I’m burnin’,

I’m burnin’,

I’m burnin’ for you.

Blue Oyster Cult

[Dear Reader: This is the fourth in a series on the vices as the Desert Fathers understood them. If you haven’t already read them, please begin the series with parts one and two first. The first of the vices, gluttony, was the subject of the last Friday Blahg.]

Every fall, as I help to integrate new freshmen into college life, I introduce them to the virtues (the language around here is “character competencies,” because in higher education everything needs to somehow be measureable and Excel-spreadsheetable) that we want to help them embrace in their time with us. There are two I point out in particular, one of them being sexual purity, because their opposing vices have such potent life-altering power. Lust has unique abilities to permanently bend the trajectory of a person’s life.

This particular vice is icky and embarrassing, and hard to talk about. But I’m riddled with it, though I don’t want to be. I suspect I’m not alone in this, so I’ll reiterate something I’ve said before: If my experience and the things I’m learning give you a path you want to follow, welcome. But you make up your own mind about anything I have to say, because I’m not telling anybody what to do except that scruffy-looking nerfherder I see in the mirror.

If you do want to follow this path, we’re taking another trip to the desert. The desert has helped me to understand clearly why this vice is such a challenge, and has also equipped me with disciplines and strategies to fight it with confidence in God’s grace.

Abstinence vs. Chastity

Purity culture has taken a lot of shots in recent years from some of the very people who grew up immersed in it, and not entirely without cause. Like most pursuits of what is good and virtuous, the desire for purity and efforts to encourage it can easily get legalistic (even without meaning to) and miss the whole point. I have argued in the past that the intent of that movement matters, but I also acknowledge that the methods have sometimes been ineffective and the message has often been garbled.

This has happened in part because of a disconnect—accidental, intentional, or otherwise—between the body and the mind when it comes to sexuality. The message and methods of purity culture have often been focused on physical abstinence. And while abstinence is a necessary part of purity, it is very much incomplete without engaging the heart and the mind. (This is why abstinence-based sex ed in public schools is so hit-and-miss in its effectiveness, because it can’t engage the heart effectively.) If I try to deny my body a craving that my mind actively promotes, I’ll turn into one of those repressed weird people critics of abstinence always warn about.

The Desert Fathers understood this. This is why John Cassian devoted so much of book six of the Institutes to matters of the heart and mind when addressing the topic of lust. “It is one thing to be abstinent,” he wrote, “and another to be chaste.” Merely denying something to your body is a far different thing than diminishing and controlling the desire for that thing in your inner person. “The hidden places of our heart must be carefully purified. For what those others wish to acquire in terms of purity of body, we must ourselves possess in the depths of our conscience.”

There is a world of difference in these two old fashioned words. Abstinence, as understood by the monks, was external. Chastity, being internal, was much deeper and more vital. As necessary as abstinence may be during a season of life, it is doomed to fail if not working in concert with a chastity that takes root in the soul and purifies the heart and mind by God’s grace. Without such chastity in the inner life, abstinence becomes a torturous exercise that leads to bitterness and resentment. Even if one managed to maintain a physical abstinence in the face of such internal conflict, the desire for the very thing being abstained from takes root in the heart and undermines the entire effort.

Be Careful Little Heart What You Want

Cassian illustrates the importance of the inner life in his treatment of Matthew 5:28, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” It is easy to focus on gouging out the eyes and cutting off the hands that cause us to sin, but the Desert Fathers took the view that this kind of behavior (including those who, like Origen, made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom) was cheating. More accurately, such extreme measures did not accurately address the problem—because it isn’t really the eye or the hand or the glands that cause me to sin. My body acts only as directed by what my heart desires. “On observing our wanton eyes he blamed not them so much as the inner sense which makes bad use of them to see,” Cassian noted.

The struggle to learn self-discipline in matters of food so as to control our bodies and not be controlled by them provides a helpful template here. Food has a good and necessary purpose that can be corrupted when I desire it in unhealthy ways, at which point I become a slave to my stomach. Even accounting for the monks’ renunciation of sexuality for what they considered to be better, the same principle still holds: God designed our sexuality for honorable purposes; we choose to use the gift selfishly and dishonorably, corrupting first our hearts, then our minds and bodies, in the process.

“It is one thing to be abstinent. It is another thing to be chaste.”

John Cassian

Ultimately it’s not the fault of the eyes, Cassian insisted. “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” The problem lies not with what I look at; the problem lies with what I want, and what I want is not driven by my eyes. “For it is not said, ‘Guard your eyes with all care.’ It would surely have been necessary to keep special watch over them if the disposition of lust arose from them. But in fact the eyes do nothing more than offer the soul the simple possibility of seeing, and so it is said, “Guard your heart with all care'” (Institutes 6.12).

The eyes merely linger where my heart wants to indulge, and averting my gaze—which circumstances may require—does not change what my heart wants. Only God does that by his grace, and even then only if I want him to. And even when I recognize that I don’t want what God wants because of the corruption in my heart, I need to at least want to want what God wants enough to ask for his help and to be transformed in my thinking and desires by his grace.

The Children of Babylon

This battle is not fought externally, which is why the Desert Fathers considering gouging out eyes or even castrating oneself to be a case of mistreating the enemy by half-measures. This battle is fought internally, and the battleground is, so to speak, our source code. What is it that I really want? Is my mind being transformed…and if so, by whom? What is shaping the way that I think?

Trigger warning: A modern exegete may get a little uncomfortable with where this is about to go, so strap in. The early church had a much greater comfort level with allegorical interpretation of Scripture than post-Reformation/post-Enlightenment scholars generally have. And care needs to be taken to handle allegory responsibly, but if you read Galatians 4:21-31 (pay attention to verse 24: “Now this may be interpreted allegorically”) you’ll notice that even the apostle Paul made use of allegory to draw meaning from beyond the narrative itself.

All that to say this: I had never known what to do with Psalm 137 until the monks showed me something different. Things are great as we sing by the rivers of Babylon, wondering how we can sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land, but then the exiles get all vengeful. “O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed…blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” Are you comfortable with the literal meaning of that passage? I confess myself discomfited.

But many early Christian authors made an interesting allegorical application of this passage to our inner life. Rather than seeking the slaughter of literal Babylonian babies, the monks concerned themselves with sin-directed thoughts in their infancy that, if given half a chance, would grow up to be fierce enemy soldiers on the battlefield of the mind. “It behooves us as well to destroy the sinners in our land—namely, our fleshly feelings—on the morning of their birth [another allegorical reference; see Psalm 101:8], as they emerge, and, while they are still young, to dash the children of Babylon against the rock. Unless they are killed at a very tender age they will, with our acquiescence, rise up to our harm as stronger adults, and they will certainly not be overcome without great pain and effort” (6.13.2).

Whether or not you are comfortable with such allegorical interpretation (and I’m admittedly wary, though willing to consider it from early Christian authors), this has been very useful to me. I’m not immune to sinful impulses, but by God’s grace I can overcome them. Better to do so while they are weak and not allow my mind to welcome them, dwell on them, nurture them, and want them. If I want sinfully I will inevitably act sinfully…but the sin was in the desire long before it was in the action. If I want honorably, then by God’s grace I will think honorably and act accordingly.

The Will of God

1 Thessalonians 4:3 reminds us that our sanctification is the will of God. But the following verses go on to link these two paramount things (God’s will and our sanctification) to a disciplined, respectful, and honorable sexuality. This stands in sharp contrast to the reckless, sweaty lust that defines so much of pop culture and at its worst is barely distinguishable from the behavior of animals.

We see the externals in this fight, hence the arguments over porn, yoga pants, and the rest. But the real fight is one for the inner life. Cassian uses the word “integrity” more than once in book six of the Institutes, and (irony of ironies) he uses it in a very literal way: Something with integrity is something which is fully integrated, or “the state of being whole or entire” according to Mr. Webster. If I abstain in body from that which I crave in my heart, I will be torn apart for my lack of integrity.

If I want sinfully I will inevitably act sinfully…but the sin was in the desire long before it was in the action.

Thus the Desert Fathers emphasized keeping close watch over our desires. Integrity is found in desiring what God loves and “thinking on these things,” which provides a safeguard against physical abstinence becoming a thing to be done only for its own sake. Because no spiritual discipline, chastity included, has value unless is draws us closer to the heart of God as a result. In commenting on Hebrews 12:14 Cassian reminds us that “without holiness, which usually refers to integrity of mind and purity of body, God cannot be seen at all.” Not that our actions don’t matter, but the inner life, the generator of what we desire, is the wellspring of anything we do.

So, once again, the presence of lust should not drive me to either shame or a self-justifying discipline, though this particular vice is custom-made to trap me in both. The discovery of any vice should alert me to what I have allowed to replace God as a greater object of desire than God himself, and refocus my efforts to overcome the children of Babylon by the grace and goodness of God. As I must do every morning when I wake, I need to constantly ask myself “what do I really want?” and to very deliberately set my heart on the best things, on things above. Over time and by God’s grace, what I do will integrate with my desire for God above all.

Next Blahg: The other of those two vices I warn freshmen about. Let’s talk about Greed.

photo credit: pixabay.com