Why are thoughts and feelings considered sinful?

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MargaretofCortona

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Especially feelings. Jealousy, anger, irritation are all part of the human experience. I don’t know why they are shamed. I believe so long as you don’t act or obsess over those feelings then they are not wrong.

Is it controlling to feel angry perhaps your ex moved on faster than you would have liked?
I understand you are not entitled to his love or you cannot control his actions. It doesn’t make it any less palatable especially if it is someone you disliked or a friend.

How do you deal with perhaps your need to control others? People have their right to exercise their freewill in any way they choose even if it slights, snubs or offends you.

Feelings like bitterness, resentment are difficult to deal with. Show me the way.
 
I do think evil thoughts or feelings are thought crimes between yourself and the Lord
 
Feelings are not sinful.

Thoughts might be sinful under certain conditions–if you were to deliberately decide to indulge a fantasy that was angry or lustful, for instance.
The reason for his is you are taking up room in your heart for anger and lust that is supposed to be used to contemplate and love God.

OTOH, our thoughts are not always under our direct control. We get fleeting thoughts that bubble up from our subconscious. We see and hear images all day long. We might be working on a project and then get distracted.
We do have the choice, whether to follow a train of thought. We might even follow a train of thought that starts out neutral then goes to sinful.
Once we become aware that our thoughts are heading in the wrong directions, we need to stop following that train of thought.
We’re not always in full control–as we are drifting in and out of sleep, for instance. And sometimes we get intrusive thoughts.
But we can teach ourselves to not follow a train of thought.
 
I wouldn’t say sinful - they are just distortions of how God is due to our fallen nature.

Let’s take a look at jealousy - God is completely jealous of us when we have idols or waste our time not spending it with Him! He is jealous of us when we choose hell over heaven!

We get jealous too, but it’s over petty things like crushes, material objects, i.e., things that are of little value.
 
Ephesians 4:26 tells us to “Be angry and sin not”.

The anger is not a sin, it is an emotion. When we are emotional we can let down our guard and sin more easily.

Christ had emotions, he felt loss and sorrow, he cried when his friend died, he even got angry!
 
From what I understand, this ties well with concupiscience. The inclinations are not necessarily sin, but entertaining them, putting ourselves into situations of those inclinations, and following them is most definitely sin. We have a beautiful conscience God has given us, we have a freewill which most wonderfully can avoid sin, or fall and be picked back up by His Hands.
PAX
 
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MargaretofCortona said:
Especially feelings. Jealousy, anger, irritation are all part of the human experience. I don’t know why they are shamed. I believe so long as you don’t act or obsess over those feelings then they are not wrong.

Is it controlling to feel angry perhaps your ex moved on faster than you would have liked?
I understand you are not entitled to his love or you cannot control his actions. It doesn’t make it any less palatable especially if it is someone you disliked or a friend.

How do you deal with perhaps your need to control others? People have their right to exercise their freewill in any way they choose even if it slights, snubs or offends you.

Feelings like bitterness, resentment are difficult to deal with. Show me the way.
Click to expand...
Because God doesn’t want us to be hypocrites, “white-washed tombs” as some pharisees personified, clean on the outside while filthy on the inside. He wants us truly clean, righteous, and this is accomplished via the virtue of love, of being transformed into His own image IOW. That should always be our goal, which He is patient in realizing in us as we cooperate and strive, etc. Love changes from the inside out; it changes the heart.
"For out of the heart come evil thoughts–murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander." Matt 15:19
 
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I understand they are thought crimes. Do your thoughts and feelings truly hurt others? If so, how do you control them? A flash of anger, irritation or the worse - feeling envious?
 
In my own experience, if I indulge in a ragefull thought, the next time I see that person I was raging at, I’m less patient, friendly and cheerful, and then I’m sitting there raking up all the things they did to me, so I can’t reach out in a loving way to them.
It blocks forgiveness.
 
Caring for another’s salvation or relationship with God or others. However, jealousy is just an emotion that you can’t control - I sometimes have gotten jealous over crushes I’ve had. It becomes sinful if you try to indulge on this jealousy and you don’t try fighting it.
 
Why do people care about other people’s relationship with God or salvation?
 
Our greatest good is happiness in heaven. To desire this for others is an act of love. To not care, is the opposite of love.
 
It’s not that they necessarily hurt others, although they add to the overall negativity and depression in this world to the extent that they make us that way. But consider that all evil acts begin with evil thoughts or dispositions. And the “flashes” aren’t bad BTW; they’re temptations. It’s what we do with them from there that counts.

There are also feelings and thoughts that seem bad but are not. There is a righteous kind of anger, directed at evil/ injustice: righteous indignation or moral outrage for example. A good sorrow that leads to conviction and repentance of sin. Maybe jealousy is good if I’m jealous of someone who has a closer walk with God. But if our desires are all for things of this world, for revenge, pleasure, greed, possessions, pride, then our focus is wrongly directed to begin with. Either way, the more we love, the less important those things become.
 
Feelings are not sinful if you can’t control them. Let me get back to that, though.
Our morality is not based on utilitarianism, but on virtue ethics (under the Teachings of Christ and Church, etc). One should be virtuous. Not merely not do evil, but not want to do evil. I.e., the man who wants to kill the king but cannot is also evil and guilty of murder in this sense, as is the one who wants to kill the king and succeeds.

Sins are those things that offend God.

Feelings should be arrived at rationally. We are rational beings after all. So, anger is fine, if it makes sense to be angry. I.e., righteous anger, and for example Jesus whipping those selling things in His Father’s House.

We are told to be like children.

Note that we can’t all control all the thoughts that pop unto our mind, or feelings too. It is if we WILLINGLY allow sinful thoughts etc to happen that it is sinful.
 
I think the desire to kill is a thought crime. I think thought crimes are between you and God. I definitely think it is wrong but not to same degree as actually commiting the crime. At least you didn’t act on it.
 
I don’t like the term thought crimes. Crimes are things deemed illegal by the state, and God is much greater than the state.
That and it’s considered a negative term due to a certain book that equated it with disagreeing with a certain party in a dystopian future.

But as I said, virtue ethics vs utilitarian ideology. Are you really any better if you plan out how to kill and assassinate someone then it turned out the king is actually suddenly sick and canceled the event that day, than if the king did not suddenly get sick and went on with the event which made him open to the plan of the would be assassin?

I too am not sure it is the same level of evil, but certainly they are both evil.
 
Hmm…It is unfortunate someone’s resentment went as far as wanting to plot evil
 
We are brothers and sisters. It is our job to help each other get to heaven.
 
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