Those Nasty Thoughts In My Mind
It is not possible to sin “accidentally.” Sin involves the act of the will or a conscious choice of accepting or rejecting a temptation. As a human person, there is a natural tendency to be attracted to one another, and there is no sinfulness in a natural response of the body. Once we have thoughts, what do we do with them? It is only natural after all, but how far can we take it without committing a sin?
 As God’s children, we are called to rise above our basic instincts. That means, when those thoughts pop into our heads, we let them go. We look past this person’s sexual attractiveness, to see him or her as a beloved image and likeness of God. The sin of lust occurs when, instead, we deliberately grab onto those thoughts and say, “I like this, and I want to think about that some more.” At that point, we are using that person to get sexual pleasure for ourselves. When we deliberately consent to those thoughts, when we start adding to the fantasy, we sin against chastity. A way to remember this is that, “It isn’t the first look that gets you into trouble. It’s the second.” Our emotional life, unfortunately, can also contribute to uninvited sexual fantasies. Father Benedict Groeschel, in his excellent book The Courage to Be Chaste, says that these fantasies often reflect the need for tenderness, reinforcement, intimacy and spiritual love. When we’re not getting those, we tend to be more vulnerable to sexual fantasy.
This causes many sensitive people to struggle with guilt. They think they’re bad people just because certain sexual thoughts enter into their brains. They think that chastity means that their sex drive should go away. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those involuntary thoughts are not in themselves sinful, but are an invitation to sinfulness. But we don’t sin unless we accept the invitation. We may be barraged by uninvited sexual thoughts all day long, but as long as we don’t voluntarily consent to them, there is no sin. (Consent, according to Father Groeschel, means having the presence of mind to say, “This is sinful, but I’m going to think about it anyway.”) Of course, those thoughts don’t always go away so easily. They linger in the mind, taunting us, and violently forcing sexual thought out of our minds wouldn’t be terribly healthy even if it did work. Burying thought like that tends to keep them alive in the subconscious, where they can cause all kinds of mischief. So what do we do?
We don’t give in and focus our attention on the thoughts, but neither do we fear them and try to drive them away. We simply acknowledge them as a part of being human, and then turn our attention elsewhere. We distract ourselves. (Father Groeschel points out that very few people are tempted during a fire alarm.) We ignore the thoughts, even as they clamor for our attention. Eventually, they go away.
It’s also important to keep our lives in order. If loneliness or need for intimacy is fueling our overactive imaginations, we need change our lives, to satisfy those needs” in the right way. Basically, it’s not easy to ignore thoughts that promise us such pleasure. We need God’s help. Chastity without prayer is impossible. All moral virtue involves turning away from short-term pleasure for the sake of long-term happiness. And that takes strength that we don’t have on our own. Achieving internal chastity is not an easy task. For many, it is a lifelong struggle, fought day in and day out. Father Benedict Groeschel offers encouragement, saying, “Every temptation resisted is a great act of worship of God. To put up with temptation and not seek the easy way out is a powerful acknowledgment of the sovereignty of God … Even if one falls later on, he has accomplished an act of obedient worship that will not be erased” (The Courage to Be Chaste, p. 90). Remember, we’re not in this alone!!
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