Article August 12, 2019 Issue

The beauty of moderation

Geoffrey Hibbs

When I first began to consider deeply what it means to be moderate in the way we think and live, I wasn’t sure how practical it was for this day and age. It is often expected that to lead a successful life, we need to spend long, sometimes extreme, hours working or studying. It is not uncommon for young professionals to be put in positions where the hours and quantity of work demanded of them far exceed what is generally considered a normal week’s work.

Another example can be found in the way we think about food and diet. As I considered the quality of moderation, I realized how commonplace it has become for many of us, including me, to take an extreme stance in regard to eating—being very attentive to and, at times, restrictive about what kind of food we eat and how much we eat in order to maintain a healthy physique.

In the Bible, the Apostle Paul earnestly counsels, “Let your moderation be known unto all men” (Philippians 4:5). Merriam-Webster’s Thesaurus defines moderation as “an avoidance of extremes in one’s actions, beliefs, or habits” and lists temperance as a synonym.