It was disappointing. I’d been assuming that the beautiful wildflowers that had been springing up in the meadow belonged there. But they turned out to actually be an invasive species that, left alone, would begin taking over. This bad news had come through a notice asking people to pull the plant up whenever they saw it.

It struck me that the notice could be applied to our thinking, too. Sometimes thoughts flit about that initially appear to be appealing, reasonable, even good. In the moment, it can feel reasonable to give in to a temptation to be selfish, uncaring, or sinful. But upon deeper examination, it becomes apparent that those thoughts are ultimately destructive. 

A temptation seems reasonable only when we accept the false assumptions underlying it. So the trick is to watch what we’re assuming. We’re constantly confronted with the claim that evil is present and that therefore good is absent. We assume we lack, for instance, love, right relationships, supply, health, happiness, or holiness. If we accept these beliefs, we can then be tempted to look to some material remedy to meet the supposed lack—an app for loneliness, a get-rich-quick scheme to fill seemingly empty pockets, maybe a pill to relieve ill health.