Consumerism, the new black. I want my burger my way. Shaken not stirred. Sauce on the side and rare but not rare rare. Venti, two-pump, sugar-free vanilla, non-fat, two Splenda, extra-hot, extra-whip, extra-mocha Mocha and can you put the Splenda in before you pour the milk? (See, this is where it gets positively delicious!) Under...

Remember, this type doesn’t really believe He’ll forgive them, by repenting they are trying to earn what they do not think, in any case, He will pay.

Guilt, if cultivated in a Christian client, can render their Christianity worthless to themselves and others.

If we can keep the Christians thinking of themselves as sinners not sons and daughters, we can make them view their relationship to The Adversary as a negative-sum-game: They fall in a hole, He pulls them out, they fall back in, etc… That way they never get anywhere; they’re always either standing next to a...

I have witnessed the pleasant result of producing a human who faithfully claims to be a Christian, but who on some fundamental level does not think Christianity actually works. And just one Christian of this type turns off dozens from trying out Christianity for themselves.

They think virtues are man-made, only exist because they exist, but if no human had ever existed, The Virtues would persist for they hold their being from the very Presence of the Adversary Himself.

If they ever envision Goodness as a thing that exists outside them, some real thing they’ve been called to participate in by their actions, well then, we’re headed right back toward The Virtues.

In general, Americans would walk a mile uphill in the rain to avoid pain, unless the walk could be shorter and level and the day sunny, which they’d prefer.

An imagined pleasure is never really the pleasure, but an imagined pain, in a very real sense, is the pain, because so much of pain is the consciousness of it. It makes itself objective. Whereas to think about pleasure is to step outside of it; to think about a presently felt pain is to step...

They want explanation, not faith; God gives them faith as the explanation.

It fits my experience of Him.

When young, the humans are all Imagination because Memory is so much smaller a part of their experience, so little of them is grounded in it. As they grow older, however, Memory overtakes their Imagination, outweighs it. But when they pray with ever increasing confidence, they see with an ever-increasing and youthful Imagination and such...

If I didn’t think of it, it has no bearing on my life.

They forget that for a Creator to create, He must be greater than His creation, thus He must be by definition not less than emotional.

When sex was something godlike, Lust was the profane curiosity that killed many a straying cat. Now, having removed mystery, Lust is less a long-standing, overpowering yearning, more a sudden craving of the appetite. Less quest, more impulse buy.

Though I despise it, I do not doubt His Love for the creatures. I have seen it —His ever-reaching outward for any hand that might reach back. At His love, I tremble yet believe.

They think that if they had more belief they would pray more, so keep them lacking. Never let them realize that the opposite is true: If they prayed more, they would have more belief.

Properly understood, Imagination and Prayer are directly proportional —the more they pray beyond their bounds, they expand their vision beyond their resources, their experiences, their expectations.

I shouldn’t need to remind you that it was words that created the universe and The Word that now holds it together. While your man was simply reading one little book, something not unlike Genesis was stirring in his skull, and you didn’t think to stop it?

With addiction, a client’s fears can be ripened into some very pleasing fruit: Irritability, suspiciousness, isolation, paranoia, and finally on to that grand banana —the fear of Fear itself.

Once a man discovers that his obedience is primarily for others’ sake, that every miracle that ever amazed happened because of someone’s obedience somewhere, that properly understood, his obedience prepares the way for His visitation, well, then we run up against the appalling result of attentive servants gladly going about His bidding without the slightest...

And I’m glad to see that all three clients are male. Not that the females can’t be corrupted, I’ve just always found the males more amenable to temptation. The males have always had all the power, so that does much to explain it. As they say: Easy pickings.

But as I say, if you look to the state of their souls you’ll find the situation nowhere near as grave as polls suggest. There’s more to being a servant of The Adversary than signing up.

I don’t even like the phrase ‘opportunity to sin’ because it implies the opportunity to obey.

But here I’d like to add to what the Tempter’s Manual suggests. Depression, at its finest, is not a Future that they cannot hopefully construct, nor a shamed Past that hounds them, but an agonizing Present that they cannot escape. We want to disable their Present so that they cannot use it to look Heavenward.

illusion” of choice because, in many cases, the nature of their choices hardly reaches the level of will, but of merely perfunctory activity. For the most part, their desires are not too strong, they are too weak, apathetic and easily placated. They often can be tempted into doing Nothing.

We have deficited upon their attention in the most disorderly fashion.

Joy is that paradox where a man so trusts, is so enraptured, as to be caught up and lost in the other, while at the same time, being utterly known by the other, thus utterly himself.

When their minds mingle with His magnanimity, something of eternity rubs off on their imaginations.

Courtesy, not control, that was His means. Just as He requested the stars to sing and they leapt into bright being, so request was to be their rule over bird and beast, seas and trees, mountains and moons and all the dancing distances between the heavenlies filled with the unending song of Creation.

Somehow they fail to see that for someone aggravated by depression, self-help will be useless, indeed, it is precisely the self that needs to be forgotten.

That dusty hill we can scarcely look upon and then only with pain, The Adversary, also with pain, does and must ever witness The Crucifixion.

A tiny adjustment, but a tasty one. Poof! And somewhere in the back of their minds the godlike thought glimmers.

I feel unforgivable, but it was out of my control.” Never let them switch those round right or The Adversary will liberate them in a heartbeat, like a bird flying from a cage.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happy hour, the long weekend, the all-inclusive island resort, the sunny beach vacation. Happiness is somewhere else, someplace with boat drinks, some secret, distant state of bliss which if they were given would bore them in minutes.

We’ve spent centuries moving them away from that word virtue and especially The Virtues and that’s precisely how we did it —by making it lower case.

As a motivation —for humans, but Christians especially— guilt is always wrong and can never move them to do anything He wants of them. Never let them realize that.

Press them continually with memory and dream and have them waste their Present there.

Faith is an act whereby they learn their God.

And once their imaginations are liberated, they begin glimpse the grand interconnectedness of all things. Eternity begins to peek out from behind the everyday things and they see the trappings of any earthly moment as the stage and props for Heaven to reveal itself. There is now nothing ordinary. Everything is being used and spun...

And keep them thinking in terms of ‘being good’ as this is not an end so much as a means to something else —happiness, respect, self-esteem, etc… And whatever their true end is, take it away, and so goes their goodness.

They think that if they were allowed to do anything they desired, they would be satisfied and the more desires the better. But all desires divorced from The Desire eventually collapse in on themselves.

This is why we apply the LCD Principle or Lowest Common Democracy. In short, this is social interaction based not on the best possible good, but on the least possible offense. Without saying so, the parties involved have entered into the following arrangement: What is the least we can all agree on and still get...

They view repentance as the thing they have to do in order to earn forgiveness, therefore the more difficult they make it, the more credit they tally up.

Turning an experience about to observe it, results in a lessening of the experience directly proportional to the amount of observation. To think about it is, to some degree, to stop the pleasure, to stop the experience, to step outside it.

The trick here is, while the actual pleasure begins to recede and blur, we simultaneously bring the imagined pleasure more fully into focus. And when we do, even the memory of the pleasure becomes more and more heightened and imagined, thus anticipation is increased. This kind of anticipation is the spiritual equivalent of a Cheeto...

If we must tempt to Pleasure, how do we tempt to the least amount of Pleasure? Or better yet, tempt them to its opposite? But how to tempt them to pain.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of gratitude, now that would’ve worked. They would have been readily led to contentment, which would’ve then better lead them on to happiness.

Never let them try out this gratitude, for they would immediately discover that it supplies the first and most important component to happiness: Contentment.

Grace runs downhill and now all his time is being redeemed.