A classmate of mine was once almost pickpocketed in the Paris metro. He described it as a laughable occurrence, and I have to agree: the thief tried to steal the wallet out of his back pocket, and when my classmate realized what was happening, he simply turned and looked the thief in the eye. The guy stared back, backed up, and walked away.
I find moments in my day when my thoughts are threatened in the same way my friend’s wallet was. I believe Satan tries to pickpocket our sense of peace by stealing our good thoughts. Or maybe he tries to plant absurd, fearful ones. But when I’m in my right mind and the Spirit guides me, I can turn, look the Devil in the eye, and bid him walk away.
Perhaps you don’t believe in a supernatural aspect to this sort of phenomenon. If not, that’s fine; but you should believe it exists. Millions of people face it each day. We are our thoughts, and we become what we dwell on.
Problem is, fending off the pickpocket is not always this easy or practical. Our minds are so blessedly malleable, but that very property, which allowed humans to break escape gravity, build the combustible engine, and write profound fiction, is the very one that can turn our minds against themselves and into depression. Sometimes this happens in the span of days or weeks, sometimes years. Now that my mind has healed from depression I can now in retrospect identify exact moments in time when I sabotaged myself, such as a moment at 18 years old when I began to believe that I should devote 100 percent of my thoughts to my passion of writing, and filter every life experience through its lens. Ever tried to do that with your chosen discipline? Luckily you realized its futility before you drove yourself mad; and if not, well, madness has its lessons as well.
So what do we do when we find our thoughts attacked, either from within or from without? First, we must realize that the attacker is a ninja. And so, we must take a lesson from Splinter: that ninja strike hard and fade away, without a trace. If you can’t identify the attacker–or, indeed, whether there was an attack at all–then you’re doomed to fall to the malicious thought.
If you have identified the attacker, however, then you’re a giant step closer to foiling him. The other aspect of this I’ve found is that thoughts, rather than being instantaneous impulses in the mind, have stages. A perfect example of this is sexual attraction. I catch a glimpse of a girl’s body, perhaps intentionally, perhaps unintentionally, and I have a thought that I am attracted to her. And for a portion of time perhaps indefinable outside of quantum mechanics, I have a choice. I can carry that thought through into sin; or I can let it drop; or I can allow it to ascend into a purely aesthetic appreciation for God’s creation, and thereby see the woman from His perspective, and not my own. The point is that there is a chance for change: our thoughts do not own us when we realize this.
Finally, there is the counterattack. I’ve found this most often takes the form of letting the thought drop, and moving on. If you believe Satan’s in it, tell him to get lost. Whatever your method, eliminate the thought by “taking it captive”, as the Scripture says (2 Corinthians 10:5).
Yet there are still times in our lives when we simply cannot combat these malicious thoughts on our own. What then? This is where practical application becomes difficult. But God has given us a way, and that is simply through prayer. It goes something like the business plan of certain Underpants Gnomes living beneath South Park:
Step 1: Pray.
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!
There’s almost no definable reason why it should work. I can’t say, “Pray, and then you’ll feel yourself change, and then you’ll have strength to combat your fear and despair,” because the feeling of change might not happen. Our emotions can confuse us, so I believe that God sometimes chooses to skip over them (this is at least so in my case). So the practical application here becomes hard to explain, but I assure you, it works (unlike many business plans).
Thoughts can be mastered, no matter what we feel. The thief comes to steal and destroy, so get your baseball bat. I assure you, God approves.