9 "Defining Lust"
What Does It Mean to be Human?
What is Lust?
Making Some Distinctions
It Starts in Your Heart
How the Natural Mind Works!
What About Your Dreams?
The Wisdom of Release
Related Articles
What Does It Mean to be Human?
We can not control what comes up into the heart. That is what being born in sin is all about. Those things are part of our inherited fallen nature. They happen and we can't control them or the things in them. But when we are awake, can we really control them any better than when we are asleep? I don't believe so. They are in our hearts. To deny them and try to suppress them is dishonest and doesn't work. It actually causes us to obsess about them and create excessive guilt and drives us to sin. This has been aptly demonstrated and understood in psychology. They call them obsessive/compulsive disorders. We have to come to grips with the monsters inside us. We are sinners and God is not unaware of our inherited condition. So He does not judge us as severely as some of us judge our selves and/or each other. God is more realistic and reasonable about what to expect of us. It is time for us to do the same.
I bring this up because honesty is very important to God. It is wrong to pretend we are holier than thou and that we do not commit sin. If we claim not to commit sin, John (the 1st letter of) says we are liars. To pretend to be what we are not is to act and that is where we get the word hypocrite, which is a Greek word for actors. He, who confesses his sins is forgiven by God. He who does not confess will not be forgiven. We don't need to get too specific but we do need to acknowledge to God and to each other in what sort of ways there are that we all sin in. It will relieve a lot of people who might be under the impression that they are somehow more wicked or guilty than the rest of the crowd. It may not be so.
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What is Lust?
I know of many who will bring this up when I say it does not matter what you feel inside. I know it is coming so I will address that now. Jesus said in Matthew 5:28:
"28 But I say to you, Everyone looking at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
What does it mean to "look at a woman to lust after her?" Is lusting after her a thought or does it indicate some sort of pursuit? I recommend caution for if we claim it only requires a thought to come up into our hearts, then all are doomed, immediately, regardless of the blood of Jesus. We certainly have no control over our dreams and we do terrible things in those dreams. Some might say that though it comes into our hearts we should dismiss it and not dwell on it. How many of you tried that? Did it work? I doubt it. As I mentioned earlier, that tends to only make us obsess about it. We can't control that much, either. Could it be that what Jesus was/is saying is more like what Job described in Job 31?
Job 31:9 "If my heart has been enticed to a woman, and I have lain in wait at my neighbor's door; 10 then let my wife grind for another, and let others bow down upon her. 11 For that would be a heinous crime; that would be an iniquity to be punished by the judges;
Job was describing things he could have done that would have merited attention and punishment by God. One was laying in wait at his neighbor's door, hoping for an opportunity with his neighbor's wife. He didn't actually have her, but merely attempting or waiting for the opportunity would have made him guilty. For had the opportunity arrived, he would have indulged. So intent is all that is necessary. Actually doing it is not necessary if the intent was there. Even in our courts, attempted murder is nearly as bad as murder. Proven intent is considered nearly as bad. This is what I believe Jesus was referring to when he spoke of lusting after a woman. Not lusting about but lusting after. It sort of suggests action in my mind.
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Making Some Distinctions
But consider this. Is gluttony not wrong? The Bible does condemn it. But does that make all eating wrong? If it did, we would all die of starvation. Obviously, we need to eat. Eating by itself, does not constitute gluttony. Gluttony is when we eat more than we need to, much more. It is when our appetites and desires become insatiable and out of control. That is when eating becomes a sin.
Drinking wine or other alcohol is not a sin. But drinking too much certainly is. We can overdo many things and become obsessed with them or get out of control. The problem is moderation and balance. When we loose moderation and balance, we get into trouble.
It is absolutely essential that we have appetites. Hunger tells us to eat so we do not die. Thirst tells us to drink so we do not die. Sleepiness tells us to sleep so we can rejuvenate. And in addition, God, Himself, placed within us a strong desire for the opposite sex so that we would be certain to reproduce. That was God's will and desire that we do so, according to the rules He set out for us.
So having a desire for the opposite sex, or being attracted to the opposite sex and finding them deisrable and appealing, finding their forms beautiful and compelling, or desiring sexual activity are not wrong or improper desires. They were placed there by God. The problem is keeping them in balance and control.
If they get out of control or obsessive, then we have a real problem. That is when a healthy appetite or interest in the opposite sex constitutes lust. Lust is the extreme appetite for sex and sex activity. In fact, activity is the real essence of lust. Let me explain.
If something truly exists in your heart, whether love, faith, or other good things, or anything bad, too, such as lust, hate, anger, or whatever, then it will be manifest in your actions. What is in your heart will soon be in your actions. Notice what James says about works in James 2:14:
14 ¶ What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?
17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. 18 But some one will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.
19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder. 20 Do you want to be shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren?
26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.
One can in no way claim faith if they are not producing good works, not to be confused with works of the law which are of no profit. James points out that even the demons believe in God and know Him as the only one. But they do not obey God, they shudder and tremble just thinking about Him. Knowledge is not enough. One must be moved to action. Action is the sign that something is in your heart.
So it is with lust. It has to do with action. If you merely have sex with your wife or husband, you are committing no sin. But if your appetite drives you to seek out others in addition to your mate, now you have lust. Your appetite is unreasonable and causes you to ignore the laws of God. Lust in not any inclination whatsoever or none of us would ever have a prayer in hell of being saved.
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It Starts in Your Heart
One should keep in mind that the Bible often makes statements that if taken in an absolute sense, would contradict each other. It is left to us to figure out that some things are only spoken of in a relative sense. When one considers all the scriptures together, then one can arrive at a reasonable conclusion about what God intended. It is that way with Jesus' statement. It needs to be balanced with other things mentioned. I wrote an article about interpreting the Bible that you might want to have a look at for more on this.
So if you would like to kill someone, then Jesus says you are in serious trouble and you need to get control of yourself. There is little left between you and actual murder. It begins with hate and desire in the heart, desire as in intention. So if you look at a woman so as to desire a chance to be with her, and would accept a chance if one were available, that would constitute adultery. You have already made the decision in your heart. All that is left is the opportunity. That is sin and that is wrong.
If you look at the other things Jesus condemned around 5:28, you will see that this is a common theme. It is what is in the heart that matters. Actions do not just happen. They start as ideas and plans in the heart that grow into actions. Jesus wanted us to examine our hearts and be careful of what we allow to grow. We will come back to this idea more, later.
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How the Natural Mind Works!
Now some may try to claim that they banish all thoughts when they come up into their heads. Yes, they may, though I question it. Here's why! How do men dream up building and engineering projects? How do they write songs, stories, plays, or movies? How do comedians come up with their funny points of view and jokes? They all do it with imagination.
Our minds are able to play with thoughts and ideas and come up with solutions or creations. Our minds naturally play with ideas and images. It is only natural for our minds to play. It is an automatic process that we don't even have to think about. It would be pretty much unavoidable to not be aware of possibilities that exist when we see an attractive person. Given our playful nature, we might do a little playing in our minds in regards to the possibilities even though we would have no intention of carrying them out.
These are not the only things that might occur to normal imaginations. After Kleybold and Thomas killed 13 students at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado, everyone condemned the movie "Basketball Diaries" for inspiring the two boy killers. But couldn't they imagine it on their own? Really, haven't we all been mad at one time or another and fantasized about killing an enemy or 2. Really, I am surprised that it took as long as it did for some kids to snap and cut loose on others. It was an idea waiting to be fulfilled by someone who took their anger too far.
May I point out that the movie starring Christian Slater and Winona Ryder called "Heathers" also was a story about blowing up and killing everyone at the school. But because it didn't use the same scenario, no one criticized that movie. There was similar sort of movie from about 1976 where a student was finding unique and creative ways to do in bad students. The movie was called "Massacre at Central High." Such ideas have been around quite a while so no one need blame "Basketball Diaries" for the Columbine murders. The human imagination is fertile ground for all sorts of things, both good and bad.
But if bad thoughts come up at all, then it is a sin, isn't it? Or is it just our inability to cope with them and refrain from them? I don't know since I have never been perfect. But neither has anyone else, so no one else can say, either. Besides, what they are doing is suppressing it. But this often just makes it worse as many can testify from experience.
Some people are also in denial about what is really inside them. These are the ones who will resist what I suggest in this article. They are too ashamed of what is inside them. They need not be that way. There really isn't anything to be ashamed of. That is why I am writing about this. But it does take personal courage to face our inner selves. So this article will scare some. It's unavoidable. Some people do not possess courage. It is a gift.
So I hope it can be agreed that a bad thought coming up into our hearts/heads is not a serious matter. For one, I question if a playful musing about what it would be like to have sex with so and so's wife is really all that bad, anyway. What would be dangerous is if one allowed themselves to be overcome by the idea and started to plot a sexual encounter. That would be going way too far with the thought. Possibilities are always there. Playing with them briefly seems harmless enough. But we have to draw careful lines.
But even if a thought is judged bad, it is the natural result of Adam's actions in the Garden of Eden which Jesus atoned for with his death. So we don't have to feel overly ashamed or guilty. What is potentially dangerous is what we do with our thoughts from there. There are any number of options.
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What About Your Dreams?
Still not convinced? Let me ask you, how much control do you have over your dreams? I have no control, myself. A lot of times, my dreams are bizarre and don't even make sense. I have no control over them. No one does. And dreams can get pretty wild, too. Crazy lustful sex can often come up into the heart and dreams. You do things in dreams you would never dream of doing when you are awake. I don't even like some of the things I do in dreams. Shall we be condemned by our dreams?
If not, then we might want to go easy on our minds when we are awake, too. The fact is that when someone is stimulating themselves and imagining some sort of elicit sex, it is something only taking place in their head. It is not actually taking place in the real world. I have already discussed what Jesus meant about things starting in the heart and leading to sin. The distinction is intention. What is your intention toward someone that you may have in mind, when you are stimulating yourself? Would you really do it with them if you had an opportunity or is it just something you flirt with in your head to get you over the top, so to speak? That is the important difference in my thinking.
So if one imagines sex with a married woman, maybe (its not certain, though) he is committing a certain amount of sin, but not the kind that would condemn him in the eyes of God. If one has a sexual thought about a woman, surely you can not condemn him. For how long must he hold that thought before it becomes a great sin? What if I just undress a woman for only a few seconds? What if one holds a thought or image long enough to get aroused and cause himself to climax in the privacy and isolation of his room, has he then gone over the line? Does the degree really matter? Are any fantasies at all, wrong? Not in the big sense in my thinking! It is just a playful imagination at work. It is a natural process.
But if a man starts to plot a means of getting to a woman, and later hung out somewhere hoping to encounter and ask her to bed, then he has certainly sinned in a big way even if he does not succeed at what he intends. But if things only stay in his imagination, and there is no plot or intention, then there is no real harm that I can see.
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The Wisdom of Release
But does imagining sex with someone lead to committing sin? I really don't think so. I believe it allows us to exorcise something from our minds. It gets it out of our systems. We relieve ourselves of the desire. I and many like my have found that when we tried to deny and suppress thoughts or feelings that came up into our hearts, it only made it worse and stayed there in our minds. Only when we stopped lying to ourselves and accepted what was in us due to Adam, were we free to rid ourselves of the things in our heads.
Jesus said in Luke 7:35 "Yet wisdom is justified by all her children."
What he basically said in other words was - that wisdom is proved wisdom by the results it gets. If you are bothered by the thoughts in your head, and they only get worse when you don't "relieve" yourself, and things are so much easier to bear, and it is much easier to behave as a result of masturbation; then I would say that self stimulation is proven to be the wise course to take. I definitely believe that.
Really folks, we are talking about something akin to what we might call in the computer world, virtual sex and virtual sin. If it only takes place in the head, then no harm is done. It is like killing in a video game. Nothing really happened. And since nearly all kids have played video games and killed in them and yet most of them do not go on to murder, then we would have to conclude that virtual sin (if it even is a sin) remains virtual and harmless. We give what goes on in our heads too much concern. We have enough to worry about on the outside without getting all bent out of shape about what goes on, on our insides.
When one considers these many things, pornography suddenly doesn't seem as harmful. It is what I will call a virtual sin. Yes, much may go on in the head but as long as that is where it stays, there is no big problem. And curiosity and attraction to such material is only natural. I can't find a whole lot of fault with such curiosity and desire. It sort of allows us to explore ourselves and our desires and curiosity without crossing the line. I am not saying that it is not a manifestation of sin. We are full of inherited sin from Adam. But much of that sin and its manifestations will not be held against us. It is bought by the blood of Jesus. And some of it is not really harmful and is certainly beyond much control. And some of it may not be a sin at all.
Think of this, folks! For those that are married, have you ever imagined that your partner was someone else, even for a moment? How long did you hold the thought? Did you indulge it at all? If you have, and you take the strict stance that any sin in the head is wrong, then what can you say about what went on in your head during sex with your mate? You were an adulterer and are going to hell. You don't also want to be a hypocrite, too, do you? If you have done it, then show some mercy to others who might do something in their head.
But by my definition, you would be OK. Most married couples, at one time or another, imagine their partner is someone else. Maybe they even both agree to some sort of role-playing. The things we play with in our minds are just that. They are play. They are not a big deal.
Now some will ask, shouldn't we aim for the highest form of conduct? Certainly we should. The highest form possible! But how possible is it that you will never consider sexual things in your head? How much will you be able to resist or control what might go on in your brain? How likely is it that you will never be stimulated by what you see and hear? If you are like most, you will not have a lot of control or ability to resist, no more than you can control your dreams.
I hope this will be given some serious consideration so that we do not cause unnecessary guilt in our brothers and sisters. You might also want to consider the related articles below.
home.maine.rr.com/bittertruth/lust.htm Created May 8, 2001 Defining Lust
Masturbation and sex are a gifts of God. Masturbation and sexual lust is not evil lust, it is God designed human nature. Evil lust is hurtful and harmful to humans. Masturbation is healthy. Masturbation is good. Masturbation is God designed. Masturbation is good for you. Masturbation is for everyone to enjoy. http://inkaboutit.homestead.com/index6.html
The Liberated Christian and
Masturbation, the Bible and Sex.
God made us and our human
nature, including our sexuality and said it was very good, accept for the "sin principal
part", which is:
unforgiving, selfish, greedy, unloving, bitter, hatred, unkind, no mercy,
conceited, provoking one another, envying one another, idolatry, sorcery,
hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, envy,
drunkenness, witchcraft, wrath, strife, murders, lies etc.
The spirit of love wars against
the flesh, which is the "sin principal" part of us.
Major Research on Sexuality in the Bible and the Liberated Christian. God made sexuality, both animal and human. He said it was very good. Only part of human nature is evil is the "sin principal part", not our sexuality or our nude human body. http://inkaboutit.homestead.com/index6.html
The Cause for a great deal of the sexual negativity in our culture. When did sex became bad? http://thinkaboutit.homestead.com/gnotic.html
Who, when, and How Sex Was Made
A Sin?? http://inkaboutit.homestead.com/madesin.html
The false Gnostic ideal that sex
was a sin or evil was forced into the Christian thinking and is kept there by
taking the Bible verses out of context. http://inkaboutit.homestead.com/gnosticlie.html
