187. Why God does not give you grace to overcome lust
187. WHY GOD DOES NOT GIVE YOU GRACE TO OVERCOME LUST
Why do the sins of the flesh seem to be so much more common than the sins of the spirit today? Why are most of the ordinary people we know victims of lust but not Phariseeism or hypocrisy or cruelty? In Jesus’ day more people seemed to be victimized by the hard, cruel sins. Does our preference for the soft, warm, comfortable sins mean that we are worse or better? Can a divine perspective shed any light on this mystery? What is God doing with us? Why is He abandoning us to lust?
In order to overcome their pride, God punishes certain men by allowing them to fall into sins of the flesh, which, though they be less grievous, are more evidently shameful. . . . From this indeed the gravity of pride is made manifest. For just as a wise physician, in order to cure a worse disease, allows the patient to contract one that is less dangerous, so the sin of pride is shown to be more grievous by the fact that as a remedy God allows men to fall into other sins (II-II, 162,6).
It’s not the flesh but the spirit that’s at the root of the problem of lust.
Here is a parallel (but not identical) case: Why does God allow so much pain? He could reduce the amount of pain in the world by 90%, either by miracles, or by providence, or by having made the world less full of toxic germs, cancers, dangerous animals, hurricanes, and earthquakes. The answer is that He has to keep us humble and weak so that we yearn for Heaven and perfection. The more Heavenly earth becomes, the less dissatisfied we would be with it. We fall easily into addiction to earthly goods, so He can’t give us too many of them. If we never suffer, we become spiritually stupid.
What’s true of physical humility (weakness, pain, disease, vulnerability) is also true of spiritual humility. He has to keep us humble. If He gave us the grace to overcome all our more obvious moral weaknesses, we would become self-righteous Pharisees. And that is far more dangerous than becoming alcoholics or sex addicts, because pride is much more self—deceptive than the sins of the flesh—except today, when the sins of the flesh no longer confess themselves to be sins. That is the greatest danger of the “sexual revolution”—not new practice but new thought, new rationalization—and new pride. “Gay pride” parades—the name says it all. The “pride” is by far a worse problem than the “gay”.
Pride is the greatest spiritual danger in the world. It was the sin of Satan. If comes from not the world or the flesh but the Devil. It comes from Hell, and it leads to Hell.
We never have to do evil so that good may come, but we may have to tolerate the lesser of two evils in order to avoid the greater one. Thus many moral evils are tolerated by civil law to avoid a government—enforced morality that would be dictatorial and totalitarian. No one wants government agents in their bedroom monitoring their sex lives. Doctors follow this toleration principle when they use chemotherapy: they tolerate lesser ills like hair loss, weight loss or nausea in order to cure a greater ill like cancer. God also does this: He never does evil, but He tolerates lesser evils in us to avoid greater ones. And the greatest one is pride.
A practical corollary: if we were humble, we would get more grace. God “opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (Jas 4:6)—not for Himself, because our pride threatens His ego, but for us, because He gives us only the graces that He foresees we will use well, not those He foresees we will misuse.
Bad doctors treat symptoms; good doctors diagnose the root cause of the symptoms and treat the disease. If we want to overcome the sins of the flesh, we should concentrate more on the sins of the spirit. For they are either themselves the cause of the sins of the flesh (e.g., sloth is a cause of lust: see #182 above), or at least they prevent God from giving us the grace to overcome the sins of the flesh. That is why the habitual, prayerful contemplation of God—His holiness, His beauty, His quiet, tidal love—is a great antidote to the loud, crashing waves of lust.