UN/Broken - Day 8

Luke 4:1-2
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was  led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty  days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing  during those days, and at the end of them, he was  hungry.
 
When we are hungry, we are more susceptible to  moral shortcuts. In an experiment with college  students after fasting for 12 hours, the hungrier they  were, the less disgusted they were by a morally  problematic dilemma in a short story (Vicario et al.,  2018). We could have less energy for moral reasoning  when our blood sugar is low. It is probably easier to  agree with whatever is going on.

Luke reports that Jesus was much more food deprived than the study participants, and we can only  imagine what kind of hunger he was experiencing.  There is no mention of why Jesus didn’t eat anything  during that time and if he planned to go that long  without food. Regardless of the reason, as we learn in  Luke’s subsequent verses, Jesus did not take the easy  moral shortcuts he was tempted towards, but this  must have been excruciating and only because of his  immense moral strength.
 
For the rest of us, in addition to relying on the Holy  Spirit and bible study for our moral strength, it is an  excellent idea to minimize our human vulnerabilities
to moral compromise, including our biochemical  vulnerabilities. As the study authors conclude, if you  have something you need to do at the top of your  moral game, “…make sure you do it after breakfast.”  (p. 35).

JOURNAL:
How might your moral choices be influenced by the  health basics of appropriate nutrition, sleep, and  exercise?