“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10). When confronting temptation, it is understandable that, in the beginning, there is fear. After all, fear is all about activating our flight or fight response, and so often the struggle against Satan and all of his minions is described in terms of a battle of good versus evil. When we fear the consequences of sin, we place ourselves in the fight for our immortal souls. But we don’t want to face every temptation that we come across in terms of fear only, if for no other reason than the fact that we don’t want to be fighting battles all of the time. For one thing, we’ll wear ourselves out. And for another, there’s always the possibility that we get brutally maimed or killed on the field of battle. Fear is just the beginning. If we want to take things to the next level, then we have to talk about disgust. If fear is all about running the mental calculations as to whether it is better facing a threat with aggression or running away to fight another day, then disgust is taking a much more hardline approach. Disgust won’t even get dragged into a fight. Disgust won’t even be anywhere near the vicinity to begin with. Disgust is all about preventing pathogens and contagions from poisoning us. If we eat something disgusting, we don’t try to fight our way through it and prove that we are stronger than the poison we ate. We throw it up immediately. It is no wonder that sin and the pain and misery that comes as a consequence of it is described as bitter, since bitterness is closely associated with disgust as things that poison us are most often bitter to the taste. “Now they, after being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, having their garments made white, being pure and spotless before God, could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence; and there were many, exceedingly great many, who were made pure and entered into the rest of the Lord their God.” (Alma 13:12). Those who are pure and spotless, in other words, those that are not afflicted with pathogens or contagions, can’t look upon sin except with abhorrence. They are able to so successfully withstand temptations because they have made them disgusting and abhorrent and loathsome. They will not lose a battle against sin because they find sin so disgusting that they won’t go near the battlefield. Joseph of Egypt did not fear whether or not he would be strong enough to resist the temptation to commit adultery with Potiphar’s wife. He was so disgusted by the idea of committing adultery that he got out of the room, out of the whole house even, before the battle could even start. The Anti-Nephi-Lehi’s were so disgusted by the lives of violence and murder that they had led before their conversion that they buried their weapons of war and removed the possibility of fighting altogether. We have to move beyond a response of fear to temptations and arrive at a point where the very idea of sinning fills us with unspeakable horror. We have to understand that like a virus, sin will work its way into us if we let it and it will change us and spread its pathogens out to others. And one of the main ways that we can so put off the natural man that we become put off by the very idea of the natural man is by doing the exact opposite. If sin is feasting on the bitter and poisons fruits of evil, then we can learn to better distinguish between the sweet and the bitter by choosing instead to feast upon the words of Christ, to savor the fruits of the spirit, to eat of the flesh and drink of the blood of Jesus Christ that we may be cleansed and purified of all toxins and poisons and sicknesses both physical or spiritual until we have become saints, pure and spotless before God, and worthy to enter into His rest. If a temptation is still so appealing that we are afraid that we will fail to have the strength to fight effectively against it, then with that fear we are still at the beginning of wisdom. We must seek to discern with clearer eyes all of the bitterness that lies beneath the sweet-seeming surface, until we have become so disgusted by it that we can’t even look at it with the least degree of allowance. The best way to avoid losing any battles with Satan is to never get drawn into them in the first place.
