‘Thou Shalt Not Covet’: Excessive Obsessions
Part One
In recent editions of The Catholic Sun, we considered various questions connected with the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Now, we turn to the Ninth and Tenth Commandments, both of which begin with the words, “Thou shalt not covet.”
Covet is not a household word. Not that it is completely unused in the 21st century, for we hear talk about the “coveted” Nobel Prize, the “greatly coveted” Oscar or some other trophy that is hotly pursued. For the most part, however, “covet” is an obsolete word. Sadly, covetous acts are anything but obsolete.
A society of excess
We live in an age of covetousness run amok, a time of desire out of control and an era of excessive obsessions! Significant segments of America’s advertising, movie industry and popular media idealize unfettered promiscuity and push selfish consumerism. We are a society that frenetically excites desires to excess, desires that are already difficult to control. We have forgotten the danger, both spiritually and ethically, of having too much and of pleasure-seeking too much. As one contemporary writer has warned, we are entertaining ourselves to death.
Whenever desires become excessive and obsessive, when things are exalted over persons, individual comforts trump the common good. One’s own pleasure becomes more important than others’ needs. Rich nations become richer; poor nations become poorer. When consumerism becomes prevalent throughout society, as it has in America today, people begin to focus solely on themselves, their desires and comfort. When this happens, the rights of the most vulnerable among us are discarded because they are seen as a burden, as an obstacle to freedom and self-satisfaction. We have seen how this leaves no legal protection for them and leads to such atrocities as abortion and euthanasia.
Speaking of this selfish consumerism, which has created such shocking inequalities in our world, John Paul II wrote in Dives In Misericordia (#11), “side by side with wealthy and surfeited people and societies, living in plenty and ruled by consumerism and pleasure, the same human family contains individuals and groups that are suffering from hunger… poverty, shortage and underdevelopment.” When coveting is not curbed, a blind eye is turned to the millions of poor, living not only in other countries but also within our own cities and rural areas.
Woe to the rich!
Jesus repeatedly warned about the spiritual danger of having too much. Recall, for example, His blunt message (Lk 6:24), “Woe to you who are rich.” Remember, too, His words (Lk 18:24f), “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
All too easily, those of us living in a country that prizes comfort and wealth can become deaf to this alarming, yet needed, teaching of our Savior. We do so at our own peril. God has been warning us about the danger of excess for millennia. The last two of the Ten Commandments aim directly at sins of coveting. Moreover, Jesus repeatedly tells His followers things like this (Lk 14:33): “Everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”
Looking with lust
In addition to strong warnings about setting one’s heart on riches, Jesus also warned about impurity of heart (Mt 5:27), “I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” As the Ninth Commandment warns against carnal desires and lust, so Jesus takes aim at the interior designs of the heart. While He reiterates the evil of adultery, fornication, homosexual acts and other sinful sexual activity outside of marriage, He reminds us that the attitudes of the heart come first. What we concentrate on with our imagination, what we cultivate in our desires, what takes place in the deep recesses of the heart inevitably lead to what we do in practice.
St. Paul traces this inner dynamic of sin when he warns us not to follow the bad example of others (Eph 4:17ff), “…you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; darkened in understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance, because of their hardness of heart, they have become callous and have handed themselves over to licentiousness for the practice of every kind of impurity to excess.”
Are not these words of the Apostle Paul badly needed today in the face of the accelerated proliferation of pornography, the twisted notions of sexuality popularized in television and movies, and the nearly wholesale rejection of New Testament teachings about sexual immorality?
“Looking with lust” does not just happen on occasion today. Pornography has become a multi-billion dollar business, corrupting our youth and poisoning upright relations between men and women. Pornography has had disastrous effects on families, relationships and careers. Was there ever a time when we needed more to heed God’s Ninth and Tenth Commandments: Thou shalt not covet?
In the next edition of The Catholic Sun, we shall take up the virtues that are needed to overcome these vices, looking especially at the Beatitude (Mt 5:8), “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.”
Copyright The Catholic Sun.
Part 2 'Thou Shalt Not Covet': Purity of Heart
Part 3 'Thou Shalt Not Covet': Avoiding Greed and Envy
This item 7681 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
