It’s obvious, isn’t it? Pray more, read the Bible more, share your faith more, participate in pilgrimages to holy sites, sing more (especially spiritual songs) . . . in short, treat the Faith like one of those sales meetings where they engage a specialist to whip everybody up into a frenzy of self-confidence! Then, surely, there will be no room for wayward desires. Right? Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Since you’re reading this question, I have to assume that you’ve already tried all of that and found, to your dismay, that it doesn’t work. Some people have this idea that religion allows them to shortcut the normal human processes of agony, desire, decay, and death. But that’s not how it works. When God makes the saint, he does not unmake the man. There is no way to shortcut normal human processes through some secret powers built into religion. Anyone suggesting that is selling something, something that will severely damage your humanity.