“Avoid It, Do Not Pass By It”: Fleeing Temptation

Proverbs piles up four verbs in a single line: avoid, do not pass by, turn away, pass on. The father in Proverbs 4 is not training his son to walk past the door of sin with clenched fists. He is telling him to take another street. Paul’s counsel to Timothy is the same. He says “flee,” not “resist,” and he pairs it with pursuit, in company: “with those who call on the Lord.” Joseph running from Potiphar’s wife, leaving his garment behind, is the picture (Gen. 39:12).

Self-control works mostly upstream. For years, self-control was pictured as a muscle that resists temptation in the moment. Large experience-sampling studies tell a different story. Hofmann, Baumeister, Förster, and Vohs (2012) gave 205 adults beepers for a week and collected 7,827 reports of desires as they happened. Desires were frequent and mostly harmless. When a desire conflicted with a goal, people usually tried to resist, with uneven success. Personality mattered most early, in how strong a desire was and whether it caused conflict at all. The situation mattered more later, in whether resistance held. Alcohol, the presence of others, and the presence of others already indulging all changed the outcome.

A follow-up series of three studies found that people high in trait self-control were happier, and the reason was revealing. They experienced less conflict and distress when desires arose. Part of their advantage seemed to come from avoiding frequent conflict in the first place, not from winning more fights (Hofmann et al., 2014). In other words, the people best at self-control seem to arrange their lives so they face fewer battles.

Why it matters over a lifetime. In a cohort of 1,000 children in Dunedin, New Zealand, followed from birth to age 32, childhood self-control predicted adult physical health, substance dependence, finances, and criminal convictions. The relationship followed a gradient and held after accounting for intelligence and social class. In a second cohort of 500 sibling pairs, the sibling with lower self-control fared worse despite the shared home (Moffitt et al., 2011).

A popular idea that did not hold up. One widely repeated claim is that willpower is a limited fuel that runs out with use, called “ego depletion.” A preregistered replication across 23 laboratories (N = 2,141) found an effect close to zero (d = 0.04; Hagger et al., 2016). The lesson for us is not that self-control is unlimited. It is that the strategy Proverbs recommends, distance and redirection, does not depend on a reserve of willpower at all.

What the studies cannot tell us. These studies measure everyday desires such as snacks, sleep, media, and spending, not sin as Scripture defines it. Trait self-control is partly temperament, and nothing here measures grace. But the convergence is clear: the wise man changes the road he walks.

Practice

Living it out

Five practices drawn from this passage. Each says how strong the research behind it is. What the labels mean.

1. 1

   Change the road, not just your resolve

   Identify your top recurring temptation and the place or time it usually starts. Change one thing about that place this week: the route, the room, the device, or the time.

   ModerateExperience sampling shows that situations strongly shape whether resistance holds (Hofmann et al., 2012), and people high in self-control appear to avoid conflict more than they win it (Hofmann et al., 2014).
2. 2

   Decide before the moment

   Write a simple if-then plan: “If I am alone with the laptop after 10 p.m., then I close it and go to bed.”

   StrongStrong for if-then plans in general. A meta-analysis already cited in the paper found a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). It was not tested on temptation specifically.
3. 3

   Flee with company

   Paul’s “flee” comes “with those who call on the Lord.” Tell one brother which road you are avoiding, and ask him to ask you about it.

   ModerateOthers’ presence and behavior shift self-control in daily life (Hofmann et al., 2012). See also Addition 18 on the company you keep.
4. 4

   Don’t count on willpower running out, or holding

   Stop telling yourself you were “too tired to resist.” Plan the setting instead.

   StrongStrong that the ego-depletion effect is near zero in a large multilab test (Hagger et al., 2016).
5. 5

   Pursue, don’t just flee

   For every road you leave, name something you will run toward instead, such as a person to call, a task to finish, or a psalm to read.

   ObedienceObedience. Commended by the shape of 2 Timothy 2:22. Replacing a habit rather than only stopping it fits the paper’s habit research (see the Bonus section), but the specific practice is untested.

Studies cited on this page5

1. ↗ Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
2. ↗ Hagger, M. S., Chatzisarantis, N. L. D., Alberts, H., Anggono, C. O., Batailler, C., Birt, A. R., Brand, R., Brandt, M. J., Brewer, G., Bruyneel, S., Calvillo, D. P., Campbell, W. K., Cannon, P. R., Carlucci, M., Carruth, N. P., Cheung, T., Crowell, A., De Ridder, D. T. D., Dewitte, S., . . . Zwienenberg, M. (2016). A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 546–573. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616652873
3. ↗ Hofmann, W., Baumeister, R. F., Förster, G., & Vohs, K. D. (2012). Everyday temptations: An experience sampling study of desire, conflict, and self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(6), 1318–1335. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026545
4. ↗ Hofmann, W., Luhmann, M., Fisher, R. R., Vohs, K. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2014). Yes, but are they happy? Effects of trait self-control on affective well-being and life satisfaction. Journal of Personality, 82(4), 265–277. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12050
5. ↗ Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., Houts, R., Poulton, R., Roberts, B. W., Ross, S., Sears, M. R., Thomson, W. M., & Caspi, A. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(7), 2693–2698. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1010076108