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(Disclaimer: I’m not criticizing this great thought-provoking article, but just adding some of my own ideas, which have been going in the same direction lately.)

I’m not 100% sure “indulgence” is the problem; it’s convenience that people are hung up on. If you indulge in something over and over, it’s just a habit and not a pleasure. You’re wallowing in whatever it is and not appreciating it properly.

True indulgence is a one-shot deal and shouldn’t make anyone feel too guilty, unless you’re indulging in food and your kids are starving, or your favorite indulgence is other people’s suffering.

Trust is more a culprit: We trust what doctors tell us, what the TV tells us, what our favorite blogs tell us, etc. And today we’re finding out that a lot of these trusted sources have been lying their butts off to us for a really long time now. (We lie to ourselves, too, as the writer mentioned, to keep from having to go out of our comfort zone, to keep from having to learn and grow. That’s an unholy problem.)

If indulgence makes you feel guilty, then you’re wallowing in something and of course you’ll likely have a bad result even if it’s just lemon drops.

Being able to hog out makes me thankful. Realizing I’ve trusted a source that gave me wrong information can make me feel guilty.

In terms of faith, your devotion to pleasures and comforts may not be what’s working against you - it could be misplaced trust.

Of course, one time-honored method to discover and reinforce one’s faith is to fast and undergo hardship; to remove distractions; to stop listening to so many different voices and find Gd’s voice. No arguments with that!

But here’s where I’m at with it: It is no sort of struggle whatsoever, for example, for me not to watch TV. I really hate TV and started hating it when I was young. I looked at siblings watching Saturday morning cartoons in a slavish manner and felt contempt! I didn’t even have a TV in my home for the longest time. A relative was horrified to see there was no TV and forced one on us. (Most of the time when I did watch TV, it was because I was in some sort of mental anguish or physical pain and needed it for a distraction.)

So many people waste precious hours of their lives watching TV and via this mechanism many lose their faith as well; that’s what TV is for, folks! It makes you doubt everything! And a lot of people don’t think of watching TV as a pleasure - that’s how bad it’s gotten. They think of it as a kind of obligation so they can “know what’s going on in the world.”

So, in order to boost my faith, should I force myself to watch TV? (All the vomiting will help me keep my weight down, so maybe it will be a positive benefit!)

If indulgence is truly the problem, then it’s easy enough to remove all those obstacles to your faith. You just need a little willpower and maybe a storage shed.

And yet being able to indulge in those things could be a sign of Gd’s favor toward you. Like milk; do you ever look at a gallon of milk and think of how many people’s time and effort went into getting that milk to you? If you think about it, it’s a miracle! And you’re just chugging it down (probably straight out of the container, if you’re a man) like all you have to do is send someone to the store to get another one! (Wait! That IS all you have to do! Maybe we’re on to something here...)

Perhaps I’m not making a lot of sense but I just started reading this and it struck a chord with me.

I guess if I was to sum it all up: In my opinion, the thing most Westerners need to stop indulging in is TRUST. Start looking at that gallon of milk like maybe it won’t be there tomorrow, or maybe tomorrow getting another gallon of milk will be a whole new ball game involving risk and inconvenience. Stop trusting and start appreciating.