Thanks guys… I don’t know, it’s just so hard out there in the world. Stuff is everywhere. I’ve been trying my best and have overcome some things, like thoughts and other things. But I still struggle with the real world situations like this one. I will probably confess this anyway, just to make sure. But at least right now, I can live with myself.
Here is a rule of human psychology: You can’t make yourself
not think something. The famous example is the command: Don’t think of elephants. Well, of course that is not possible. Instead, you give yourself an instruction that is incompatible with thinking about elephants, such as “Think about predators.”
This is why St. Paul wrote:
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me. Then the God of peace will be with you. Phil. 4:8-9
If you find someone is attractive in the “thing of beauty” sense, that is OK, but turn your mind
also to think of her as a person you want to get to heaven, that you want to have a happy life with or without you, as a daughter of the Lord and so on. Keep her in mind as a whole person who would of course want you to see her as a whole person. Put yourself in her place, and you’ll see what I mean. Let’s say you were wealthy. You’d want her to see you as a person, someone she would love and honor if she were your wife, even if you lost all your wealth and had only yourself to offer. Do you see what I mean? If she only looked at you as a source of money, that would be lust and disrespectful to you as a child of God.
If you look at women in that way, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about lust. Lust is when you make a person into an object, and the best remedy for that is to always turn your thoughts to the person as a person, which is to say as the beloved of God and someone with a soul for whom Our Lord thirsts. You won’t go wrong with that, whether you marry or not. So long as you put thoughts of the person ahead of anything they have to offer to you, you won’t have to punish yourself for noticing that someone else has something that you might covet or lust over if you weren’t in the habit of thinking of things from their point of view and the divine point of view.
