Seven: Lust

Lust is the fifth of the deadly "root sins" (1 Timothy 6.10) we've been discussing. The ancients called it licentiousness, and you can still find that word in certain translations of Scripture. Lust, as a deadly sin, involves the mind as well as the sexual organs. Jesus said that looking upon a woman with lust was the same as committing adultery with her (Matthew 5.27-28). It was lust that drove King David to inquire about the beautiful woman he saw bathing on her rooftop (their roofs were flat) which led to his impregnating her. It was lust that drove one of King David's sons to rape his half sister rather than wait and properly marry her (2 Samuel 13.1-15). And it was lust that caused Ted Bundy to end up murdering several young women. Licentiousness, then, is a "Humans Gone Wild" life-style.
In one way, lust is so tempting because it permits a lack of conscience, a total freedom from responsibility and from our life-context. It is a "now" thing. Instead of dealing with the real relationship issues that create conflict in a couple, they'll just have sex. Scripturally, sex was just one way to express intimacy; but we have now exchanged sex for intimacy. Sex is part of who we are, meant to be part of our imaging God as we fill the earth (Genesis 1.28, 2.18, 5.3). Because of mankind's declaration of independence from God, the sexual relationship between men and women has become a struggle for dominance (Genesis 3.16) which makes the longing for intimacy even greater. And if sex is not the pursuit of intimacy, why do men pay women to have sex instead of masturbating?
And yet this "freedom" that lust represents to us is responsible for adultery, premarital sex, sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS, fatherless infants, single moms, commitment and abandonment issues, rape, and the sexual abuse of children. Pornography is a $13 billion dollar industry, protected by a ridiculous twisting of first amendment rights as free speech in spite of the fact that pornography is proven to degrade women and to create a self-centered illusion of intimacy for men. Sex or sexual innuendo sells our products and forms the basis of most musicians', comedians', and sit-coms' material. We are slaves to lust. Our operational motto is becoming, "Dogs do it, and so do I." In effect, we are transforming ourselves into animals.
I guess I would have to describe lust as passion out of control. Fire will warm our homes or burn them down, depending on the degree of carelessness exercised. No one can read the Song of Solomon and believe God is not for sex within the boundaries He has set. So, then, feeding passion with the wrong things will create lust while feeding it with the right things will create intimacy. Listening to or watching sexually suggestive or explicit material will create more and more lustful thoughts which will lead to more and more lustful actions. Lust seeks to keep us shallow or hollow-to take something that is sacred and make it common, increasing our feelings of emptiness.
Therefore, practicing the prevention of lust is not about castrating yourself (as Origen, an early church father, did) or giving up everything and going out to live in the desert with scorpions and rattlesnakes (as Antony, the father of monasticism, thought to do). Rather, it's about practicing intimacy-genuine biblical intimacy. If lust is a perverted passion for intimacy, then developing real relationships with our spouses and other people while protecting one's eyes and ears from lust-generating material should help prevent it. But is our church ready to help the lustful heal?

The Elders