I wonder if you’ve ever come across the word “thoughtcrime”? If you haven’t, let me tell you that it was coined by George Orwell for his famous book “1984”, a suggestion of what a repressive regime like Stalin’s in Russia might look like if it came to Britain. “Thoughtcrime” was one of many words that were part of “newspeak” – a heavily edited and highly political form of English which sounded rather like the old-fashioned language used in telegrams. In “newspeak” complicated ideas were reduced to short statements which sounded clear but in fact deliberately concealed truth and misled their hearers.

“Thoughtcrime” meant thinking thoughts that were not in line with the Party’s ideology. The hope was that, eventually, no individual could think for him- or herself; the Party would do their thinking for them. So merely disagreeing with statements such as “the earth is flat” or “black is white” or “freedom is slavery” was a criminal offence. Of course the worst thoughtcrime of all was to think, “Down with Big Brother” – it wasn’t necessary to shout it, whisper it or write it down as the very act of thinking it was a crime in itself. Some people are worried that thoughtcrime might be a creeping reality in Britain today, where anyone who dares express a controversial or unorthodox view is immediately hounded on social media or even arrested. However neither your neighbour nor the Police can actually know what you are thinking until those thoughts give birth to action – not yet, anyway.

In “1984”, peoples’ thinking would be monitored by “thought police”. Of course they  cannot see directly into peoples’ minds, so they have to use criminal psychology and constant surveillance by informers, telescreens, cameras, and microphones to build up a picture of citizens’ attitudes. However Christians, and Jews before them, believe that God does have a “direct line” into our thoughts, without the need for any such techniques and devices. For instance Psalm 139  says, “You have examined me and you know everything I do; from far away you understand all my thoughts. Even before I speak, you already know what I will say”. Equally the author of Psalm 44 declares, “If we had stopped worshipping our God and prayed to a foreign god, you would surely have discovered it, because you know our secret thoughts”. The belief that God knows everything about us – or “omniscience” – is reflected in the prayer which opens every Anglican Communion service and which we ourselves said earlier: “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit …”.

Is that a comforting thought or a scary one? Does it, indeed, turn God into a kind of divine “thought-policeman” from whom we cannot hide, however hard we try? It may do, if were raised to think of God as stern and judgmental, ready to pounce on our tiniest misdemeanour. Believing that he not only sees everything we do and hears every word that we say, but also knows all our thoughts, could be a crushing burden for us: how dare we live from moment to moment if we think that God is critically assessing us all the time? However I honestly don’t think that is what the Psalmists were driving at: they saw God’s total knowledge of us as something reassuring. For we can never be forgotten or out of his sight, he is with us even in the remotest of places.

It’s against this background that we come to today’s text which again comes from the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. And in it Jesus makes the powerful statement that “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”. (This verse was of course famously quoted by the US President Jimmy Carter who, in a misguided interview for “Playboy” magazine, said, “I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times”. The media had a field day with that – Carter had been incredibly naïve!).

Jesus follows this sentence with a truly horrific suggestion, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away” because “it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell”. Of course he doesn’t really expect his hearers to start mutilating their bodies, and his hearers knew that; he’s using this hyperbolic language to underline the point that our attitudes are just as important as our actions. After all, he has said just a few verses earlier that anger is as bad as murder.

Now we need to understand what Jesus is saying. He isn’t saying that people should never feel sexual attraction for another person. No; that’s perfectly natural, it’s an important part of human make-up. However the word he uses for “woman” specifically means one who is married; so what he’s saying is that it’s wrong for a man to look at a married woman and think, “I’d like to have it off with her” – although I don’t think we should restrict his teaching only to males lusting after females! In other words Jesus isn’t worried about someone feeling attracted by someone else; his concern is with us harbouring those feelings and letting them run riot within us. He certainly isn’t endorsing the extreme Muslim view which says that men have uncontrollable passions which can only be tamed by women themselves up; quite the opposite, in fact – we are all responsible for controlling our thoughts.

Now there is, of course, a difference between thought and action: I’m sure Jesus knew that murder isn’t the same as anger, nor as a wife saying, “I’ll kill that husband of mine when he gets home!” because he’s left the toilet seat up yet again. There’s clearly a spectrum (or perhaps a pathway) between thought and deed, and this is brought out well by James when he discusses temptation: “We are tempted when we are drawn away and trapped by our own evil desires. Then our evil desires conceive and give birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death”. Jesus is clearly saying, “Watch out what you are thinking! For, before you know it, you may find yourself on a slippery slope and are unable to stop yourself”. We have this advice, so we can’t blame God for putting temptation in our way (as if he would) nor the Devil for “making us do it” nor our upbringing: “I can’t behave in any other way, I’m a creature of my background”. We’re in charge of our actions and those excuses simply won’t wash.

I want to say two more things before I close. One is to take you back to my first thought about God knowing our innermost thoughts – I said that we might find the idea a bit worrying or scary. But I think it has its positive aspect as well: won’t a belief that God is watching us act as a restraint on what we do? I do realise that that thought might project the wrong picture of a God who is just waiting to catch us out and gleefully say, “Aha! You didn’t think I’d see you doing or thinking that – well, you’re wrong”. But that’s not my idea at all. Rather, I think we might want to see God as a loving father who is “keeping an eye on us” for our own safety. We behave in certain ways, not just because we know he’s watching but also because we know it’s sensible.

I also want to say that, although Jesus is talking specifically about men having sexual thoughts about women, he’s giving us a principle which can be extended to the whole of life. For there are many ways in which we can be attracted, many unwise decisions we can make as a result. We may be attracted by internet pornography or get sucked into online gambling. We may be attracted by advertising (whose aim is, of course, to create desire) to buy a car we can’t really afford. We may be tempted to spend far too much time and energy in activities which aren’t wrong but are ultimately unimportant. We may see the luscious cream cakes in the bakery window and succumb to their charms far more often than is good for our waistline. And so on!

I’m not trying to take the enjoyment out of our lives. And I’m pretty sure that that Jesus didn’t want to do that, either – after all, we know that he liked good food and drink! But what he did say was simply: “Watch your thoughts. For, if you don’t, you may end up in a very bad place indeed”. Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to aid our discipline and resolve.