Linda B. asked a really good question about when we should share some of these issues regarding purity (and lack thereof) in our thought lives with our husbands.
I would say probably never, if we are actively fighting our crushes and whatnot, and if the impurity is relegated to our own hearts and has not developed into a full-blown affair or any kind of mutual attachment. But let me qualify that. So don't stop reading right now and go skipping off thinking "phew, okay, I'm good." :)
I know Linda to be a Godly woman who knows scripture, and I believe she could probably give a much more clear, concise, and solid answer to this question herself. But here are some thoughts, anyway, and we can hope that by thinking together in the Word, we'll think more truthfully and clearly as we work all of this through.
Please speak up, ladies, if you have further thoughts or think I'm off. (Be willing to back up your opinions with scripture.)
First of all, although we do harm to ourselves and our marriages by nurturing crushes and an impure thought life (again, see the excellent article over at Desiring God to read some of the bad effects that a lack of purity can have on our lives), having impure thoughts is not the same as having a full-blown affair. God honors our obedience in NOT acting on our feelings, even while at the same time He desires for us to be pure in our thoughts as well as our actions.
In other words, if I think about hitting you, that's not as bad as hauling off and hitting you. But the ultimate good would be that my heart itself was changed, so that I would not be angry with you at all, and not even have those thoughts of desiring to hit you.
In the book I mentioned earlier, The Holiness of God, RC Sproul elaborates on these "degrees of sin" a bit. He addresses it in the greater context of making very clear that as Christians, we are set apart and called to be holy and consecrated to God. He wants to make certain we understand that this nonconformity to the world's standards is not something we apply to our lives by just trying to follow a bunch of rules. He wants to make sure we understand that holiness comes through the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. He wants us to avoid Pharisaical behavior:
We tend to think that sin is sin and that no sin is greater than any other. We think of Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that to lust after a woman is to be guilty of adultery. We are aware that the Bible teaches if we sin against one point of the law, we sin against the whole law. These two Biblical teachings can easily confuse us about the degrees of sin.
When Jesus said that to lust is to violate the law against adultery, He did not say or imply that lust is as bad as the full act of adultery. His point was that the full measure of the law prohibited more than the actual act of adultery. The law has a broader application. The Pharisees thought that because they never committed the actual act of adultery, they were free of sin against the law.
So while obviously a full-blown affair or any kind of extramarital entanglement would need to be confessed to a spouse, I can't think of too many instances where what I'll call our "daily impure thought lives and feelings" need to be confessed to a spouse. If we have given in to these deep dark feelings, it will soon enough show up in our actions. But if we're fighting the good fight inside our head, and resisting this sin, and asking God to deliver us from the tyranny of our feelings and emotions, I'm not sure it would serve a Godly purpose to confess this to a spouse.
Linda's point about "venting" versus discretion is a very good one. The worldly idea of "venting" is a cheap imitation of the Biblical mandate to confess our sins to God and repent. In many ways, truly repenting and confessing is much more difficult to do than "venting" our sins to a spouse. And when you've vented, really all you've done is pass your burden to him, and maybe you feel better, but now he feels lousy. We want to be confessing and repenting to God.
First John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
That said, I think there is value, if you are struggling and need help, in confessing these sins to a mature Christian WOMAN who is discrete and who will hold you accountable in this area. An accountability partner can pray for you, and also can keep an eye on you and make sure you're not saying "I don't want to have this crush" with your mouth, but then doing things to perpetuate it with your actions. :)
James 5:16 says, "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working."
Secondly, in answer to Linda's question, I think it's probably enough for both genders to know that the other gender struggles with lust. I think most women are very clear that all men, Christian or not, struggle with this their entire lives. Frankly, I do not want the details of their thought lives. And thank goodness we are spared them and people don't walk around with thought bubbles over their heads!
Men may not be universally aware that women also struggle with lust, because it has been a taboo subject. If you think your husband doesn't know this about women, you might want to tell him generally sometime that it's a problem. But he probably knows.
Thirdly, as far as women having crushes on men we can't get away from, that's tough, but probably pretty common throughout history. I don't mean the fact that it's common makes it okay in any way, but this indicates that God has dealt with this particular sin before, and provides a way out, as He always does. Although you may not physically be able to run away from this crush, there are still a lot of practical things you can do to run away from him inside your head. You can probably control much of the content of your conversation with this man, and keep it from becoming intimate. You can probably choose where you sit when you're in a group, and who you spend most of your time on. You can choose to behave like the Godly woman you wish to be, even if weird things are going on inside your head. And you can scare yourself out of it by reading the Bible a lot, and concentrating on verses about what God thinks about immorality and people who pull other people down into sin.
Seriously, I think that concentrating on God's hatred of sin and His passion for His own glory can really help straighten us out in so many different ways. :) There are all kinds of terrible sins I would never, ever even fantasize about in my head because they are abhorrent to me. We have to work at getting our definition of "abhorrent" in line with God's own definition of "abhorrent," so we see how awful it truly is that we would ever want to betray our own husbands (even inside our heads), or take another woman's husband, or teach our own daughters that this is an okay way to think and feel about men, or betray the trust of our friends and family, or objectify men the way our brains sometimes can ... I could go on, but you get the idea.
My crushes tend to be movie stars or fictional characters in books (although this is not always the case), because real people usually irritate me too much. :) And with a movie star or book character, nothing is ever going to actually happen, so it might seem pretty innocuous. Bob and I have even joked about these celebrity crushes before, and he knows who "my guys" are, and I know who "his girls" are. But recently (very recently, because if you scroll down this page you can see me drooling over some movie stars), I've decided to even stop talking about these crushes, or letting them play in my head, just because I was convicted by this thing that John Piper said: "Don't ask, what's wrong with it? Ask: Does it maximize my experience of the power of Christ, my enjoyment of his fellowship, my perception of his beauty, my reflection of his glory?"
Finally, here are some more thoughts from Sproul and the Bible about the ultimate purpose in our pursuit of this purity:
Many people have spoken to me about being ethical, moral, spiritual, or even pious. But nobody seems to want to talk about being righteous. Perhaps it is because we know it is a sin to be self-righteous. The word righteous sounds a bit pharisaical. It sounds more spiritual to talk about being spiritual than to talk about being righteous.
To be spiritual has only one real purpose. It is a means to an end, not the end itself. The goal of all spiritual exercise must be the goal of righteousness. God calls us to be holy. Christ sets the priority of the Christian life: "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matt. 6:33). The goal is righteousness.
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