The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man & Jesus’ Words on Adultery

I remember the first time I heard this Gospel read at mass:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt 5:27-28). 

My mouth hung open in terror.  I said to myself: I am for sure going to hell.  500+ times over I’m going to hell!  If that really is the moral bar, I fall way short.  In astonishment at what I just heard, I remember looking around the pews to see if anyone else looked as alarmed as I was feeling.  Nobody seemed disturbed at all.  People were just staring with blank faces.  Hello!  Did anyone else just hear that? No one else is even a little anxious about what Jesus – who is supposed to be God – just said?   

Have you ever tried to not think about something in particular?  It reminds me of the movie Ghostbusters.  At the end of the film, a powerful demon-lady gives the ghostbusters an ultimatum.  She tells them that the next thing they think of will be the means by which she destroys the world.  So Bill Murray and all the ghostbusters cover their ears and close their eyes for about five minutes trying not to think of anything.  Until regrettably we hear the demon lady say that the choice has been made.  The ghostbusters question each other in confusion.  All of them claim not to have thought of anything, except Ray who is guilty quiet.

“Ray?”  

“I couldn’t help it.  It just popped in there.”

“What? What popped in there?”

“I...I...I tried to think...”

Then in the next scene, a giant white figure is striding down the street terrorizing New York City.  It’s the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.  For whatever reason, that was the thought that popped into Ray’s mind.  In my opinion, this is one of the funniest movie conclusions ever.

The point is this: sometimes the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man just pops into your head.  Thoughts come into our mind from various sources: experiences of normal life, what we watch or listen to, evil or good spirits, or sometimes randomly from nowhere.  To be honest, even as a seminarian and as a man who has been living the Christian life for years, sometimes lustful and inappropriate thoughts will pop into my head.  Does that make me or anybody else a bad Christian?  No.  The real question that matters is what we do when lustful thoughts pop into our heads.  If we indulge in these lustful thoughts and willfully turn our backs on God, that is when it becomes sinful.  So does that mean we should repress our desires?  I think not.  As we see in the ghostbusters example, repression can often be ineffective and in my own experience downright unhealthy.  Rather than repress or indulge our twisted desires, Jesus is inviting us to expose them completely to him so that by his power he can untwist them and redirect them toward the love we truly long for.

Let me make a quick clarification: Jesus is not condemning sexual attraction.  What he is condemning is lust – meaning treating someone as an object to be used instead of a person to be loved.  Lust is never okay because every person has immeasurable dignity.  Because of the sin of our first parents, we sometimes have a hard time seeing this dignity in ourselves and others.  We might be tempted to accept the behavior of using one another in relationships as normal when really we were made for so much more.  The analogy found in the contemporary book Fill These Hearts explains this well.  It is as if we are all driving with flat tires.  The rubber is shredding and the roads are all a mess.  When Jesus questions us about this, we respond by saying it has always been this way.  But Jesus eagerly says to us, “In the beginning, it was not so” (Matt 19:8).  Author Christopher West explains that “Jesus did not come to condemn those with flat tires.  He came to re-inflate our tires” (Fill These Hearts).

Jesus frequently calls us to things that are impossible.  Not because God is a merciless taskmaster that wants to see us mess up.  Nor is he insincere in his requests.  Rather Jesus is inviting us to submit ourselves to his strong love so that he might bring redemption through our weakness.  He wants to do great things for us!  He wants to restore in us now to the type of love that Adam and Eve had in the beginning where there was no shame, no manipulation, and no fear because “perfect love casts out all fear” (1 John 4:18).   Let us reflect on the words of St. John Paul II who spent many hours mediating on Jesus’ words on the Sermon of the Mount which had first put anxiety in my heart.

“Should we fear the severity of [Christ’s] words, or rather have confidence in their salvific content, in their power?” (TOB 43:7).