Impulse Control

Thomas M. King's Enchantments: Religion and the Power of the Word

In his book Enchantments, Fr. Thomas M. King, S. J., describes a spirituality of any type as a way of dealing with the impulses and urges within us, given that they lie outside the domain of the rational will. In general, an act is potentially sinful only to the extent that it is willful. If something wrong is done as a result of a mere impulse, uncensored by rational intent, it is in a different category of transgression.

Christian ethics and morality seek to train the will to want only right and proper things, but as King points out, none of us can suppress our urges and impulses entirely. We may dedicate ourselves to serving an ethical ideal. Then we may encounter a Dark Night of the Soul, when we realize that our chaotic inner impulses have refused to die. Oddly, the next stage of religious development is quite marvelous: a "second baptism" into a true spirituality.

Impulses are neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad. However, they need to be placed under some sort of control, some "decider" which tells us in which direction to move after an impulse has propelled us to make a change in our life, or even just to alter something in our momentary situation.

King suggests this is the province of the Spirit of God, which, the Bible says, "blows where it will." The Spirit, that is, does not adhere to rules that can be stated in words, in the way that a rational ethic does. (This is why King says that the Bible cannot always be read literally, as if all divine truth could be conveyed in flat, everyday prose.)

I am put in mind of a scene in the movie The Apostle where the protagonist, Robert Duvall, is kicked out by wife Farrah Fawcett for his philandering ways. He is nonetheless a holy man. As he motors along toward some sort of new life, he asks the Good Lord for direction by driving his car round and round in circles in a deserted intersection until an impulse tells him which highway to take.

I think this is something my evangelical/charismatic friends Chris and Dee (see Aspiration and Inspiration) are intimately familiar with. They are always talking about how God is "leading" them to do this or that, a locution which I interpret as meaning that the Spirit is moving them in a particular direction. Or, in terms of the urges and impulses that they feel as complex human beings, I think they are saying that they experience one particular impulse, among the riot of possibilities that well naturally up within them, which they feel has God's sanction and bears his blessing. It is that particular one which deserves to be followed. It is that one which marks the highway they need to take, at the proverbial crossroads.