The LUST Question
The LUST Question series answers questions on the topic of Lust and tries to clarify some beliefs about Lust. This article is divided into four parts.
Dr. Olulade Ebenezer, Your Intimacy Coach writes.
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Part 1:
I remember the first time my brother asked about wet dreams.
What!?
Many African parents are wired to protect their kids from the consequence of their own curiosity especially when it is sexual. It is hard to imagine that he was answered satisfactorily... not to mention that words like 'lust' and 'hell' must have been used in the same sentence during the conversation to convey a fearful severity on the matter.
Have you ever asked your parents how they dealt with being horny in their single days?
Your cheeks would have boiled from a slap one second before you wrongly conclude... "maybe mommy and daddy never felt 'sexual' back in the day. Maybe this "lust" affair is just you; your inordinate, sinful, unregenerate problem!"
The common experience of having "Mr Johnny" rise gently between your legs when a voluptuous woman is persistently within view must be a pariah tale born again people are free from.
The Sermon on the Mount vomits Christ's typically high standard:
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
I know,I know!
You've just read that "lust is equal to adultery"
You have been committing adultery without even knowing it! Shitty sinner! Maybe it's time you request a divorce already since adultery is Christ's grounds for one. You'll instantly become a legitimate divorcee with a lust problem.
"Oh my God,that's nasty!"
I might offer my castration services. They reduce libido and its unholy consequences! LOL.
On a serious note...
Why did God give us a functional sexuality and imagination if he didn't want us committing adultery in our hearts? Is lust equal to sin... as this verse suggests? Doesn't Matthew 5:28 seek to sterilize our minds from its sexual longings?
The LUST QUESTION series brings with it some answers for you. In the End, all we explain from the Word must exalt Jesus' more than our own frailties or realities.
Yours Sincerely,
Your Intimacy Coach.
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Part 2:
For cultural and religious sakes, we will never talk about our battles with sexual urges. None of us openly will and when the matter stubbornly rears its fragile head amidst church folks, it is heckled down as a problem of carnality. "After all, Jesus raised the standard of righteousness so high as to equate lust with adultery!"
Unfortunately, this is not accurately what Jesus did with his sermon in Matthew 5:28 - But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
He didn't raise the standard. He literally repeated Exodus 20:17 - Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not COVET thy NEIGHBOUR'S WIFE, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
Similar right? The word "covet" here is "lust" as a verb form in Greek Septuagint. So, the sin is about the "act" of coveting and not merely the desire (noun-form) itself.
To continue spinning this further, James 1:14 - But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
James 1:15 - Then when LUST hath CONCEIVED, it bringeth forth SIN: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
Indeed, lust IS NOT sin UNTIL it is conceived. The word conceived is /συλλαμβάνω/ in the Greek, which means "to seize as prisoner"
To straighten this lump, lust becomes sin when it imprisons, rules, controls the man in whom it is found.
A final crucial point to make is to define clearly what lust means as known by the Greek culture this Matthew text was written.
Lust is 'epithumeō' described by Socrates as the lower mind - the seat of all forms of appetites for food, drink, sex and pleasure. I learned this in my first philosophy class. The mere presence of these cravings are human, non-sinful, natural. Having a desire to eat a sumptuous meal doesn't incur the hell fire and brim-stone consequence of eternal damnation.
But as we have seen in James, lust becomes sin when it rules the man within whom it is natively born.
Sexual urges or lusts are therefore not inherently sinful or entirely depraved. One positive (non-negative) use of lust is in Luke 22:15 - And he (Jesus) said unto them, With desire I have desired (epithumeō--lusted) to eat this passover with you before I suffer...
Even Jesus lusted...
Finally, we can gasp with astonishment that lust, no matter the kind, is an intrinsic component of our humanity.
What then was Jesus saying precisely in Matthew? We'll see that next!
Yours Sincerely,
Your Intimacy coach.
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Part 3:
Mum: I've told you a million times to clean your room!
Me: Ah, Ahn, you've only said so twice... LOL.
This playful misunderstanding happens when figurative statements are taken literally. But sometimes they have severe consequences when mummy is irritated.
The sermon on the Mount presents Old Testament laws with a fuller component that drives home what Christ truly meant to teach. Christ didn't change the law by raising or lowering the standards. He simply exposed us to the complete breadth; the motive of God's precise demands that seemed missing in Moses' law.
Like many of Jesus' discussions, he sprinkled lots of figuratives in this sermon and alarmingly, Anabaptists and Hutterites selectively practice them literally.
For we who probably don't, how many of us have gouged out our eyes or amputated our limbs for "offending" us? I would imagine we'd all be blind, limbless Christians already.
Jesus talks about murder in verse 21 and he uses his exposition subsequently to say murder begins with unjust anger against someone. Now, this doesn't mean that ALL purposeless or unreasonable anger leads to murder. But it tells you that murder begins in the heart, not in the act. Its "heart-form," that is, anger, may be a fundamental human emotion, quite normal but when unbridled, becomes of severe, unholy consequence.
On anger, Paul did say likewise: "Be ye angry and sin not... neither give place to the devil".
So, anger (without a just, good cause) is not what Jesus truly denounces but the explosive, unbridled form in the heart that imprisons a man till it moves him to kill another... giving place to the devil.
In the same logical domain, looking at a woman with an intention to sexually desire her is wrong, sinful. The presence of a sexual desire or of an attractive woman in front of a man is in itself not the sin. The sin is the INTENTION/reason for looking.
Jason Staples puts it better than I: "In modern terms, it’s the difference between seeing a woman and being attracted to her — a natural part of the God-created appetite and a good indicator that one is alive — and actually considering or seeking an illicit activity."
To spell out my thoughts more clearly, our sexual desires, urges, lusts are NOT sins. They are an involuntary but fundamental part of our biology. What Jesus addresses as sin is the deliberate submission of ourselves (a verb or action) to be ruled by these impulses especially when it concerns something as forbidden as desiring the wife of another.
Note Dear Pastor, Matthew 5:28 is not applicable to men who look illicitly on unmarried ladies. Adultery in the heart only happens with someone who's married. There's a verse for them but this text isn't it. You'll have to find it somewhere else.
Yours Sincerely,
Your Intimacy Coach.
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Part 4:
By every stretch, our hormones are the culprits that make our sexuality functional. Little juices of testosterone can drive an 80 kilogram man into the sacred hallways of the never discussed world of sex, its maddening urges and urgencies.
Ladies begin to get all cuddly and pliable once they are in that "time of the month" when the genitals are moist and the breast needs a gentle massage.
It was after a sex education forum that a young lady asked me what "pent-up" hormones are. Finding words, I stuttered, bit my tongue in a bid to buy time, and finally got around to explaining the irrational but raging desire to love and be loved in a skin-deep way; the type of intimacy you express roughly underneath the sheets beneath dim bulbs on a chilly night.
Never in history have we seen a celebration of feminine nudity and alpha-male modelling like we have today. The appeal to our sexual drive is shot relentlessly from the media that engages us everyday and the prolonged time we spend getting an education makes us put letting off sexual steam legitimately at a later date.
"Read your books! Don't follow boys"
Yet the ears that listen to this, tingles at the wooing of the guy next door.
When the Church comes up with its version of help; hell, damnation and sin are never too far from the pious lips that counsels us.
So our sexuality created to benefit us is forbidden by the church, desecrated by the world, and we are in the middle of it all; befuddled by what's happening in our groin.
It is in this chaos I have written how the Bible humanizes rather than condemns our sexuality. Even so, the Bible is unflinching on where sex has its intended rewards.
People out there are very confused regarding the subject and if you feel you have some light, it is always time to shed it.
It is now, more than ever, that people must believe that their spirituality doesn't conflict with their sexuality.
The End.
Yours Sincerely,
Your Intimacy coach.
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