THE CAGED BIRD:
BAD THOUGHTS

How do you explain the difference between having bad thoughts and making them one's own? People often confess “having bad thoughts” and then ask, “Did I commit a sin?”

Some people have been helped by the example of the caged bird: There is a world of difference between a bird on a fence and a bird in a cage.

There is a world of difference between having bad thoughts and making a decision to own them, to net them, to cage them.

We have 10,000 thoughts everyday: thoughts about the weather, the neighbors, the family, traffic, gas mileage, music, politics, the economy, love, sex, in-laws, and what's for supper. These thoughts come and go across our mind like birds flying across the sky, landing on our fence, and they flying away.

But then there are those thoughts and ideas that become major – ideas we make decisions about – ideas that we act upon. Compared to all the other thoughts that fly across our minds, these are very few in number.

Recently, while giving a retreat on the Gospel of Matthew, I realized that Jesus taught the same idea about “bad thoughts” – but much clearer and much deeper. His ideas should bring peace to those who are overconcerned about “having bad thoughts”.

1) MORE THAN SEX

The first thing to establish is that “bad thoughts” refer to more than sex. There are 6 other capital sins besides lust. There are 8 other commandments besides the 6th and 9th commandments.

Yes, Jesus talked about adulterous thoughts, but he also talked about the inner damage other “bad thoughts” like judging others could do (Matthew 7: 1 - 5). He taught that excessive worry about money, clothes, eating, drinking, and tomorrow can destroy us (Matthew 6: 19 - 34). He warned about not forgiving from the heart (Matthew 18: 35). And all through the Gospel of Matthew we find constant warnings about anger, hypocrisy, and self-righteousness.

Besides adultery, then, the Gospel of Matthew provides a long list of “bad thoughts” to be careful about. Moreover, if we limit “bad thoughts” to sexual bad thoughts, we could end up hurting ourselves because we might become blind and unaware of worse thoughts.

The English writer and convert to Christianity, C.S. Lewis, pointed this out. He wrote that “the center of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and backbiting; the pleasures of power, of hatred.” Then he adds this deep insight, “For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither (Mere Christianity, pp. 94 - 95).

In that one clear statement, C. S. Lewis sums up the thoughts and feelings one should receive from reading the Gospel of Matthew. Yes, Jesus warns about adulterous thoughts, but he spends far more time and energy challenging the Pharisees to become aware of their dangerous inner thought patterns and attitudes – especially thoughts of self-righteousness (Cf. Matthew 9: 9-13). Jesus told them bluntly, “Let me make it clear that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you” (Matthew 21: 31).

2) SIN IS A DECISION

One often hears the saying, “Love is a decision!” In other words, love is more than a feeling. We can also make that statement about the opposite of love, “Sin is a decision!”

The thought or the feeling is not the sin, the decision is. If love takes in the whole heart, soul and mind of a person, so too sin (Cf. Matthew 22: 37). This has been a constant moral teaching down through the ages. The thought, the temptation, the hint to sin, is not the sin. The thought or the feeling is like a bird flying across the sky and then landing on our fence. When we decide to cage it, then our problems begin.

Sin has to do with consent – consent of the will. And before consent, we need to know the danger before us and to take sufficient time to consider the alternatives. Most of us have heard of the classical 3 points to look at when examining our consciences about serious sins. First, when we are talking about mortal or deadly sins we are obviously talking about serious matter. Secondly, for a sin to be a sin we must take time for sufficient reflection on the choices before us. Thirdly, we decide to go ahead with full consent of our will.

Some people, especially those who tend to be scrupulous, often think that all “bad thoughts” are sinful. They forget about sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. They forget about the difference between a bird on a fence and the decision to try to cage it.

Sin then is a decision – a deadly decision. And that's where the greatest damage takes place – in our wills. Moreover, we can decide to sin and no actually carry out what we planned and still seriously hurt ourselves. We can decide to steal, only to discover that the store is closed or the boss walked into the room unexpectedly.

All through the Gospel of Matthew we hear Jesus preaching that morality is centered in the heart of a person and not in externals. People around him were making external traditions and superstitions more important than the heart and soul of a person. They were cleansing the outside of the cup while leaving the inside dirty. They were like nice green cemeteries with beautiful flowers and whitewashed tombs for eye to see, but underneath filled with death (Cf. Matthew 23: 25 - 29).

Birds on the fence are on the outside of our lives. However, we can choose to try to capture and cage them. We have freedom of choice to go either way. We can decide to enter the narrow or the wide gate, to take the rough or the easy road, to be a good tree or a bad one, to build our house on rock or on sand (Matthew 7: 13 - 27). The choice is always ours – choices that shape our personalities – choices that help us or hurt us. Love is a decision. Sin is a decision.

3) WHEAT OR WEEDS
And lastly, one of the parables we find in the Gospel of Matthew, what of “The Wheat and the Weeds,” can help us in this question of “Bad thoughts” (Matthew 13: 24- 30).

The farmer planted wheat. At night while he was asleep his enemy came and planted weeds. The wheat began to mature, so too the weeds. The farmhands came running, “Didn't you plant wheat? Where are the weeds coming from?” The farmhands then asked if they should remove the weeds. “No, you might pull up the wheat along with the weeds. Let them both grow until harvest time!”

The farmer did not make a decision to plant weed, yet they were there. So too “bad thoughts”. Television, family, movies, newspapers, books, the classroom, and so much of what surrounds us invades us. New ideas like birds are constantly landing on our mind. So often we are asleep as new ideas are being planted within us. Some are wheat; some are weeds.

Of course we shouldn't be our own enemy, planting weeds in our mind. We have to watch what we read and what we see. We have some control over our life. People working with computers often say, “Garbage in, garbage out.” If we spend our time planting weeds we will not harvest wheat. The gospel call us to become wheat, so as to become bread, so as to become the Body of Christ, to give our lives for others, to let them eat us up (Matthew 26: 28; John 12: 24; 1 Corinthians 12: 12 - 31).

Yet in a mysterious way, the weeds, the bad thoughts we have, can also serve us. The farmer said not to pull the weeds out, because the wheat might be ruined. Our pride wants to pull them out. Our pride tells us that we shouldn't have any weeds. We want the best lawn on the street. No weeds allowed! We want to look perfect, correct, always right. And this can lead to self-righteousness and pride – the major sin – the sin that Jesus warns the Pharisees about all through the Gospel of Matthew. Down deep we know that many of the bad thoughts that we have are rooted in sins of the past, what we have read, what we have done, and especially what we have failed to do. We don't like to admit this, especially when the sin of prided starts appearing in our field.

C.S. Lewis said, “You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it is through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind” (Mere Christianity, p. 109)

And our bad thoughts not only keep us humble, they can also connect us with everyone else. Everyone has weeds; everyone has bad thoughts; everyone has in. The proud person wants to be like God – the Sinless One. To paraphrase a famous image of Jesus, “We see the weeds in the other person's field or lawn, and not in our own” (Cf. Matthew 7: 1 - 5). The humble person doesn't try to hide the fact that he or she has sinned and can sin again. They realize, starting with themselves, that everyone in the church is a sinner, and that's one of the main reasons they are in church (Cf. Matthew 9: 10 -11).

And we can conclude by also saying that bad thoughts can and should bring us to our knees in prayer. We need God to survive. God sent his Son to save us. Here we have one of the major reasons why the Pharisees rejected Jesus. They saw no need for him. They thought they were all wheat. And when Jesus, like one of the farmhands, came to tell them they had weeds in their field, bad thoughts of anger began taking over their minds. Jesus said to them and now to us, “I have come to call, not the self-righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9: 13). Knowing that the birds of temptation are around us, knowing that we have caged them at times, bad thoughts can lead us to pray to Our Father, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen” (Cf. Matthew 6: 13).

Father Andrew
 Costello, C.SS.R.

Liguorian Magazine