Can You Boost Your Self-Control?
I am posting the following because being celibate as an adult is a matter of choice and self-control.
God does not “gift” any adult single, Christian or no, with celibacy or singleness, nor does God remove the sexual drive of adult celibates, as is often falsely thought or taught by Christians, such as preacher Mark Driscoll (see this Link for more on that).
God does not specially gift or grace any single to resist sex, nor does God remove sexual desire or longing for a spouse from an adult celibate / single.
Being celibate as an adult is a matter of choice and self-discipline and willpower, and not a magical superpower bestowed by God. Celibates are not asexual persons who are devoid of sexual desire.
(Link): Can You Boost Your Self-Control?
Excerpts:
- SCIENTISTS DEBATE WHETHER WE LOSE THE ABILITY TO RESIST TEMPTATION OVER TIME, OR JUST NO LONGER WANT TO.
…But Newton’s apple aside, few scientific insights emerge on the scene in perfect form. While the depletion model of self-control has been validated by more than a hundred empirical studies, it remains rife with limitations and rough edges. In an upcoming paper for Trends in Cognitive Science, a research team led by Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto not only points out some of the theory’s shortcomings but proposes an alternative: iIt’s not that our willpower weakens, it’s that our motivations change.
“From this standpoint, self-control failure is less about resource depletion and more about the motivated switching of task priorities from ‘have-to’ to ‘want-to’ goals,” write Inzlicht and company.
Put another way: Perhaps flipping on the television after a long day of work isn’t a sign that we’ve used up all our willpower for the day. Perhaps it reflects a natural desire to balance the grueling labor of life with gratifying leisure.
… There’s also the basic observation that sometimes people can sustain high levels of self-control over extended periods of time–all energy drinks aside. If self-control is truly a limited physiological resource, our varying psychic states should have little to do with it, yet in test after test, it does.
One study found that people who believed willpower was unlimited showed no depletion on self-control tasks; another found the same persistence in people who had simply prayed beforehand. Perhaps such examples are the exception to the resource rule, or perhaps they’re a sign that it should be rewritten.
Inzlicht and his collaborators suggest revising the theory to focus more on motivation. It’s not that we lose the ability to resist temptation after a long stretch of willful exertion, they argue. It’s that we no longer want to.
The difference may seem semantic, but it carries empirical weight.
A 2003 study depleted test participants of willpower with a tough initial task, then measured how they did on a second one. Those who believed the task would help others or themselves–in other words, those who were motivated to do it–performed better than those who did not.
…So maybe self-control can’t be explained by physiological resources alone. Sure, we sink into the couch after a long day of work. Is that because we’re no longer capable of labor, or rather because we much prefer by that point to bask in leisure? Inzlicht and company argue for the latter, largely on the strength of adaptive reasoning: any human need to attain rewards through work must be partnered with the equally powerful need to enjoy those rewards.
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Related posts, this blog:
(Link): There is No Such Thing as a Gift of Singleness or Gift of Celibacy or A Calling To Either One
(Link): Why So Much Fornication – Because Christians Have No Expectation of Sexual Purity
(Link): False Christian Teaching: “Only A Few Are Called to Singleness and Celibacy”
Christian Pundit 