Temptation - all, half or nothing?

Satan tempts us at the point of our physical needs, not that we might gratify them to excess, but that we may think of nothing else, and gratify them at the expense of our usefulness in this world.

Satan tempts us at the point of our ambitions, not that we might engage in positive evil, but simply accept the fact of evil, learn to live with it, come to terms with it and maintain a discreet silence in the presence of it.

Satan tempts us at the point of our religion, not that we might disbelieve in God, but that we demand certainty of God, that kind of certainty which leaves nothing to faith, nothing to God Himself.

These are the moral struggles that have reality for people such as we are.

The subtle temptation to renounce our duty in favor of that which is attractive – that insidious allurement to a kind of half-goodness, which is the essence of everything bad, and which is more productive of suffering and hatred and war and misery in the world than all the designs of wicked and greedy men combined.
--Arthur Leonard Griffith, cited by Ravi Zacharias