I can stop for a few weeks, but there is just a hole where the habit used to be, and eventually I fill it back up with the same thing.

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

The Psalms open with a portrait of two lives, and the good one is not defined by what it avoids. Almost immediately the poem moves to what the person does instead, sustained attention on something, pictured as a tree planted beside water. That image is a slow root system rather than a single decision. Removal on its own is not what the psalm recommends.

“That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

Paul is writing to new believers in Ephesus about how change actually happens, and he gives it in three movements: put off the old, be renewed in the spirit of your mind, put on the new. Two of the three are additions rather than subtractions. A few verses later he makes it concrete, telling the thief not merely to stop stealing but to work with his hands instead.