About ARMOR
Inspired by Ephesians 6:11-12, ARMOR is a Christian faith-based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that facilitates behavioral change as an active response to the spiritual warfare waged upon humanity by the devil. Rather than accept being a passive participant in this spiritual warfare, ARMOR boldly engages in it under the patronage of St. Michael the Archangel by enabling better habits that help humanity "to stand firm against the tactics of the devil" and to overcome vice with virtue.
Why care?
Each choice you make is a battle in spiritual warfare for your soul. While Jesus redeemed humanity through his death and resurrection and God freely gives His grace to humanity for its salvation, everyone makes choices every day that demonstrate either acceptance or rejection of the need to cooperate with God's grace to be holy and happy. While eternal happiness exists only with God in heaven, we can experience true happiness even now on this side of heaven.
Everyone wants to be happy, and the world is filled with ways to seek happiness. True happiness comes by ways that strengthen your relationship with God, others, and/or yourself, and false happiness comes by ways that weaken your relationship with God, others, and/or yourself. Choosing ways of false happiness often leads to habits that erode those relationships.
Why now?
Without behavioral change, these habits of false happiness will continue to erode those relationships and will leave you feeling less happy each time you indulge them, and they can lead to eternal unhappiness (hell) rather than eternal happiness (heaven). You can see the effects of false happiness everywhere: depression, addiction, divorce, injury, suicide, murder, and Godlessness in a world created by God.
The effect you don't see is even worse, as Jesus says in Matthew 10:28, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna." The timing of these effects - seen or unseen - may not be as distant as you might think. The time to act is now. (2 Corinthians 6:2, Romans 13:11)
Why ARMOR?
As taught by 13th century monk St. Thomas Aquinas, virtue is essential to experiencing true happiness. He also taught that growing in virtue is a lifelong process of strengthening habits through repeated acts, aided by divine grace, to align human actions with reason and God’s will.
ARMOR enables better habits aligned with virtues, which help you to grow in virtue and experience true happiness. Its Grow in Virtue program of behavioral change is rooted in Ephesians 6:14-17, which Pope Paul VI alluded to in the last section (entitled Defense against the Devil) of his address to a General Audience in 1972. In that address, he recalled “how often the apostolic method of teaching used the armor of a soldier as a symbol for the virtues that can make a Christian invulnerable. The Christian must be a militant; he must be vigilant and strong; and he must at times make use of special ascetical practices to escape from certain diabolical attacks. Jesus teaches us this by pointing to ‘prayer and fasting’ as the remedy. And the Apostle [St. Paul] suggests the main line we should follow: ‘Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’” (Matthew 17:21 [see footnote], Romans 12:21)
To overcome evil with good, ARMOR promotes intentionality with exercising better habits every day to decrease acts of vice and increase acts of virtue. Other programs can lead to successfully breaking a specific habit, but their approach has disadvantages:
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Focus. Focusing only on a specific habit fails to account for your whole person and your total wellness based on the 8 dimensions of wellness. (ie. spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional, social, financial, occupational, and environmental)
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Replacement. Replacing one hurtful habit with another hurtful habit is something that often happens when you focus only on a specific habit.
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Identity. Identifying yourself based on your hurtful habits undermines your identity in Christ and can have a negative impact on your mental health. Who you are is different from what you've done, and your identity as a child of God made in His image and likeness (Genesis 1:26) does not change when you struggle with a habit that weakens your relationship with God, others, and/or yourself.
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Idolatry. It is idolatry to identify your higher power as being anyone or anything other than the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Exodus 20: 3-5)
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Duration. The duration of some programs is limited to a period of time (eg. 21 days, 90 days, etc.), which correlates to varying ideas about the length of time it takes to break a habit. However, habits are broken only as long you restrain from them, and they exist only as long as you exercise them.
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Cost. Some programs cost money, and some are so costly that money can be an obstacle to getting help with breaking hurtful habits.
ARMOR's Grow in Virtue program is based on a whole person, total wellness approach that guards against replacing one hurtful habit with another, and it identifies you as a child of the Triune God. The Grow in Virtue program is actually a rule of life that is lived one day at a time for a lifetime rather than a short period of time, and it is faithful to Jesus' command in Matthew 10:8 to give without cost. The only requirement to join ARMOR is your desire for true happiness and your willingness to put away the old self and put on your new self. (Ephesians 4:22-24)
What's next?
Start to Grow in Virtue! Anyone can do it, but which virtues? ARMOR leverages writings on the virtues from ancient, medieval, and modern times to recommend the specific virtues on which to focus your efforts. Those recommended virtues also have examples of better habits that you can exercise to grow in each of those virtues.
After you decide the better habits you will exercise, what strategies will you use to exercise them? There are many ways to make and break habits, but ARMOR uses best practices from contemporary literature about habits to recommend how to exercise better habits.
As you exercise better habits, how will you hold yourself accountable? It's critical to stay connected with others who are exercising better habits too. ARMOR facilitates that with a peer support community that is designed to keep you connected with others for help and encouragement when, not if, the road gets bumpy. And in the same way you receive help and encouragement, so also are you called to help and encourage others. (2 Corinthians 1:3-7)
If you have questions, contact ARMOR.
If you're ready, start to Grow in Virtue!