Dr. V on "moral failure"

I hope the good professor will pardon my quoting of his blog post in its entirety, but this one is rather short, so I thought I'd take the liberty:

We fall back again and [again] into our old bad habits because of our weakness on all levels: the flesh, the [heart,] the will, and the intellect. Our minds are dark, our wills are weak, our hearts are foul. How do we know this? By honest self-examination and a refusal to evade the truth.

The will is not strong enough to tame the animal in us and control its natural tendencies; but it is strong enough to suborn the intellect and persuade it to rationalize the free will's wrong decisions.

A will too weak to tame the flesh is yet strong enough to suborn the intellect.

Because we cannot significantly improve ourselves by our own efforts, we must seek help elsewhere, but obviously not from those who are as wretched as we are, which is to say, from fellow human beings.

Keep in mind that Dr. V is an unapologetic theist, hence his "elsewhere." My own view of God is that, if you want advice from Him, look to those around you, and you'll find Him there, in bits and pieces—the perfect always and ever shining through the imperfect, and it's up to you to cobble those nuggets of wisdom together into a coherent whole. That's what being an adult means: accept no crutches. Others will be there for you, but it's ultimately all up to you.