Living With Legalistic Desires

The desire to force or convince someone to abandon an amoral or permissible practice, attitude, or longing is the core of legalistic motivation.  Even if that person being pressured is actually oneself, this is the real inherent heart of legalism, not just tradition or soteriological arrogance.  Living with legalistic urges could be exhausting and is of course pointless and irrational the moment those urges are treated as anything more than just that.  Rationality and self-control are required for such a person.  The things they dislike or wish no one engaged in are of no consequence as long as they are not problematic themselves.

It does not matter if it is maintaining lifelong opposite gender friendships even if married, consuming alcohol regularly, enjoying very sexually graphic or violent art, using profanity to the point of relying on it more than other words plenty of times, masturbating to many people of the opposite gender while in a romantic relationship, or savoring righteous hatred.  If something is not irrational or sinful (Deuteronomy 4:2), no one needs to give it up no matter what pain or discomfort it causes others, most of whom will be non-rationalists anyway.  People do need to get past whatever emotional objections they have to the best of their ability.

Unfortunately, subjective annoyance or dread not only has nothing to do with anything but personal feelings/attitudes, but it also might not disappear even with time and effort.  This is not the fault of whoever is practicing the nonsinful deed in question and they should thus not be treated as a problem regardless of how much the person with legalistic desires prefers.  Someone can abstain from a permissible thing out of preference, for there is nothing obligatory or evil about that thing, but this is only because of their personal whims and not because of social pressures.

This is not what some who gravitate towards legalistic demands or requests want to be the case.  Like a non-rationalist who does not wish to hear think about how they are inferior to rationalists, those who know legalism is irrational and still want it to be true, to pressure others to submit to their mere whims, might not exactly see the objective freedom in the truth.  They might focus on their own preferences so much that they fail to intellectually or emotionally bask in the freedom that they have.  Desiring to control the behaviors of others except for pressuring them to do what is obligatory and avoid what is sinful is something to be kept under strict control, never to be yielded to even once.