August 16
“’You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery”; but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.’” (Matthew 5:27-28)
“’But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.’” (Matthew 15:18-19)
Yesterday I mentioned my theory about viewing pornography being primarily a sin of the mind. I argued that the mind is the agent that makes the decision to view pornography and to quench the warnings from our consciences and the Holy Spirit. In my view, it is the brain that is being stimulated by chemicals and the mind by fantasies. The body also is stimulated to some degree, but in my view not so much as the mind is. Contrast that to physical acts of immorality, where the body is being stimulated primarily.
In both of these cases, physical acts of immorality and the deliberate focusing on immoral images and ideas of others, sinful lusts of the heart are also being fed and activated. Jesus tells us that we commit adultery in our hearts and that evil thoughts of immorality proceed from our hearts. Solomon tells us to “watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life (Proverbs 4:23).” The command is to the mind, the will, or perhaps the spirit, but the command is not to the heart to watch over itself. Our consciences and our hearts are distinct, although very closely interacting.
Perhaps one way to think of it is the mind is the gatekeeper, controlling what the heart and body are allowed to feed on and do. What the mind allows the body to do, and what the mind allows the brain to observe and think about and store as memories, the heart will then draw from those thoughts and experiences, that input so to speak. Feed our minds and bodies immoral actions and ideas, and our hearts then will turn those things into evil thoughts and desires – in a word, immoral lusts. The old nature, the unregenerate heart, generates evil thoughts based on what we have fed it in the past, what our minds have decided to store up for it as food. Maybe our hearts are like carnations: they will be colored by the color of the water that is fed to them, either clear or blackened.
I think that is why we are told in several key passages to renew our minds and set our minds on the things above, because when we do that, we displace from our reservoirs of thoughts, memories, and images evil things and replace them with pure and godly things. Then our hearts can produce desires and longings for God and the things that are pure. If we allow our “reservoirs” to be filled with evil thoughts and images, our hearts will produce evil thoughts, imaginations, and desires, and the cycle continues its downward spiral. The only way out is to stop inputting evil into our minds and to stop committing evil actions.
I think heart longs to love and be loved. Loneliness, the longing to belong to someone and have someone belong to you, the desire for intimacy, the desire to be treated kindly and lovingly by one’s spouse, I think these types of desires come from the heart and can also give rise to reasons why a person may lust or have sinful, adulterous fantasies or can be the reason a person may find excitement in pornography.