Virtue is Beautiful - Gardens on the Mount of the Beatitudes
Matthew 5: 27-28
27
“You have heard that it was said,r ‘You shall not commit adultery.’
28
But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
For a dew years (~11-15 years old) I thought this passage was just impossible to follow and so I did not even bother trying. How do you really control what your mind thinks? Especially when you are a middle/high school boy? It also seemed be concerned something that was a non-issue. What did it really matter what you thought anyway?
It really does not matter what happened, but something did happen back when I was a sophomore in high school that caused me to take a much more serious look at this. I basically started taking this issue of lust much more seriously. I earnestly began trying to fight off every lustful thought that tried to enter my mind without exception. This was not an easy task at all. It was without a doubt the toughest thing I ever tried to undertake at that time and ever since. I tried so hard to control my thoughts that my head would really hurt. The way I went about it probably was not the best, and I could recommend different ways to go about it, but I found it was possible to succeed in this endeavor. Prayer and discernment were definitely a big part of it. So was the application of intelligence and good judgement in terms of knowing what was a temptation and what was a sin. Actually knowing what I know now, I can say it is challenging, but is not as impossible as it seemed at first. I have to admit though that I really did not know what the point of all this effort was other than to avoid something that was considered a serious sin.
A couple of years ago I came across this Atheist cartoon that deals with the issue of "sinful thoughts." Basically they paint God as a cop out looking for thought-crime offenders. To be honest at first I had to sympathize with their view. To some extent that is what it looks like, but at the same time I also knew they were missing something - I just was not sure what it was. It made me think, but ultimately what I realized was that what secular society in general lacks is the concept of "purity of heart." When I say purity of heart I am talking about some intrinsic quality of a person that orients them to good (More or less) This is pretty much what Jesus is talking about as he lays down the beatitudes just before he talks about anger and list in a person's heart. This is what I realized was important. This is really nothing new, I knew it all along, what I did not realize is that not everyone had the concept of purity of heart to work from. My experience now is that this makes a big difference.
From a secular perspective it is so easy to dismiss the concept of a pure heart and striving toward some internal goodness simply because there is no way to observe or measure it. At one time behavioral psychology (see B.F. Skinner) was big for just this reason. Who cares what is going on inside when you cannot observe it. Lets focus on what we can measure and restrict our understanding to just that.
Well from the Catholic perspective only God can really know the heart, but there may eventually be ways to at least know a little more about what is going on inside the mind. About two years ago I learned about some work being done in the Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley on decoding visual images being seen by the brain. It is really remarkable. I invite you to take a look at this video on the work. Basically they are able to show it is feasible to tell what a person is seeing solely based on fMRI measurements. They basically do it by applying machine learning techniques. One day this could be used for a whole variety of applications such as mind reading, interrogation, etc etc. Imagine if an artist no longer had to practice painting or drawing. They could focus solely on creativity and print their ideas directly from the mind. I digress though. The more interesting question is what if your spouse had a way to know who you were fantasizing about even though they did nothing to act on it? This is a long way off from being a household item, but the day could come when a spouse stumbles on a brain scan log-file and find out about the other person you might currently be enamored with. I just thought this was interesting because as science evolves, what we are capable of measuring and observing may have an impact on secular ethics, and it may look more like the "purity of heart" we strive for in Catholicism.
Thought crime might not be so innocent one day.
