4 So Why Do We Do the Things We Do?
He was in trouble long before he knew it. As he assessed his life, he concluded that he was okay, but he wasn’t. He saw himself as a mature Christian, a committed family man, and a diligent worker. But he was running toward disaster without any sense of concern or fear.
He had worked with her for years. They were on a management team and often in meetings together. For almost a decade their relationship had been strictly business, that is, until that day she asked if she could share a table with him in the executive dining room. That morning had been ridiculously stressful. His children had been out of control, and he and his wife were not in a very good place. When he left for work, everybody was mad at everybody, and his goodbye gesture to his wife was a dirty look rather than the usual perfunctory kiss.
He must have had the posture and facial expression of a beaten man, because when she sat down with her lunch tray, her opening line was not about business; it was about him. “You look like you’ve been hit by a Mack truck,” she said, half jokingly.
“You have no idea,” he responded.
“Oh, yeah?” she replied.
“It’s not work,” he said. “Things are great here; it’s home. Sometimes it all just seems impossible. Too many complicated relationships with too many people all at once. It’s all I can do to turn off the stress before I get here so I can concentrate on the job and not get myself fired,” he moaned.
“If you’re anything at home like you are here, you must be a pretty good husband and father. I’m sure your family is blessed to have you around,” she said as she looked at her watch, excused herself, and rushed out of the room.
He watched her leave, thinking, “That was really nice; the most encouragement I’ve gotten in months.” He went back to work and his busy life and didn’t think about her for days until they had their first semimonthly executive meeting. He noticed her in ways he hadn’t before. She got his attention in ways that the other participants hadn’t. He tried not to look at her because he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, but he kept looking at her. After the meeting he went back to his overloaded desk. He tried to deny it, but he was glad when, a couple days later, she came into his office to ask him a few departmental questions. Before she left, she asked, “Are things less stressful at home?” He smiled and rolled his eyes as she exited his office. He sat, watching her go, completely unaware that something dramatic and important, potentially life changing, was happening in his heart. He still thought he was okay.
In the kind of denial that seems to accompany these temptations, he told himself that nothing had changed, but it had. He began to come to work hoping he would see her. No, he didn’t want a relationship with her, and, no, he’d entertained no thoughts whatsoever of sex, but in his heart their relationship had definitely changed. He didn’t often eat in the lunchroom, but he began to regularly. He told himself that it was good for the department, but that’s not why he was there. He was there in the hope that she would be there. She often was, and their having lunch together began to happen more frequently.
With each lunch his affection compass was pointed increasingly in her direction. He hadn’t abandoned his commitment to his wife, and he surely hadn’t entertained any thoughts of leaving his marriage, but his heart had moved, and because it had, it wouldn’t be long before his body moved as well. He told himself that she was just another colleague, but she wasn’t. He told himself that it was important to develop solid friendships with fellow workers, but he seemed to have that bond only with her. Their conversations became more frequent, more planned, and more personal, but he still had no sense of danger.
One time in the hallway, they were laughing about something, and she touched his hand. He felt a buzz at that moment that he had only ever felt with his wife. She had touched him, and he liked it. He wanted her to touch him again. No, he wasn’t thinking of sex, but he liked her, and he liked being close to her. He liked the thought of being physically close. The heart that he should have protected long before was now no longer searching or attracted; it was hooked. But he simply didn’t recognize how hooked he was.
His wife grew concerned. It wasn’t because he was staying late at work; he wasn’t. It wasn’t that she had found an unexplained receipt or something on his cell phone. No, she noticed differences in the way he related to her. He seemed distant and even less communicative. He was surely more impatient and irritable than usual. He had quit giving her that perfunctory kiss. And it had been a long time since he had shown any interest in having sex with her. She had approached him several times with her concern, and he had blamed it on burdens from work, claiming he would try to do better at leaving those burdens at the door. But nothing changed. She was worried, but she didn’t know what to worry about.
Meanwhile his relationship with his female colleague had gotten quite physical. I don’t mean physical in an overtly sexual sense. I mean that their relationship had become quite tactile. He would put his arm around her when he asked how she was doing. She would stand with her body actually touching him as they waited in the hallway for a meeting. He would grab her hand when he was making a point or touch her shoe with his shoe under the table in a meeting. All this appeared to him and maybe to others as harmless, but it wasn’t harmless at all. It wasn’t harmless because all of it was sexual, highly sexual. He had weeks earlier committed adultery in his heart; that is, he had shifted the affection of his heart from his wife to his fellow worker, and now he was beginning to commit adultery with his body. It was all office-acceptable foreplay, and it wouldn’t be long before sex would follow.
It was in the stairwell of the parking garage as they were both leaving for the day that she reached up and gave him a kiss on the cheek as she said goodbye. He looked around to see if anyone was near and responded with a kiss on her lips. Embarrassed, they both rushed away, but it wouldn’t be long before they rented a hotel room for the disaster they’d been heading toward for a very long time.
He sat with me, now estranged from his wife and having left his well-paying job, depressed, self-righteous, and confused. “She knew I was married, and she set me up anyway,” he said defensively. It was the same old self-righteous, self-atoning delusion I’d heard many times before. He’d thrown away a wonderful marriage to a good lady and his relationship to three beautiful children for twenty minutes of sexual pleasure. He knew what he’d done was wrong, but he still held on to the possibility that he wasn’t to blame. Adulterous, yet innocent—how does that happen?
So Why Do We Do the Things We Do?
It was a dramatic, game-changing moment. It’s recorded for us in Matthew 5:27–30. Jesus is unfolding the gospel principles of his kingdom. I’ve often wondered about the reaction of the crowd as he spoke these words:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
In these words not only does Christ lay out the original intent of God’s law and define where the real moral battle is raging, but he also drops a bomb on any hope that legalism can produce righteous living. Let me give you the helicopter view of this little passage and then draw out some of its implications for our topic.
These words are humbling to hear but vitally important to consider because Christ is saying something counterintuitive to the way most of us think about ourselves and try to make sense out of our lives. From fifty thousand feet, what Christ is doing here in the area of sex is answering the question that every human being asks at some time: Why do people do the things they do? And related to that, why do we say the things we say and make the decisions we make? Why do we successfully fight some things and willfully give in to others? Why do we tell ourselves that we won’t do certain things but end up doing them anyway? Why?
The war of sex is never just a battle with the temptations of the surrounding culture; it is never just about behavior or about what we do with our bodies. Christ is saying that our behavior is directed more by what’s inside us than the people and situations outside us. He’s saying that sexual struggles are inescapably struggles of the heart. Physical adultery is simply the body going where the heart has gone long ago. And as Christ says this, he gives thoughts and desires the moral value of actions. You don’t cross the adultery boundary only when you have illicit sex. You cross the boundary when you give your heart to thoughts and desires that are outside God’s will for you. You will never win the battle with sexual sin by just attempting to harness your behavior, because every wrong sexual act is connected to a decision, which is connected to a desire in your heart. You always give your heart away before you surrender your body to what is wrong.
Listen to the hard-to-hear words of Mark 7:20–23:
And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “Hey guys, it’s very simple. The problem is, you live in this broken and evil world that isn’t functioning as I intended. It’s populated with sinful people who seduce you into doing what’s wrong. So if you want to live a godly life, you have to determine to separate yourself from both.” But that’s how we tend to think. I’ve heard adulterous husbands say to me, “Paul, if you lived with my wife, you would understand why I did what I did.” I’ve heard adulterous women blame the seductive power of their lover. I’ve heard parents of a pregnant teenager blame TV, YouTube, and Facebook. I’ve heard pastors who’ve committed sexual sin point to the lonely burdens of stressful ministry. Again and again I hear people instinctively pointing outside themselves to answer the question Why did I do what I did? But listen to the words of Jesus and let them sink in: “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.”
Here’s where the words of Christ drive us: our struggle with sexual sin is not first a struggle with the environment in which we live or with the people that we live near. Our struggle with sexual sin reveals the dark and needy condition of our hearts. We are our biggest problem. When it comes to sexual sin, the greatest sexual danger to any human being anywhere lives inside him, not outside. Isolation, changes of location and relationship, and management of behavior never work because they don’t target the place where the problem exists—the heart. Sexual struggles have a much deeper beginning point than your eyes and your sexual organs.
So if sexual problems arise from the heart, it’s important to make some biblical observations about the heart. I’m persuaded that you can’t have a real, life-changing conversation about sexual insanity without these heart principles from Scripture.
1. You need to know what the Bible is talking about when it talks about the heart.
Scripture presents the heart as the seat of our emotion, motivation, will, thought, and desire. This means that when you encounter the word heart in your Bible, you should have the following definition in your brain: the heart is the causal center of your personhood. People do what they do because of what’s in their heart. Situations don’t cause you to do what you do. People don’t cause you to do what you do. Locations don’t cause you to do what you do. Your heart does. That’s the Bible’s humbling bottom line.
2. You need to understand that the heart is always functioning under the rule of something.
The heart is a control center. Your heart is always submitting to the rulership of something. And there are only two possibilities. Your heart functions under the control of the Creator or the creation. Now, grasping this is more helpful than it may at first seem. It isn’t wrong to desire pleasure, but if you love pleasure more than you love God, you’re heading for trouble. It isn’t wrong to enjoy comfort, but if your heart is more controlled by desire for comfort than by love for God, you’re heading somewhere not good. You see, the problem is not that your heart has the capacity to desire; the problem is ruling desire. Let me say it as I’ve said it before: the desire for even a good thing becomes a bad thing when that desire becomes a ruling thing. When the pleasures of sex exercise more control over your heart than the will of God does, your heart has already stepped beyond God’s boundaries, and your body will soon follow.
3. You need to realize that what controls your heart will direct your behavior.
Your behavior is inextricably connected to the thoughts and desires of your heart. People and situations may be the occasion and location of what you do, but never the cause. So when you have done with sex what God says you should not do, you can’t look outside yourself for explanations. You must look inside. If, as Jesus says, you’ve already committed adultery in your heart, it won’t be long before you commit the act with the members of your body. Here’s what these two diagnostic passages tell us: it is always the sin of thought and desire in your heart that hooks you to the evil in the world in which you live. Your problem when it comes to sex is much deeper than an entertainment and media culture that has simply gone crazy. Your problem is the self-oriented, pleasure-addicted insanity that lives inside you and makes you an easy target for the madness of the society around you. Monasteries and boycotts simply don’t create pure living; never have, never will.
4. You need to realize that this side of eternity, your heart is susceptible.
Because our heart leaves us vulnerable, we must humbly admit that we live in a constant state of susceptibility. None of us has a pure heart. You read it right—not one of us. Yes, by the grace of the cross, the power of sin has been broken, but that doesn’t mean we are sin-free. No, sin still lives with deceptive and destructive power in each one of our hearts, even though its hold is being progressively eradicated by God’s sanctifying grace. I’d like to think that I am one of the pure ones, but I give regular empirical evidence that I’m not. We all carry impure desires inside us. We all think impure thoughts. We all dream impure dreams. We all crave what we shouldn’t crave. All of us. This side of heaven, complete moral purity is a self-righteous delusion that we would all do well to reject. Our hearts continue to be dark and messy as grace continues to work to purify us.
You are susceptible every moment of your life because, admit it, there are still areas where you want what you should not want. In silence, secrecy, or a lack of self-knowledge, you look at things in a way that you should not look, you begin to consider what you should not consider, and you entertain dreams you should not entertain. You’re in the process of offering up your susceptible heart, all the while telling yourself that you are pure.
5. You need to admit that this side of eternity, your heart is fickle.
I get uncomfortable in those worship-service moments when we sing, “You are my all in all,” “You’re my priceless treasure,” “With all my heart I love you,” or “I adore you.” I often stop singing and think, “Really? Do I?” Does love for God rule my heart unchallenged? Does it? Is God at the center of my affections, the focus of my greatest joys? Really, is he? I think we seriously underestimate the fickle nature of our sinful hearts. We quickly switch loyalties. We rapidly trade affection for one thing for another. We all too easily give way to our love. We willingly abandon commitments we forcefully made. We fail to do what we promised. We abandon our dreams for what we think would be a better dream. Our hearts will only ever be truly loyal and stable when our hearts are sin-free. As long as sin lives inside us in some way, we’re all sadly shopping for a better, more satisfying master, denying the glory of the Master whom by grace we’ve been given.
6. You need to face the fact that this side of eternity, your heart is deceptive.
We would all like to think that no one knows our heart better than we do. We would like to believe that others may be self-deceived, but we are not. It’s simply not true. Since sin is in its essence deceptive, as long as sin lives in our hearts, we will tend to be blind to the true condition of our hearts. But more must be said. Not only will we be blind to our hearts; we will be blind to our blindness, thinking we see when we really don’t. To add to this, we will participate in our own blindness. Because of the self-righteousness of sin, we will work to make ourselves feel good about what is not good or to believe that the problem is not, in fact, us. So the man who has looked too long at a woman at work in a way he should not will tell himself that it is not lust, that he’s just one of those guys who notices the beauty of God’s creation. (“Is it a sin to recognize when a woman is beautiful?”) A relationship that has grown emotional and a bit physical will be characterized as a close friendship. (“Is it wrong to have close female friends?”) A woman who has begun to replace her husband emotionally will say she needs friendships with other men. (“Is it wrong for a married woman to hear the perspectives of another man?”) Each question is self-atoning. Each person is a participant in the deception of his or her own heart. Since the heart is deceptive, we are often in sexual danger long before our eyes see it and our heart admits it.
7. You need to face the fact that your body will wander where your heart has already gone.
I don’t need to say much more about this; I’ve said much already. I think, though, that this point needs to be highlighted: sexual problems are symptomatic of deeper problems of the heart, and if you give away your heart, you simply will not be successful in controlling your body.
8. You need to confess that your behavior always reveals more about you than about your situation, location, or relationships.
It is here, I think, that the evangelical church has tended to lack honesty, integrity, and biblical accuracy. When it comes to the growing sexual insanity that exists in our churches (Internet pornography, marital adultery, and singles having sex), we have tended to point our fingers in the wrong direction. We have talked much about the shocking sexual degradation and coarseness of the surrounding culture. And it is shocking. We talk about the sexual images from which it is almost impossible to protect our children. We point to the sexualization of the fashion and entertainment industries. And we should talk about those things. We talk about how the Internet has been morally kidnapped by a global, multibillion-dollar pornography empire. We talk about the moral insanity of high school health classes. We talk about how sexual humor infects even the family sitcom. All these things are issues and need discussion and action, but self-delusion and self-righteousness make the conversation hard and set us up for greater difficulty.
The sexual madness that lives in the seats of our Sunday services exposes and indicts the true condition of our hearts. The debt and materialism that live in our congregations reveal more about us than about the surrounding culture. Here’s what’s important about this chapter: when you tell yourself that the problem is not you, when you deny the centrality of your heart in every choice and action you make, and when you minimize the dangerous impurity that still lives inside you, you don’t seek the help you desperately need, and you don’t set up the protections that are clearly called for. As a result, you set yourself up to be seduced and deceived once again.
So What Now?
Well, we must all face the fact that changes in our personal sex life don’t begin with cultural analysis; they begin with personal confession. Change doesn’t begin with pointing to the difficulty of your situation or to the behavior of the people around you. Change begins in one place: with heart-deep confession. When it comes to sex, we all need to say that the biggest problem in our sexual lives is us.
I would challenge you to pray with me David’s prayer of humble confession (Psalm 51). Do it right here, right now.
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
build up the walls of Jerusalem;
then will you delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.
You see, if our sex problems are a matter of our hearts, if it is true that we do what we do because of what’s in our hearts, then we need something more than cultural analysis, biblical information, and rules. Give a man who is addicted to Internet pornography a set of rules and see how far that takes him. Sexual sin is a matter of the heart. Our only hope for personal purity and for a defense against cultural insanity is found in the transformation of our hearts, and for that we need the very same mercy for which David cries out in this beautiful, heart-wrenching psalm.
Won’t you stop right now and cry out for the very same grace? You need it right now as much as David did, whether or not you admit that to yourself.
Review and Reflect
1. Reread Jesus’s words in Matthew 5:27–30. What was Jesus teaching here, and how is the lesson reinforced in Mark 7:20–23?
2. What turns a good desire into something bad? Where have you seen this happen in your own life? Trace the particular ways in which this desire of yours went from good to bad.
3. Paul Tripp writes, “Monasteries and boycotts simply don’t create pure living” (p. 61). Explain what he means.
4. Why is humility necessary to accurately understand how our heart functions? How does a right understanding keep us sexually sane?
5. As you examine your life and heart, where do you see a need for change? How does such change begin? Form your answer from specific portions of Psalm 51.
Heart Reset
Matthew 5:27–30
Mark 7:20–23
Psalm 51