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Nearly four years ago I wrote of a vast and complex edifice I had engineered, which towered high above me; my conscience told me to pull it down, but a battle raged within. Over the years and months that followed, I sent in demolition repeatedly, only to build it back up again within weeks or months. What was once a hideous carbuncle became normalised, pushing me further and further from my Lord.

But still that great battle rages on, between the good and bad sides of me. The bad side mostly wins. We open up doors that are difficult to close, and however hard with try to push them tightly back behind us in a moment of sincerity, it is never tight enough.

I have sent in demolition again, but this time without that penitent emotion of the past. This time just a detached realisation. The good side of me striving to take action, fully aware that the bad side is not ready for this change. The good side smashes the inner idols, closes the doors, changes the locks and throws away the keys. But the bad side continues to resist.

Repentance feels feeble and weak. It is difficult to utter the words of remorse, for it longer feels sincere after so much has come and gone. And of course the bad side of me is still awaiting the inevitable relapse, to finish off what it has started. The good side of me thinks it futile to even ask.

And here I sit typing, wondering what has happened to those emotions of old, that could force me down onto my face with that sincere tearful regret, even if quick to pass. Now there is just this detached resignation. Tear it down, whispers the good in me, and in an instant that is what I do, but not with that passion of old: just this weary, nonchalant resignation.

Breaking these inner idols pained me. I didn’t want to do it, but I knew I must. I had invested my all in building them up. I had invested belief in their creation. It was a decision months in the making: to wipe the slate clean, though it pained me so. Finally I have done it, but even now the whispers within are petitioning me to return. And so it always is with these inner obsessions, that are more addictive than wine.

For now they have been vanquished, but for how long? Here the fear that I will never reform. That I will never truly conquer the inner idols of my soul to save myself.