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Vice Of Vainglory

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The vice that I have chosen to examine further and relate to my everyday life is that of vainglory. The broad definition of vainglory is “excessive and disordered desire for recognition and approval from others” (DeYoung 60). This is basically an action that strives to bring praise upon oneself, possible at the expense of another person’s well-being. While striving for glory is not always a sinful act, when the drive to receive glory no longer focuses on the acquisition of charity, but instead for personal gain, or becomes excessive in nature, you cross the line from being a glorious person to a vainglorious person. While spending my week focusing on the vice of vainglory, I identified two insights that explained why it is so prevalent in …show more content…

In contrast to the tree ways that vainglory can manifest itself, there are three ways that make vainglory acceptable, for an action that is vainglorious that does not fall under these three categories, is indeed a vice. Therefore, vainglory can be ordained in three ways: when desiring such glory is desiring to give glory to God, when the goal of obtaining glory is to help your neighbor, and when receiving praise is to help assure that you are on the right track to obtaining your highest level of goodness. In simpler terms, vainglory seeks to corrupt the good because it seeks to remove glory from the good, and place all that excessive glory on things that do not last, things that are not true, or things that take us off our own paths to greater goodness. It is also important to mention the daughter sins of vainglory, which someone people may be more familiar with. These daughter sins are composed of any action in which we try to appear superior to others either through means of our intellect, resisting advice, not submitting to authority, or simply through boasting. During my week focusing on the vice of vainglory, I discovered just how prevalent it is in our society. Not only is vainglory fueled by the media that consumes an ample amount of our daily lives, I also believe that it is fueled by the competitive nature that is academia. Competition is not necessarily

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