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I don’t want to write about lust. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because we live in a culture saturated with messages about sex, often competing ones. Perhaps because the church has gotten so much wrong about this over the centuries, and continues to do so today. Perhaps I don’t want to write about it because I’m tired of thinking and writing about the seven deadly vices - but fortunately this is the last one on the list! In next month’s newsletter, we’ll move on from this series on the seven deadly sins, but for now we’ll consider what lust actually is, and the remedy God has provided us.
Here, as in the book this series is based on, we’ll focus on lust in the sexual dimension of life. People lust for many things: power, fame, comfort, wealth, success, etc., though we usually associate lust with sex.
Our culture is confused about lust, equating it with mere sexual desire. This leads many to conclude that on a Christian view, sex is bad, shameful, or whatever. But of course God created humans as sexual beings. We are more than that, but we are that. Some of us marry, some of us remain single. Whatever our path, it is the case that God created us, created sex, and wants us to honor him in this dimension of our lives.
But what is lust? On a Christian view, “lust strips sexual pleasure-seeking down to individual gratification, apart from a love relationship to a person…without a holistic view of sexuality and its purposes, lustful pleasure downgrades all the goodness of sex to the lowest common denominator—its physical dimension” (p. 196).
There are many problems with lust. One of the main ones is that it reduces sex to a self-centered physical pleasure. Lust ignores the mutuality, intimacy, self-giving, and love that are a part of God’s design for this aspect of human life. Lust imitates intimacy, but it leads to alienation. Another main problem with lust is that it involves dehumanization. In lust, people use others as a means to some end, as objects rather than subjects, as things rather than persons made in God’s image. This means that for the person who has this vice, they numb themselves to the goods involved in sexual intimacy. When they do this, they become less human. We need a fully human encounter, not just a mutually physically pleasurable physical exchange, because we are fulfilled in love for God and one another. Lust is antithetical to love. It is similar to gluttony, as in lust a person is trying to use physical goods to satisfy spiritual needs.
The remedy for lust is the virtue of chastity. As a virtue, chastity “keeps sexual goods, desires, and pleasures ordered to the good of the whole person and their vocation to love” (p. 213). Whatever one’s marital status, chastity is relevant. Chastity leads us to ask this question:
How can my whole life—my thoughts, my choices, my emotional responses, my conversation, and my behavior—make me a person who is best prepared to give and receive love in relationship with others (p. 213)?
One way to cultivate the virtue of chastity is participating in a loving community that brings us life. This is part of the role of the body of Christ, the church. Building good friendships helps us grow in this as well. And on our own, the practice of contemplative prayer can be incredibly helpful.
What is contemplative prayer? There are many ways of answering this question, but I like the way Jan Johnson puts it, “Contemplative prayer isn’t prayer in which we ask God to do things for us. It’s being with God and listening for God’s input whenever God may choose to speak.” In this practice, in our silence, we can more easily experience God’s love for us in deep and meaningful ways. We come to see ourselves as God’s beloved. We become more fully human, and the attractions of lust, of dehumanizing others and ourselves in the sexual dimension of life, begin to fade.
There is so much to consider, so much that the above doesn’t cover. But these are good starting points for considering the vice of lust and the virtue of chastity. I encourage you to read the full chapter in DeYoung’s book for a deeper and more detailed discussion of lust and chastity. It, as all of the other chapters in her book, is excellent.