Disordered Desires

One

The 9th and 10th Commandments

God isn’t just concerned with our actions. He doesn’t just want us to perform well, He wants us to be good people. And He knows, because He’s the one who made us, that we won’t be good, we won’t be really happy, if we give in to disordered thoughts and disordered desires.

In other words, it’s not enough to avoid doing sinful things. We have to cut sin off at the root. And the root of sin is disordered desires and feelings. 

God gave us the 9th and 10th Commandments to help us reorder our disordered desires. The ninth commandment tells us not just to avoid adultery, but to avoid lustful thoughts and desires. And the tenth commandment tells us not just to avoid theft or murder, but to avoid any thought or desire of greed or envy. Because the virtuous, and therefore happy, person isn’t just someone who doesn’t do evil. It’s someone who doesn’t even want to do evil.

The virtuous, and therefore happy, person isn’t just someone who does the right thing. It’s someone who does it because he wants to, and he enjoys it. 

That’s what a saint is. And that’s what the Lord wants to make all of us into.

Two

Concupiscence

The difficulty of becoming a saint is that our desires just don’t cooperate. Our desires are God-given, and they are generally for good things. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that these desires for generally good things get out of control, and they start pulling us towards the wrong good thing at the wrong time. This phenomenon, in which our desires pull us in sinful self-destructive directions, is called concupiscence – which means disordered desires that lead us to sin. 

Imagine you have a car with a steering wheel, which, of course, you need, but that sometimes the steering wheel seems to have a mind of its own and pulls us left when we should go right, and right when we should go left. And if you’re not careful, a steering wheel like that will get you into a terrific crash. 

So, the path to virtue, to happiness, is going to involve a lot of effort, where you’re pulling with all your might against the steering wheel so you can get the car to go the right way. 

Now, the question is, what are the main desires you’re going to have to pull against so that you can follow God’s law, avoid wrecking your life, and end up at virtue?

Three

The Three-Fold Disordered Desire

The First Letter of St. John 2:16, warns us against the three most dangerous forms of disordered desires: The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

Here we have three main areas of areas of temptation.

First, Lust of the Flesh, that means lust, and it’s what the ninth commandment warns us against when it says not to covet your neighbor’s wife. Jesus says “Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Mt 5:28

Then, Lust of the Eyes, that means greed and envy, where you want everything you see, and particularly everything you see that other people have. This is what the tenth commandment (You shall not Covent your Neighbor’s goods) – warns you against.

Finally, there is The Pride of Life. This is where say, “I’m going to do what I want and no one can make me do otherwise.”

Four

We have good desires, but they can get out of control.

God gave us freedom and we must use that freedom to choose and to act. So freedom and our ability to choose for ourselves is a gift and desire. But pride is bad. Instead of humbly accepting the way God designed the human person and the moral law of right and wrong that explains our design and is made known to us by Scripture and the Church, we say, “The heck with that, I’m going to determine what is right and wrong and no Church or Authority is going to tell me different.” Pride is where you try to make the rules of what is right and wrong and then do as you please.

The desire for sexuality is a God-given good thing. Likewise, the desire to be loved and cherished, the desire for a family, for kids and grandkids, and the desire for companionship, are all good.

But lust is bad. Lust is the desire to use another person to get what we want. Both men and women suffer from lust but often in different ways. It is commonly said that men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love. Regardless, men tend to use women for sexual pleasure and women use men to get what they want.  

What does a woman want most? Boy, I wish I knew the answer to that… Actually, women want to be cherished, valued, protected, and loved and very often they want a family, they want kids and grandkids. 

Women may sin through lust by giving sex to get what they want. Woman may also sin through lust by refusing to give love through sexual intimacy with their husbands often caused by deep-seated resentments… an emotion that is a mixture of disappointment, disgust, anger, and fear. Remember, Lust is a sin because it is not loving enough, refusing to love as much as you can through the body.

Private property, taking responsibility, excellence in our professions, money, and financial security, – these are all good things.

But everyone knows that greed and envy - the desire for stuff and security and the status of making a lot of money – everybody knows that that desire can take over your life. 

Five

Only Christ can set us free

The first thing to do if you want to get a handle on the Three-Fold-Concupiscence is to recognize that on our own we are powerless to overcome our lust, greed, and pride. Then turn to Christ and ask him to conquer them for you.

Christ did not live according to the Pride of Life. He came to do not His own will, but the Father’s. Satan encourages living for yourself. Christ died for others, praying just beforehand, “Not my will, but Thine be Done.”

So ask Christ to free you from the slavery of pride, from the desire of living the way you want especially when it goes against the way God designed the human person. Ask Him.

Christ didn’t live according to Lust. He was celibate and offered all his disciples freedom from the slavery of lust. So ask Christ to conquer lust in you so that you can love by desiring and doing what is good for others and not use them to get what you want. 

And Christ didn’t live according to greed. He didn’t have a big house. He had, actually, nowhere to lay His head. So ask the Lord Jesus to detach you from the need for more, or from anxiety about your finances.