What motivates me?

I like looking at attractive women.

A lot.

Despite what the culture would have me believe, I do not consider this a virtue.

I spent all my younger years hunting hot women with my eyes, a sport my culture, my friends, my television, and my subscription to Playboy all strongly encouraged me in and trained me at.

Upon becoming a Christian, I learned that the lust behind such eye-hunting is wrong for a variety of reasons, and I have been trying ever since to unlearn the skill. Sometimes I do pretty well at not looking. Sometimes I even enjoy a few brief hours of being uninterested in looking. Most times I am a spectacular failure.

But the other day, I had an insight that ever since has been useful for me, and I thought I’d share it in the hopes it might be so for you as well.

I was walking through a parking lot, and I caught myself looking at a pretty woman. Well, actually, I caught myself looking away from her just at the moment I thought she might turn and see me ogling her from a distance. Such finely-tuned reflexes are common for eye-hunters. We don’t want the quarry to notice us hunting them, you see.

But why not?

Because I would feel very ashamed and embarrassed to let a sexy woman actually see me looking at her this way. She would almost certainly dislike it, an understandable reaction to someone visually assaulting you. And as a result of not wanting to actually be discovered in my lusting, I have just enough cowardice to try to hide it from her.

That’s when it struck me.

If the passing opinion of a complete stranger is enough to motivate me to behave properly with my eyes, why isn’t the eternal opinion of my most dearly Beloved Companion sufficient as well? Shouldn’t the sadness of my Father be more meaningful to me than the unspoken contempt of an objectified woman daring to look back at me?

All I know is that since that moment, I have found it relatively easy to not look as I should not. This current triumph may not last, as past experience shows. But at least for the moment, there’s something effective about knowing that God is on my side, wanting my holiness and helping me remember that He alone is the one I should be cognizant of in everything I do.