Last week, I wrote about letting go of expectations and indulging yourself. My point was that we spend so much time doing everything right, we forget it’s okay to have fun. This week, I want to talk about the other side of that: self-indulgence.

Self-indulgence is defined by Merriam-Webster as excessive or unrestrained gratification of one’s own appetites, desires, or whims. Basically, you do whatever you want. This lends itself to a philosophy called hedonism, where self-pleasure is the highest goal in life. You should probably be picking out the theme by now. We, you, me, are the centers of our universes. We, you, me, are the only ones that matter, that have agency, that think and move and can actually change the world. We, you, me, are our gods.

Now, to some extent, the self is the highest priority. I believe in a God Who watches over me and provides for me, but at the same time, I’m going to buy food and clothes, I’m going to pay for a place to live, I’m going to get a job so I can buy food and clothes and pay for a place to live. I have my own hopes and interests. My priorities matter more to me than your priorities. I may only go along with you because it gets me what I want. At some point, we need to say yes only to ourselves in order to live.

But the line between selfishness and necessary self-focus is thin, and often varies depending on the person. It is selfish, but not necessarily wrong, for me to say, “Go away, I want to be alone,” after a long day. It is selfish and wrong for me to say that because I prefer myself to everyone else.

Ayn Rand, one of the most fascinating and exasperating authors I’ve ever read, is a big proponent of the self as the highest goal. According to her, you can be justified in pretty much anything–cheating on your spouse, for instance–as long as it is what you want. Of course, when she got cheated on, she didn’t like it very much. I’m not saying we all want to go out and cheat on our partners. But we all have things we know we shouldn’t do so much. We giggle awkwardly and say we’re indulging ourselves, it’s self-care, it’s been a wild week . . . 

The thing with self-indulgence is it keeps growing. We are always around ourselves, a whirlpool of thoughts and feelings. We can make excuses for pretty much anything. “Watching TV before bed calms me down!” “I just need that Starbucks pick-me-up before work.” “I’m so tired, why don’t I just order out tonight?” Your actions and feelings become fused, until you really can’t go to bed without watching TV, and skipping Starbucks makes you miserable. We’d rather get that feel-good jolt than sleep better or save money.

Self-indulgence loses its purpose. That pre-work Starbucks may have genuinely started out as a treat on a bad day. But if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself relying on it. Suddenly, a day is bad just because you don’t get Starbucks. Worse, all your days are suddenly terrible because that’s how you justify getting Starbucks in the first place.

 To be self-indulgent ruins the idea of a treat and turns every day into me-focus. Soon, the treat itself doesn’t give you nearly as much excitement as the knowledge that you’re going to get one. All the time spent with the treat turns from enjoyment to depression, knowing the treat will soon be gone.

Self-indulgence also wrecks that genuine God-given part of yourself with unique interests. I highly doubt it’s sinful to like fast food. I like ordering a Domino’s pizza now and then. But if I go from enjoying a pizza to craving a pizza, where is the enjoyment? If I got to a point where I only felt alive and happy while looking forward to Domino’s, where is my life? Shrunk down and contained in that half-hour between ordering and receiving.

C.S. Lewis wrote a theological scifi story about the paradise Perelandra (also known as the planet Venus). Perelandra is a golden world of floating islands and tiny dragons, of fruits so indescribable, “wars would be fought and nations betrayed” for a single taste. The character, Ransom, is about to have another when he realizes “he was now neither hungry nor thirsty. And yet to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual seemed an obvious thing to do. . . . Yet something seemed opposed to this ‘reason’. . . . Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity . . .”

In simple words, Lewis is saying the repeated experience of a good thing, simply to feel its goodness, spoils the good. “This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards . . . was it possibly the root of all evil?”

I don’t think this means we should cut out every enjoyable thing in our lives (unless it’s leading to a lack of self-control or really is frivolous). I like Sparkling Frost drinks, Blistex chapstick, Star Wars, and Coldplay. But have you ever had a favorite song that you listened to on repeat until you were sick of it? To overindulge ruins the good thing, and the God Who blesses us with good things does not intend for those to be curses.