"Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart."
Much of Jesus’ teachings on morality can be summed up as such: intentions matter. Your internal way of being—what’s in your heart—is as important (if not more so) than your external actions. Most philosophical traditions agree. Nearly every major moral theory distinguishes between the act in itself and the underlying intention of the agent. For instance, the objective act might be that of shooting the family dog. But the evaluation of the morality of that action most likely will hinge upon whether or not the dog was suffering excruciating pain from cancer or if someone in the family simply got sick of the dog and decided to get rid of it. One we might classify as sympathetic and humane; the other as selfish and cruel.
Most criminal law codes concern themselves primarily with external acts and only, to a secondary degree, do they consider intentionality. The traffic cop does not usually care whether you were going 90 on the highway to get to your niece’s birthday party or whether you were speeding to show off the acceleration of your new Camaro—either way, the penalty is identical and you’re probably getting a ticket. Likewise, “good” intentions won’t get you off the hook for shoplifting a dress from the mall, even if you planned on giving it to a poor friend to wear at an upcoming wedding. But Jesus isn’t talking about the laws that hold together a society—he’s talking about a whole code of ethics that supercedes merely getting along with others and not devolving into utter chaos. He is talking about a way of being that leads to becoming a happier, more fulfilled human person, both intrinsic to oneself and in relationship with others.
It’s not enough to not hit someone, Jesus says—if you harbor anger in your heart towards that person, that’s every bit as problematic. There are two words for anger in the Greek: thumos and orge. Thumos is the instant, pre-cognitive emotional reaction one feels to a situation. For instance, you find out, upon coming home after class, that someone has burglarized your apartment and stolen your laptop, or you are out with friends and you hear a random stranger at the bar call one of your close friends a nasty name after she has declined his offer to buy her a drink. There is a natural emotional response to this; it would almost be un-human for something like this not to elicit a visceral displeasure. Orge, by contrast, is the word that Jesus uses in this passage, and it means a long-simmering grudge towards another. Orge goes beyond “getting pissed off” in a given moment. It is a deliberately clung-to feeling of intense animosity that festers in one’s heart and poisons any good will one might feel towards another. It is this type of seething resentment that Jesus identifies as antithetical to internal harmony, external peace, and overall flourishing. God did not create us simply to “make it through the day” or to “manage not to punch anyone.” Even if we never act (i.e. take physical action) on that anger in our hearts, it is—with or without our knowledge—poisoning us from the inside and preventing us from being truly happy.
Jesus is not so much worried about whether or not you break what we would call the (criminal) law, that is the laws of our respective society—there are other people (police) who can worry about that. He’s more concerned with whether or not we’re happy, i.e. flourishing.
And so it is not enough simply to not commit adultery, he goes on to say. Rather, if we so much as look at another person with lust, we imperil the harmony in our heart. Once again, going back to the original Greek text—with its particular cultural paradigm—is important (lest we think all teenagers everywhere should start cutting off body parts). The way it is phrased, Jesus is not talking about the natural, uncontrollable human urge to be attracted sexually to others around us. Rather, he is condemning the intentional pursuit of this sort of physical fixation and reduction of persons to objects for our sexual gratification. It’s one thing to go to the gym and notice all of the fit bodies around you; it’s quite another to wait in line for the elliptical and fantasize about all of the girls/guys in workout attire.
The type of “anger” and “lust” Jesus is here condemning are not the fleeting, unavoidable, hormone-driven responses that evolutionary biology has built into our makeup. Rather, they are the deliberately cultivated attitudes or heart-sets that permeate our daily interactions and adulterate our relationship with others. These types of obsessions serve as impediments to achieving internal peace and ultimate happiness. It’s impossible for you to cling to a burning resentment or contempt of another and still love that person as a fellow child of God, even if we manage to be civil in polite company. Again, it’s simply not feasible to love our girlfriend (or other female friends… or our sister… ) the way they deserve to be loved if we allow ourselves to focus overly on the sexual attributes of the girls in our lives or on our screens. Jesus today challenges us, in our contemporary culture, to identify those things in our heart—enmity, jealousy, superiority, contempt, lust—that prevent us from being truly happy and to replace them instead with the sort of life-giving activities that cause us to grow into the person we were created to be.
Reflection Questions
Most criminal law codes concern themselves primarily with external acts and only, to a secondary degree, do they consider intentionality. The traffic cop does not usually care whether you were going 90 on the highway to get to your niece’s birthday party or whether you were speeding to show off the acceleration of your new Camaro—either way, the penalty is identical and you’re probably getting a ticket. Likewise, “good” intentions won’t get you off the hook for shoplifting a dress from the mall, even if you planned on giving it to a poor friend to wear at an upcoming wedding. But Jesus isn’t talking about the laws that hold together a society—he’s talking about a whole code of ethics that supercedes merely getting along with others and not devolving into utter chaos. He is talking about a way of being that leads to becoming a happier, more fulfilled human person, both intrinsic to oneself and in relationship with others.
It’s not enough to not hit someone, Jesus says—if you harbor anger in your heart towards that person, that’s every bit as problematic. There are two words for anger in the Greek: thumos and orge. Thumos is the instant, pre-cognitive emotional reaction one feels to a situation. For instance, you find out, upon coming home after class, that someone has burglarized your apartment and stolen your laptop, or you are out with friends and you hear a random stranger at the bar call one of your close friends a nasty name after she has declined his offer to buy her a drink. There is a natural emotional response to this; it would almost be un-human for something like this not to elicit a visceral displeasure. Orge, by contrast, is the word that Jesus uses in this passage, and it means a long-simmering grudge towards another. Orge goes beyond “getting pissed off” in a given moment. It is a deliberately clung-to feeling of intense animosity that festers in one’s heart and poisons any good will one might feel towards another. It is this type of seething resentment that Jesus identifies as antithetical to internal harmony, external peace, and overall flourishing. God did not create us simply to “make it through the day” or to “manage not to punch anyone.” Even if we never act (i.e. take physical action) on that anger in our hearts, it is—with or without our knowledge—poisoning us from the inside and preventing us from being truly happy.
Jesus is not so much worried about whether or not you break what we would call the (criminal) law, that is the laws of our respective society—there are other people (police) who can worry about that. He’s more concerned with whether or not we’re happy, i.e. flourishing.
And so it is not enough simply to not commit adultery, he goes on to say. Rather, if we so much as look at another person with lust, we imperil the harmony in our heart. Once again, going back to the original Greek text—with its particular cultural paradigm—is important (lest we think all teenagers everywhere should start cutting off body parts). The way it is phrased, Jesus is not talking about the natural, uncontrollable human urge to be attracted sexually to others around us. Rather, he is condemning the intentional pursuit of this sort of physical fixation and reduction of persons to objects for our sexual gratification. It’s one thing to go to the gym and notice all of the fit bodies around you; it’s quite another to wait in line for the elliptical and fantasize about all of the girls/guys in workout attire.
The type of “anger” and “lust” Jesus is here condemning are not the fleeting, unavoidable, hormone-driven responses that evolutionary biology has built into our makeup. Rather, they are the deliberately cultivated attitudes or heart-sets that permeate our daily interactions and adulterate our relationship with others. These types of obsessions serve as impediments to achieving internal peace and ultimate happiness. It’s impossible for you to cling to a burning resentment or contempt of another and still love that person as a fellow child of God, even if we manage to be civil in polite company. Again, it’s simply not feasible to love our girlfriend (or other female friends… or our sister… ) the way they deserve to be loved if we allow ourselves to focus overly on the sexual attributes of the girls in our lives or on our screens. Jesus today challenges us, in our contemporary culture, to identify those things in our heart—enmity, jealousy, superiority, contempt, lust—that prevent us from being truly happy and to replace them instead with the sort of life-giving activities that cause us to grow into the person we were created to be.
Reflection Questions
1. Have you ever harbored the sort of long-held anger or resentment in your heart that Jesus talks about in today’s Gospel? Have you been able to let it go? How? Do you feel better, worse, or unchanged since then?
2. Are there any other types of fixations—jealousy, pride, contempt, lust, etc.—that you struggle with? What might be some possible ways to root out those negative feelings and replace them with life-giving ones?
3. In your mind, is there more to being a “good person,” than obeying the law? Do internal states matter? Do intentions? Are they more important than external physical acts?
