You are innocently working on one of your daily tasks and all of a sudden an evil thought comes into your head. It plays for a few seconds, but you don’t embrace it. You mentally fight and reject it. Then you feel a little dazed and confused by its impact. Finally, the thought fades away. Now you are wondering how to deal with unwanted thoughts.
Then you start wondering where it came from. Is this from you? Is it some buried corruption you are not aware of? Or is it from Satan? Is it a combination of the two? Is it from neither one, just a quirk of the human mind? Was it triggered by something around you by the power of suggestion? Is it just free association? You can’t really figure it out.
Regardless of how they come, it is frustrating and sometimes discouraging when unwanted thoughts come in. You want to grow in Christ; you want to be holy and loving. But why do these thoughts come? How much should you work on them? What do they mean for your spiritual growth?
Fortunately, we have guides to help us through. The early Christian monks spent a lot of time thinking about how to deal with unwanted thoughts. In fact, in some places the monks were supposed to expose their thoughts to their spiritual director each day. The director would teach them how to deal with thoughts and how to discern where they came from.
We will look at specific strategies in Part 2 of this post another week, but it will be helpful to learn how the ancients explained the progression of an evil thought. This will help us stay calm and unaffected by unwanted thoughts.
The monks looked at the stages of a thought, from the beginning to a sinful action, then learned to stay away from the later stages. Different teachers had variations on the stages but here is a composite list, what you might call the “Seven E’s”:
The Seven E’s of Unwanted Thoughts
- Entrance. The thought first enters your mind.
- Examination. You give your attention to the thought. You consider how to deal with it; in other words, how to proceed. Examination is not sin.
- Election. You decide how to deal with it and proceed. Common choices include: process it, reject it, contradict it with scripture, ignore it, or entertain it. Entertaining it is the choice that has the potential to lead to sin.
- Entertainment. You think about whether to accept it (do it, believe it, or assent to it depending on what kind of thought it is) or not. This stage is not necessarily a sin but a maturing Christian avoids entertainment as much as possible since their desire for sin should be disappearing. It may not be a sin, but it is also not mature. Note: this process may only take a fraction of a second and only be half-conscious, especially when the temptation involves a sin of thinking, in other words, choosing to embrace a sinful idea in your mind.
- Embrace. You decide to accept it. This is sin.
- Execution. You do the sin. For example, you say the hurtful word, you believe that God doesn’t care, or you decide to hold a grudge.
- Enslavement. If you keep executing then you will develop a habit of sin and become enslaved to that sin.
Incredibly, the human mind can do the first six stages in a couple of seconds!
This list helps us know how to deal with unwanted thoughts. When unwanted thoughts come in it helps to realize that we can’t stop unwanted thoughts. Even the most mature believers have them; sometimes the thoughts are shocking in their wickedness. But it is best not to fear them.
Instead, remember that it is okay to have the thoughts. It is not a sin for them to enter, and it is not a sin to engage them. Try to avoid entertaining them; this is the challenge. Entertainment reveals areas of immaturity so you can use this to highlight areas where you need to grow. Thus, with the right attitude you can use entertainment to help you grow! Don’t beat yourself up when you entertain; just learn.
Also, be like the monks and find a friend you can share your thoughts with. It might take a while to find one, but when you find someone they will really help disempower foreign thoughts as well as point out thoughts that really are part of you and should be addressed.
With ingrained unwanted thoughts you will find that at first you have to exercise more willpower to contradict such unwanted thoughts. You will have to consciously reject them and perhaps use scripture. As time goes on you will be able to just ignore them more and more and let them pass through. Eventually, as you learn to deal with unwanted thoughts, the thoughts will lose influence and you can be completely unconcerned about them as they fade away.
In Part 2 we will look at more specific tips and strategies to deal with unwanted thoughts.
