Redefining Lust
By: Jakel Wayne
Tags: Religion, Christianity, Sex, Sexuality, Lust

You were probably taught the same thing I was: lust is the sin of sexual desire. And if you grew up in the evangelical church as I did, you can testify that this message was reinforced regularly during youth services. After all, they were just trying to keep us from knocking one another up during church camp. Right?

Well… regardless of any good intentions, it resulted in people like me living in guilt and shame for the majority of our lives. If I was sexually attracted to someone, I needed to repent and shut that down immediately. And I learned that I needed to repress even the natural admiration I had for the beauty of the opposite sex. At the time, I couldn’t tell the difference.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

I started to believe that I would, in fact, be better off plucking my eyes out to preempt the issue altogether. Why? Because I repeatedly failed. I had become fascinated with girls. Even if I kept my eyes pointed at head level and all the girls dressed “modestly,” my imagination filled in the blanks on auto-pilot with no problem. When I fell asleep, I had dreams I didn’t ask for — some of which I have never forgotten.

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. Matthew 5:27–30 (NKJV)

When you repress what is natural, normal, and healthy, by default you are training yourself to be unnatural, abnormal, and unhealthy. When reinforced habitually, it can eventually develop into all sorts of hidden sexual issues followed by cycles of guilt and shame. This is why so many Catholic priests have had such serious issues with perversion — they tried to repress their God-given sexuality.

I enjoy looking at a beautiful woman—but it doesn’t mean I am planning to do anything beyond that. It took a long time for me to realize that if I didn’t have that sexual attraction or desire to see the beauty, it would have indicated I was not a normal, healthy human being.

In fact, in the bible, Solomon seems to find no issue even with talking to a young lady about her beautiful body (before they were married, folks).

Your two breasts are like two fawns, Twins of a gazelle, Which feed among the lilies. —Song of Songs 4:5 (NKJV)

I don’t know what it means for a lady’s breasts to feed among the lilies, but I sure do have an incredible visual of a buxom topless blonde frolicking around in a flower bed.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah… lust. Wait! Repress that blonde! Bring those thoughts into captivity. “Burnt toast, burnt toast!” Sorry, Jesus.

It’s a vicious cycle. You can’t even read your bible anymore. What’s a person to do?

Redefine lust.

Actually, lust was redefined for us, and that is the problem. Let’s get back to what it means in the bible.

Jesus said, “whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” In context, the issue he was addressing was adultery, not lust. But this is important to note because it helps us highlight the actual meaning. Lust and adultery are two completely different things, which is why they are listed separately in the “ten” commandments.

You shall not commit adultery. —Exodus 20:14 (NKJV) You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s. —Exodus 20:17 (NKJV)

Lust means to set your heart upon having something that does not belong to you. The word for lust is also translated covet.

I know repression can create some bizarre sexual deviances, but I’m pretty sure lusting after the neighbor’s wife is no more sexual in the commandment than lusting after the neighbor’s house or donkey. Lust is wanting to take what the neighbor has, literally. Adultery is another thing altogether.

Having sex with a woman you are not married to is not necessarily adultery. Biblically, adultery is having sex with a woman who is married to another man.

It is never adultery for a woman to have sex with a man who is married to another woman. If it was, God would not have permitted a man to have multiple wives and concubines. And, if we are being honest, this is the only accurate representation of the relationship of Christ and the Church. (More on this another day.)

Jesus is raising the stakes by saying that you have already done it in your heart the minute you wanted to take her for yourself, especially with the intent of having sex with her. Nothing more, nothing less.

I’m guessing you’re probably not going to want to take your neighbor’s wife for yourself because of her cooking or cleaning, but if you did it is still lust, just the same. In other words, lust is not inherently sexual.

Lust sees what belongs to another and wrongly decides, “Mine!”

Knowing all of this, the guilt and shame have gradually fallen away from me. Jesus isn’t condemning me for being the way he created me to be. Sexuality is normal and healthy. I can be attracted to beauty, sexually aroused even. A woman can “turn me on” without causing me to go into cycles of repression and guilt because as long as I’m not wanting to take her as my own, I’m not lusting after her.

When that buxom blonde frolics in the flowers and my head turns, jaw dropped, my wife looks at me and laughs. “She’s pretty,” she says. “She’s pretty hot,” I reply. We chuckle and go home. And since I didn’t desire to take her for myself when she is married to another man, I have not “lusted after her.”