5His­tory is but the rec­ord of man’s age­long food strug­gle. Prim­i­tive man only thought when he was hun­gry; food sav­ing was his first self-de­nial, self-dis­ci­pline. With the growth of so­ci­ety, food hunger ceased to be the only in­cen­tive for mu­tual as­so­ci­a­tion. Nu­mer­ous other sorts of hunger, the re­al­iza­tion of var­i­ous needs, all led to the closer as­so­ci­a­tion of man­kind. But to­day so­ci­ety is top-heavy with the over­growth of sup­posed hu­man needs. Oc­ci­den­tal civ­i­liza­tion of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury groans wearily un­der the tremen­dous over­load of lux­ury and the in­or­di­nate mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of hu­man de­sires and long­ings. Mod­ern so­ci­ety is en­dur­ing the strain of one of its most dan­ger­ous phases of far-flung in­teras­so­ci­a­tion and highly com­pli­cated in­ter­de­pen­dence.

• capital is labor renouncing present in favor of future

69:5.1Cap­i­tal is la­bor ap­plied as a re­nun­ci­a­tion of the pres­ent in fa­vor of the fu­ture. Sav­ings rep­re­sent a form of main­te­nance and sur­vival in­sur­ance. Food hoard­ing de­vel­oped self-con­trol and cre­ated the first prob­lems of cap­i­tal and la­bor. The man who had food, pro­vided he could pro­tect it from rob­bers, had a dis­tinct ad­van­tage over the man who had no food.

• capital is labor renouncing present in favor of future

69:5.41. Hunger—as­so­ci­ated with fore­sight. Food sav­ing and preser­va­tion meant power and com­fort for those who pos­sessed suf­fi­cient fore­sight thus to pro­vide for fu­ture needs. Food stor­age was ad­e­quate in­sur­ance against famine and dis­as­ter. And the en­tire body of prim­i­tive mores was re­ally de­signed to help man sub­or­di­nate the pres­ent to the fu­ture.

• historically › men sought approval of their gods by

87:2.4Si­lence or mourn­ing was ob­served af­ter a death so that the ghost would not be at­tracted back home. Self-tor­ture—wounds—was a com­mon form of mourn­ing. Many ad­vanced teach­ers tried to stop this, but they failed. Fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial were thought to be pleas­ing to the ghosts, who took plea­sure in the dis­com­fort of the liv­ing dur­ing the tran­si­tion pe­riod of lurk­ing about be­fore their ac­tual de­par­ture for dead­land.

• historically › looked upon as sure coercive, especially sexual

87:6.16Next came the prac­tice of rit­ual vows, soon to be fol­lowed by re­li­gious pledges and sa­cred oaths. Most of these oaths were ac­com­pa­nied by self-tor­ture and self-mu­ti­la­tion; later on, by fast­ing and prayer. Self-de­nial was sub­se­quently looked upon as be­ing a sure co­er­cive; this was es­pe­cially true in the mat­ter of sex sup­pres­sion. And so prim­i­tive man early de­vel­oped a de­cided aus­ter­ity in his re­li­gious prac­tices, a be­lief in the ef­fi­cacy of self-tor­ture and self-de­nial as rit­u­als ca­pa­ble of co­erc­ing the un­will­ing spir­its to re­act fa­vor­ably to­ward all such suf­fer­ing and de­pri­va­tion.

• historically › custom to forgo physical pleasures, especially sexual pleasures

89:3.1Re­nun­ci­a­tion came as the next step in re­li­gious evo­lu­tion; fast­ing was a com­mon prac­tice. Soon it be­came the cus­tom to forgo many forms of phys­i­cal plea­sure, es­pe­cially of a sex­ual na­ture. The rit­ual of the fast was deeply rooted in many an­cient re­li­gions and has been handed down to prac­ti­cally all mod­ern the­o­logic sys­tems of thought.

• historically › men sought approval of their gods by

89:3.5All through the olden times men sought in these ways for ex­tra cred­its on the self-de­nial ledgers of their gods. It was once cus­tom­ary, when un­der some emo­tional stress, to make vows of self-de­nial and self-tor­ture. In time these vows as­sumed the form of con­tracts with the gods and, in that sense, rep­re­sented true evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress in that the gods were sup­posed to do some­thing def­i­nite in re­turn for this self-tor­ture and mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh. Vows were both neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive. Pledges of this harm­ful and ex­treme na­ture are best ob­served to­day among cer­tain groups in In­dia.

• self-control better than extreme

89:3.7Some­day man should learn how to en­joy lib­erty with­out li­cense, nour­ish­ment with­out glut­tony, and plea­sure with­out de­bauch­ery. Self-con­trol is a bet­ter hu­man pol­icy of be­hav­ior reg­u­la­tion than is ex­treme self-de­nial. Nor did Je­sus ever teach these un­rea­son­able views to his fol­low­ers.

• reaps subsequent harvests of augmented happiness

140:5.71. “Happy are the poor in spirit—the hum­ble.” To a child, hap­pi­ness is the sat­is­fac­tion of im­me­di­ate plea­sure crav­ing. The adult is will­ing to sow seeds of self-de­nial in or­der to reap sub­se­quent har­vests of aug­mented hap­pi­ness. In Je­sus’ times and since, hap­pi­ness has all too of­ten been as­so­ci­ated with the idea of the pos­ses­sion of wealth. In the story of the Phar­isee and the pub­li­can pray­ing in the tem­ple, the one felt rich in spirit—ego­tis­ti­cal; the other felt “poor in spirit”—hum­ble. One was self-suf­fi­cient; the other was teach­able and truth-seek­ing. The poor in spirit seek for goals of spir­i­tual wealth—for God. And such seek­ers af­ter truth do not have to wait for re­wards in a dis­tant fu­ture; they are re­warded now. They find the king­dom of heaven within their own hearts, and they ex­pe­ri­ence such hap­pi­ness now.

• Jesus did not teach

142:8.1By the end of April the op­po­si­tion to Je­sus among the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had be­come so pro­nounced that the Mas­ter and his apos­tles de­cided to leave Je­ru­sa­lem for a while, go­ing south to work in Beth­le­hem and He­bron. The en­tire month of May was spent in do­ing per­sonal work in these cities and among the peo­ple of the sur­round­ing vil­lages. No pub­lic preach­ing was done on this trip, only house-to-house vis­i­ta­tion. A part of this time, while the apos­tles taught the gospel and min­is­tered to the sick, Je­sus and Ab­ner spent at En­gedi, vis­it­ing the Nazarite colony. John the Bap­tist had gone forth from this place, and Ab­ner had been head of this group. Many of the Nazarite broth­er­hood be­came be­liev­ers in Je­sus, but the ma­jor­ity of these as­cetic and ec­cen­tric men re­fused to ac­cept him as a teacher sent from heaven be­cause he did not teach fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial.

• vs. self-mastery

143:2.2At one of the evening con­fer­ences, An­drew asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, are we to prac­tice self-de­nial as John taught us, or are we to strive for the self-con­trol of your teach­ing? Wherein does your teach­ing dif­fer from that of John?” Je­sus an­swered: “John in­deed taught you the way of righ­teous­ness in ac­cor­dance with the light and laws of his fa­thers, and that was the re­li­gion of self-ex­am­i­na­tion and self-de­nial. But I come with a new mes­sage of self-for­get­ful­ness and self-con­trol. I show to you the way of life as re­vealed to me by my Fa­ther in heaven.

143:2.3“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, he who rules his own self is greater than he who cap­tures a city. Self-mas­tery is the mea­sure of man’s moral na­ture and the in­di­ca­tor of his spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. In the old or­der you fasted and prayed; as the new crea­ture of the re­birth of the spirit, you are taught to be­lieve and re­joice. In the Fa­ther’s king­dom you are to be­come new crea­tures; old things are to pass away; be­hold I show you how all things are to be­come new. And by your love for one an­other you are to con­vince the world that you have passed from bond­age to lib­erty, from death into life ev­er­last­ing.

143:2.4“By the old way you seek to sup­press, obey, and con­form to the rules of liv­ing; by the new way you are first trans­formed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strength­ened in your in­ner soul by the con­stant spir­i­tual re­new­ing of your mind, and so are you en­dowed with the power of the cer­tain and joy­ous per­for­mance of the gra­cious, ac­cept­able, and per­fect will of God. For­get not—it is your per­sonal faith in the ex­ceed­ingly great and pre­cious promises of God that en­sures your be­com­ing par­tak­ers of the di­vine na­ture. Thus by your faith and the spirit’s trans­for­ma­tion, you be­come in re­al­ity the tem­ples of God, and his spirit ac­tu­ally dwells within you. If, then, the spirit dwells within you, you are no longer bond­slaves of the flesh but free and lib­er­ated sons of the spirit. The new law of the spirit en­dows you with the lib­erty of self-mas­tery in place of the old law of the fear of self-bond­age and the slav­ery of self-de­nial.

143:2.5“Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to charge up your acts to the in­flu­ence of the evil one when in re­al­ity you have but been led astray by your own nat­u­ral ten­den­cies. Did not the Prophet Jeremiah long ago tell you that the hu­man heart is de­ceit­ful above all things and some­times even des­per­ately wicked? How easy for you to be­come self-de­ceived and thereby fall into fool­ish fears, divers lusts, en­slav­ing plea­sures, mal­ice, envy, and even venge­ful ha­tred!