Lust

Confessions of a Teenage Adulterer (the fifth in a series of articles on each of the seven deadly sins* to be published on each Friday until Labour Day), by Geoff Ryan

“Yes, man lusts but in a way that is different from…primates. Man is not simply a body with added emotional and intellectual capabilities; he is a spirit dwelling in a body. In a truly “natural” man, the spirit rules the body and not vice versa. Perhaps because such men are abnormally hard to find, we tend to mistake what seems normal for what is natural.” (Graham Simon, Yokohama, Japan. “Letters”, Time. September 5, 1994)

“Of all the worldly passions, lust is the most intense. All other worldly passions seem to follow in its train.”
(Buddha – Siddartha Gautama)

“Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.”
(John Lahr)

F

rom the ages of 11 to 16, I lived in London, England because my officer parents had appointments on International Headquarters. At the age of 13, I secured myself a paper route. These things work a little differently in the UK than they do here in Canada. Over there a paperboy is employed by a local Newsagent (variety store) and is assigned a regular route consisting of a number of streets. Each morning I would deliver every variety of paper along the assigned route, depending on what the individual homeowners subscribed to, ranging from The Times to the communist Daily Star, with all of the trashier English tabloids in between. Quite a few of my customers subscribed to The Sun, a tabloid which featured a daily Sunshine girl. As British culture is somewhat bawdier than Canadian culture, even in the 1970’s the Sunshine Girl was topless. And she defined my spiritual life in those days.

As British culture is somewhat bawdier than Canadian culture, even in the 1970’s the Sunshine Girl was topless. And she defined my spiritual life in those days.

Early each morning, by 6:00 am at the latest, I would find myself alone on a quiet street in the middle of a south London suburban maze. Not another soul stirred (this was before the plague of joggers commencing in the 1980’s), no traffic, no dog walkers - just me, my conscience and a bundle of newspapers within which lurked the Sunshine Girl. My parents were still safely tucked in bed, as was my corps cadets counsellor and junior band leader…who would know if I sneaked a peek?

Please understand that I resisted. I was not an easy conquest by any means. I fought her with all my unformed adolescent resolve and generational Salvationism. At times, I would go days without taking a look - that was when I was doing well spiritually. At other times, cavalierly tossing caution to the winds and not caring a whit for my soul, I would flip open the paper and shamelessly gaze long and hard at her. My spiritual temperature and commitment to the cause, rollercoastered in sync with how well, or poorly, I fought the beckoning charms of the newsprint muse. Our morning encounters alternatively excited me like a dark, secret and filled me with the type of dread that can only be inspired by religion. I was never able to hold the line more than a week in resisting the siren call of temptation, before I would fall again. It was lust, pure and simple, and I didn’t stand a chance, it seemed.

I was never able to hold the line more than a week in resisting the siren call of temptation, before I would fall again. It was lust, pure and simple, and I didn’t stand a chance, it seemed.

One Sunday evening, as these epic battles of the soul were raging, I remember sitting in my customary place on the back row at the corps, squeezed in along with the rest of my mates from the youth group. It was the Sunday night meeting at The Salvation Army – at one and the same time a looser and more relaxed affair than Sunday morning and yet also somehow more spiritually invasive. The Scripture reading consisted of excerpts from Matthew, chapter 5 - the Sermon on the Mount. I can’t quite recall whether or not at that precise moment, my mind was wandering to my Monday morning tryst, but I do remember being pulled up short as the following words snaked out from the pulpit to transfix me in my seat. “But I tell you anyone who looks a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

I do remember being pulled up short as the following words snaked out from the pulpit to transfix me in my seat. “But I tell you anyone who looks a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

“You have got to be kidding!” was my internal response. Sneaking sidelong glances at my companions on the bench, all of who were blithely ignoring the preacher and carrying on in our usual mildly, rambunctious manner, it was obvious to me that none of them were dealing with the same depth of sin that I was. This message was for me and if Jesus meant what he said, I thought with a sinking feeling, I was toast - a confirmed adulterer at 13. The preacher moved on to speak of murder in the same vein (Matthew 5:22) and I reflected on my anger at my younger brother earlier in the day. That meeting was the longest I ever sat through. I dragged myself home that night, fists jammed deep in my pants pockets, head hanging down, my stomach in a knot, my heart heavy, unresponsive to the concerned queries of my parents. If they only knew…their middle-son was a murderer and an adulterer, if Jesus was to be believed (and he certainly was in our house).

But Monday morning dawned fresh and bright. The world seemed new and full of promise. Weren’t God’s “mercies new every morning”? The ominous closeness of last night’s meeting seemed to dissipate with the dew. And there she was - waiting. The battle resumed…

In modern usage, lust is usually described as a powerful sexual desire. Historically, however, the sin was somewhat more encompassing. The Latin word employed by the early church hierarchy was luxuria and it was not specific to sexuality but applied to an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body - this could also include, among other things, eating. Luxuria was deemed a sin because of its dulling effect on the spiritual senses.

This is the age-old battle between the flesh and the spirit that the Greeks wrestled with and attempted to resolve (unsuccessfully) by creating a dualism between spirit and flesh. The more mystical, traditional Eastern religions acknowledged this perennial conflict and came up with cults of aestheticism, wandering mendicants - chaste and viciously strict toward their own bodily needs. The Apostle Paul wrestled with it (1 Corinthians 7:1-9) and Augustine immortalized his own issues with the flesh in his Confessions, thereby setting the subsequent course for the church. Adopting the virtue of chastity as a higher caste of spirituality and making it mandatory for clergy, the official church (pre-Reformation) attempted to keep a lid on lust. The success of this strategy has been spotty, at best. The recent abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic church seem to point to the need for a “Plan B” to be put in operation.

Adopting the virtue of chastity as a higher caste of spirituality and making it mandatory for clergy, the official church (pre-Reformation) attempted to keep a lid on lust.

In his 13th century Summa Theologica, Thomas Acquinas deconstructed the sin of lust, categorized it and shifted it decisively into the realm of sex. He listed types and degrees ranging from masturbation, same-sex coupling and adultery to fornication, bestiality and even the transgression of “not observing the natural manner of copulation”, which I suspect means heterosexual congress in a manner other than prescribed by the church, ergo priests who theoretically have no experience of what they are regulating, in any case.

While classed as a “capital” sin, meaning that it leads to other vices and sins, the good news is that as a sin of the flesh, lust cannot persist into eternity. Therefore, it was actually classified as the least offensive of the Seven Deadly Sins. In Dante’s inferno, the lustful were only sent to the second circle of hell, where for eternity they were blown about as if in a great tornado, a reflection of the stormy passions that gripped them on earth. To add some perspective, Dante relegated flatterers to the eighth circle of hell and their punishment was an eternal covering of filth. Go figure.

Back to Jesus. Reflecting now on his words from Matthew 5:28, I can’t help but think that, if he intended himself to be taken quite literally, he was setting the bar a bit high. My Sunshine Girl notwithstanding - to actually indulge any lustful promptings as a newly minted teenage progeny of an evangelical home in the 1970’s - this was not an easy thing. Getting one’s hands on a pornographic magazine, for example, was a complex process requiring great effort and skill. One either outright stole it from the shop (thereby adding another couple of sins to one’s tab) or one had a pagan friend with a Father who had such things squirreled away and who wouldn’t miss a back issue, were it surreptitiously borrowed for a while. That was about it. TV was relatively tame back then and so was the advertising industry, at least by 2005 standards.

Back to Jesus. Reflecting now on his words from Matthew 5:28, I can’t help but think that, if he intended himself to be taken quite literally, he was setting the bar a bit high.

I cannot imagine what it is like growing up in the world these days. Pornography is literally a click away via the Internet - no respecter of persons. Billboard signs from La Senza or Calvin Kline or Parasuco jeans are in plain sight absolutely everywhere and are sexually provocative in a manner that would have been unthinkable, literally, when I was a teenager. Primetime TV shows are explicit to degree that would have rated and/or censored a decade ago. When I was young, we had to work at gratifying lust - these days kids are “mugged” by it on a daily. If my mates and I were in any sense predators, albeit in our fumbling, inept manner, the youth of today are definitely victims, caught in the squeeze between the their burgeoning hormonal impulses and the incessant assaults of an overly-sexualized culture. If Jesus words are taken at face value, then pretty much any guy born after 1978 is toast - guilty as charged. Now I think that the context of this passage bears looking at again: who Jesus was (specifically) talking to and for what reason. Was he talking about one off outbursts, quickly repented of and forgiven, or of continual, habitual and deliberate sinning?

…the youth of today are definitely victims, caught in the squeeze between the their burgeoning hormonal impulses and the incessant assaults of an overly-sexualized culture.

Is lust primarily a male problem? Hard to say, although I think it is generally recognized that men are more prone to this sin than women. Maybe we are just shallower or more easily satisfied. Maybe men are simply acculturated to divorce feeling from action and can compartmentalize in a way that women, with their desire for relationship and nurture, do not. The actor Jane Fonda certainly thinks so. In her new autobiography My Life So Far, she writes: “Life had taught me that men…operate by the Fornicato, ergo sum principle.” On the other hand, I have a single male friend who is handsome, successful, financially well off and who dates a lot. He has some religious sentiment and awareness but is, by his own admission, quite promiscuous. His observation on the singles dating scene, is that women have changed in their behaviour. Sex is not only offered, but actually expected - often on the first date. “Women are acting like men these days”, was his laconic observation, offered with some chagrin.

So possibly the ubiquitous onslaught of lust is merely symptomatic of our time and culture which demands instant gratification, is obsessed with physical fitness and bodily beauty (ergo fear of aging and death - what better act of defiance in the face of the inevitable march of time than to engage in sex?), little values self-control and considers virginity an embarrassment? When joy is superseded by irony, virtue by worldliness, discernment by cynicism and innocence by sly innuendo and the knowing “wink” - then lust has come into its own.

When joy is superseded by irony, virtue by worldliness, discernment by cynicism and innocence by sly innuendo and the knowing “wink” - then lust has come into its own.

To counter these natural impulses, the church offers the virtue of chastity, continence and virginity. This is tough enough preventative medicine for a thirteen year old in 1975. It seems woefully inadequate for a thirteen year old in 2005. However, as much as resistance may seem doomed, capitulation is worse. “Lead us not into temptation…”

Co-Founder and Co-Editor of theRubicon and Co-Ordinator of the 614 Network (http://www.614network.com/), Geoff and his wife Sandra minister to Regent Park, a social housing project in Downtown Toronto.

*First published in Horizons May/June 2005

1 Comment to Lust

1. Geoff - did anyone teach you about holiness when you were in the UK? I doubt it - we must be about the same age as I had a paper round circa 1973-76. I had to cope with one house who took Mayfair and Playboy!

   Romans VII man buckles under lust but Romans VIII man is ‘more than conqueror’.

   Nobody in the UK in the 1970’s seemed to know about Romans VIII man - or at least if they did they never told me about him.

   Love and prayers

   A
Andrew Bale on June 19th, 2007

Leave a comment