Confessions of a Teenage Christian

At a home Bible study group which I attend, the topic for the evening was “Lust”. The Bible verses involved were Matthew 5:27-28 – contained in the Sermon on the Mount.
You have heard that it was said, “Do not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
We discussed the meaning of adultery within marriage and fornication outside of marriage. We talked about imaginations, images and feelings which are common to the human mind.
We talked about the “Jimmy Carter Syndrome” where President Carter admitted to having lustful thoughts about women.
When it was my turn to inject my thoughts about the subject, I told the true story of my argument as a teenage boy with a Catholic priest in the church confessional.
As a teenage boy, I had raging hormones concerning sex. Like many teenagers, the testosterone in males and the estrogen in females flowed freely.
I tried to be a good little Catholic teenager but I liked girls! I thought a lot about girls!
In order to receive communion at Mass, you had to go to confession to a priest and receive forgiveness first.
My confessions usually went something like this: “Bless me Father for I have sinned….I have had impure thoughts!”
The priest would say, “Son, you must understand that we all have those fleeting thoughts at times. But the thought itself is not a sin. It is only when you hold on to the thought and deliberately mentally take pleasure in it that it becomes a sin.”
Then I said, “Father, I’m here to tell you that when I think about a pretty girl, I deliberately mentally take off all her clothes, I deliberately mentally take pleasure in thinking about what I would like to do with her body, and then I deliberately mentally hold this image for as long as possible releasing it only very reluctantly. Isn’t this a sin??” The priest responded, “Yes, I guess you’re right. It is a sin.”
My point is this: God put those hormones in us for two purposes: procreation of children and pleasure between spouses within marriage. The hormones do rage in teenagers. Thankfully, there is usually a gradual reduction in the raging as we grow older. At seventy-two years old, I couldn’t handle the quantity of my teenage hormones.
When we grow to understand that Jesus Christ comes to live right within us in a living union, we have His strength to draw on in our hormonal temptation weakness. As a teenager, I thought that I would never overcome lusting after girls. But I did not understand then my born again, living union with Christ. I thought I had to fight it in my own power and my hormones were just too powerful. But the Bible tells us in Hebrews 4:15 that “…He was in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.” And in verse 2:18, “Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.”
My hormones now have slowed down a lot, but I still admit to some feelings when I see cheerleaders jiggle at a football game or see a beautiful woman at the mall. But Christ continually helps me understand God made women beautiful for His own purposes. And us men can appreciate that beauty of creation without getting worked up hormonally about it.

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