What Exactly Are Sins?

[Pyrrho]

The thing is, there is a difference between looking at someone with sexual desire, and actually intending to have sex with the person.  If, as a passing thought, my wife does the former with someone else, it is not anything I care much about, but I very much care if she actually intends to have sexual relations with someone else.  The difference on this is important.  An idle fantasy and an actual plan of action are quite different from each other.

Also, I don't think intentions are usually more important than actions.  Intentions might reflect more on the morality of the person, but it is their actions that impact the world.  If you intend to cut off my arm, but don't, that will bother me less than if you don't intend to cut off my arm and you do.  My guess is that you feel the same way about my intentions and actions and your arm.

I'm not disputing that there is a difference between thoughts and actions, and I think you're right to be critical of any doctrine that equates the two. But I also think it's missing the point to make that the primary emphasis of Jesus' words, even if that's what he intended to imply. After all, it's no secret that Christianity is founded upon the belief that something is inherently wrong with mankind, and that "all have sinned and fallen short" of perfection. I look at Jesus as a reformer within an oppressive environment dictated by religious leaders who were all too often quick to point out the spec of dust in another's eye while ignoring the plank in their own, a statement he is specifically said to have made. His message was not one of reforming outward appearances, as he was no mere politician, but one of transforming the hearts and minds of men and women. A person who fucks another's spouse is acting on a thought and intention that has been allowed to foster from within. Jesus is saying, I think, that one must change their attitudes before their behaviors can be expected to reflect whatever notions of virtue they claim to esteem, and that giving residence to bad attitudes and ill conceptions of one another are, to moral perfection, no less worthy of blame.

Sure, there is a difference between thoughts and actions, but that is not the only distinction to be made.  There is still a huge difference between fantasizing about something, and intending to do that something.

If Jesus had said, someone who attempts to seduce someone's wife, is morally as bad as someone who actually seduces someone's wife, I would have no problem with that.  But he seems to be saying, someone who only fantasizes about someone's wife, is morally as bad as someone who seduces someone's wife.  And that I disagree with.

We can use other examples, which, perhaps, will make my point more clear.  Consider three cases:

1. Murder,
   
2. Attempted murder,
   
3. Fantasizing about murdering someone, with no intention of doing it at all.
   

With the first two, the intention is the same.  Mentally, they are the same, only with the second one, the action fails for some reason.  It is some failure of the action that separates 2 from 1, not anything different in the mind.  With the third, the mental state is different from the mental state of the other two.  There is no intention to actually harm anyone; there is no real inclination to actually harm anyone.  It is a separate and distinct mental state, not equivalent to the first two even mentally (and obviously, it is different as far as actions are concerned, too, but that is unimportant to the point).  The person doing 3 does not need to transform his thoughts to make the world a better place, as his thoughts are no more than thoughts.  And they are not the same thoughts as one would have with 1 or 2.

Likewise, I can have a fantasy about sex with my neighbor's wife, as pure fantasy, with no intention of doing anything, and with no real desire to actually do anything with her.  In other words, I can have the sexual equivalent of 3 above, so that my mental state is quite different from the mental state of an actual adulterer.