If I am to “follow the impulses of [my] heart and the desires of [my] eyes, yet know that God will bring [me] to judgment for all these things” (Ecclesiastes 11:9), how am I to distinguish the impulses and desires that God will judge favorably from those that He will frown upon? If a way already “seems right to [me]” (Proverbs 14:12/16:25), how am I to determine whether it’s the kind whose “end” is “death”? How am I supposed to tell a righteous “desire of my heart” from an unrighteous “desire of the flesh” or “desire of the eyes”?
One rule of thumb is to ask myself, in keeping with my working definition of love, the following question: “To whose importance am I responding?” If the honest answer is “my own,” then I am loving myself, and unless I am a doormat in need of some assertiveness training (which I myself am most verily not), then there’s my clear signpost: WAY OF DEATH.