What causes the desire to commit some sins and not others

  • Thread starter Thread starter oliver109
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
O

oliver109

Guest
Like how a typical sinner will often feel the desire to commit adultery or be rude to someone in anger but thankfully they would not desire to molest a child or kill a random person for the thrill. Now i am not saying that such a person would be good because they like some mortal sins but not others but what i want to know is why does desire of mortal sin vary so much among people with some wanting to commit every sins while others will only commit certain sins?
 
There are different devils who specialize in different sins. If one sin or temptation doesn’t work out they figure something else will.
 
God gives different people different temptations.
Also, you have no idea what people’s temptations are. It’s highly likely that people you consider normal and respectable have been tempted to commit sexual abuse or violence or even murder, but they resisted the temptation. They’re not going to talk about how they felt desire for an underage person or how they thought for a couple minutes about murdering their annoying work colleague or their ex who broke their heart, because it’s socially taboo. Doesn’t mean they didn’t feel the temptation.
 
Hi,

I would believe that it is by the grace of God.

God gives out grace as He sees fit, Mary the Mother of God was full of grace, she never sinned.

His elect receives effective grace which cause them to cooperate with the grace,

Sufficient grace is enough grace to save a person, but if the person does not cooperate the the grace, God permits the person to sin, and could with hold grace from the person
 
oliver109 said:
why does desire of mortal sin vary so much among people with some wanting to commit every sins while others will only commit certain sins?
Click to expand...
It’s mental conditioning.

If you look into yourself, you can see where your desire to commit certain sins came from.

Anger, for instance, is usually frustrated desire. It comes from a discrepancy between the way we want the world to be, and the way the world actually is. Often times, we then look outside of ourselves to find someone or something that we can blame for that discrepancy, and we project the anger onto them.

Then the question becomes, where did the desire come from? That can be investigated too.

Maybe someone insults us. For instance, they call us “dumb.” We project a mental image of ourselves as being smart (a sense of self, the object of the desire). We want that mental image to be real (the desire itself). Someone calls us dumb, which is an affront to this sense of self (the discrepancy between desire and reality). We then feel anger (frustrated desire caused by the discrepancy).

So in that example, the root of the anger is the mental image (and its associated desire), and the attribution of worth to other people’s opinions. If either of those two were not present, the anger would not manifest. All of that is mental conditioning.

Other sins and temptations to sin can be understood in similar ways if you look into their causes.
 
White_Tree said:
If you look into yourself, you can see where your desire to commit certain sins came from.
Click to expand...
Amen!

Also, the sin that gets you most fired up, the one you are a crusader against, is often the sin that tempts you the most.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Also, the sin that gets you most fired up, the one you are a crusader against, is often the sin that tempts you the most.
Click to expand...
Exactly. The things we hate the most in other people are often the things we (sometimes subconsciously) hate the most about ourselves.
 
So God wants people to feel the desire to sin? what i still don’t understand is why some people feel a strong desire to kill so much that they act out on it but that being really rare while a great many people feel a strong desire to commit adultery and they act out on it. Why are some mortal sins easier to act out on than others?
 
You need to look at the customs of the secular culture, as it’s a very strong influence.

Basically, in our society people are allowed to commit adultery. There aren’t very many secular punishments for it. The adulterer might get a bad reputation among his friends, but he also might get admired for how many conquests he makes. His marriage might break up, but in this society it’s typical for people to have multiple marriages. Also, divorce is no-fault in most places, so it’s not like his spouse is going to get a favorable legal position from his having committed adultery. All he has to say is that he fell out of love with his wife and fell in love with another person instead and most people will say, “Oh, well you should do what makes you happy.” They only object if there’s some extreme situation, like his wife is pregnant or is dying of cancer or is a super-popular entertainer, or he was a nice family man and he dumped his wife for a drug-addicted stripper who he spent all the family’s money on.

I note that about 100 to 150 years ago, it was not considered okay for most people to commit adultery. The only people who could really get away with it were rich and powerful men, and even then they usually had to keep their habits hidden or it could cause a scandal.

On the other hand, in our current society it’s not considered okay to go around killing people or committing pedophilia. In ancient Rome around the time of Christ, these things were normal. If you were rich or well connected, and you killed some slave or non-citizen, probably nobody much cared. Some of the Roman emperors killed people in public on a daily basis for nothing. And it was considered normal to have sex with very young men and women. So if you did those things back then, you could get away with it. Not so today, you’ll probably lose your livelihood and go to prison.
 
Last edited:
When it comes to murder i think most people have the idea of murdering some as deeply repulsive though in certain cities in America shootings are still far too common sadly. Those who murder out of thrill, thrill killers are very rare indeed and thankfully most people do not wake up in the morning and think that a fun way to spend the day would be to go and kill someone. Adultery has always been common though opportunities to commit adultery 500 years ago were much less common than they are now though there was no doubt that people had the desire to do so. When it comes to pedophilia i think it is more common than we like to think, the series “to catch a predator” caught something like 50 men in one week in just one state and that was just the men dumb enough to meet what they thought was a 13 year old girl or boy for sex on the first date, though a great deal of men at least manage to control their urges and focus their sexual energies on finding spouses over the age of 18.
 
Last edited:
oliver109 said:
Like how a typical sinner will often feel the desire to commit adultery or be rude to someone in anger but thankfully they would not desire to molest a child or kill a random person for the thrill. Now i am not saying that such a person would be good because they like some mortal sins but not others but what i want to know is why does desire of mortal sin vary so much among people with some wanting to commit every sins while others will only commit certain sins?
Click to expand...
It is just concupiscence as well as our own dispositions which can chagne depending on the choices we make.
 
For murderers, they do not go from not sinning straight to murder, there are steps along the way. Telling lies, petty crimes, assault, working up to murder.

Adultery starts with lust, maybe a little porn, maybe a secret friendship, long talks, one kiss, then it escalates.
 
So do you think that more sin breeds more sin and worse sin? is this how the will gets so hardened against God that some would prefer the presence of the devil in Hell than the presence of God?
 
As virtue builds on virtue, yes sin takes root and grows.

We remember, Jesus was tempted in every way you or I am tempted and He did not sin.
 
oliver109 said:
Like how a typical sinner will often feel the desire to commit adultery or be rude to someone in anger but thankfully they would not desire to molest a child or kill a random person for the thrill. Now i am not saying that such a person would be good because they like some mortal sins but not others but what i want to know is why does desire of mortal sin vary so much among people with some wanting to commit every sins while others will only commit certain sins?
Click to expand...
It’s not at all whatsover - any matter of varying degrees of desire

It’s obedience or the lack of it - which connects with sin or not
 
I think the social environment, the world around you, plays a big part. St Augustine lived in a world that glorified hedonism and so it was natural for him to fall into it. In any case, whatever the sin, we must focus on overcoming it. It is not how we start life, but how we finish.
 
I do note that you seem to say that it’s men who commit adultery. There are plenty of women out there, it’s an equal opportunity sin.
 
Yeah, I figured someone would read into my use of male pronouns while I was typing them in a rush. :roll_eyes:

Please kindly be aware that I know women commit adultery. I have personally known several adulterous wives. I just didn’t feel like typing gender neutral everything as I was in a hurry. I also don’t give two hoots in heck about “gender netural” language, here, or in the Scripture or anywhere else. The fact that you zeroed in on that, in a discussion that has nothing to do with gender, is pretty telling.

By the way, I’m also very aware that women commit murder and pedophilia as well.

I’ll be sure to type the next sin with female pronouns (My workplace suggests we just use “he” sometimes and “she” sometimes so we don’t have to type every single sentence and paragraph as “he and she” or “him and her” etc. ) so someone can point out that men commit whatever sin it is too.

Have a nice evening.
 
Last edited:
In that, I completely understand. The English language in particular does have a surprising lack of gender neutral words that are easily used in conversation.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top