Lust versus love

     Eve saw that the tree’s fruit was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirous to make one wise. Likewise, our culture tends to receive lust as something good for their bodily appetites, delighting to see another’s nakedness, and something to boast about in their hearts at the least, if not to others. In terms of the inner desires, human beings desire to see what has not been given to them by God in the lust of the eyes. In the lust of the flesh they want to experience what has not been given as a gift to their bodies. And pride of life shows forth when they want to tell others about it, sharing in unholy communication. But they disregard how that act will affect the other person’s well-being and their relationships now and in the future.

     We always have to keep in mind a person’s highest and best in our actions towards them. If they are married, we need to consider how what we do affects their spouse and their children. Even if they aren’t married, we can consider how our actions affects their relationships with their friends and families. And, we need to keep in mind how our interactions with them will affect their future and their future relationships. The Lord made every person to be in community and, therefore, we have to deal with them as a whole person with their current and future networks. This “self-control is essential to the moral integrity of human beings” (TOBSL, 62).

     Outside of marriage, we can’t reject people when they want to sin against us or will not satisfy the lust we have towards them, though. Some who lust and are refused then break off all friendship, proving the difference between lust and love. “(Lust) reduces a person, called into existence for her own sake, to a object for my pleasure” (TOBSL, 89). If what is ruling a person is lust, when they can’t get that lust gratified or once it is satiated, they are done with relating to that person they formerly had lust for, as happened with Tamar and Amnon.

     Within the context of marriage, the Lord has given us the gift of marriage to fulfill both our needs and wants bodily. We are not to withhold ourselves from each other, as Paul states in 1 Cor 7:5. And we should pursue the fun of mutual enjoyment that God has given us in it, including in our sexual life together. If you’ll excuse me quoting from another one of my Nashotah papers:

The practice of fun or play is most embodied in the sexual life of the married couple.  In God’s Companions: Reimagining Christian Ethics Samuel Wells states, “It is vital that an understanding of sexuality be bodily, lest the quest for sexual excitement become an attempt to transcend the body in a moment of ecstasy. Play involves sheer enjoyment of the physical being and presence and movement and gift of the other” (p. 93). Wells sees the importance of play as 1) exultation in the goodness of being alive and a statement that we are not more earnest than God, 2) like the Sabbath it affirms trust in God, 3) play offers practice in sharing together in the common life, and 4) play helps us to become like children (p. 95).

But along with the fun, we have to guard against the sin of lust in our marriages as Theology of the Body in Simple Language reminds us:

Shame is a response to lust, and aims to protect us from its consequences. In fact, through shame, man and woman almost remain in the state of original innocence. If they continually nurture the nuptial, gift-giving understanding of the body and strive to protect it from lust, a married couple can experience sexual union the way it was meant to be—as a true communion of persons (TOBSL, 67).

Shame protects against the spouse being treated as less than a mutual partner. Though perhaps embarrassing and difficult, communication is essential to revealing shame and protecting and enhancing the fun and mutual enjoyment of marriage.

     Christians need to learn, experience, and portray how fun God is. As such, we should both guard ourselves against lust and against lusting but while guiding others into friendship instead of closing our hearts to them. “True Christian morality doesn’t flee bodily existence—it embraces and sanctifies it” (TOBSL, 93). The one who lusts needs to love the whole person and their networks. The one who has shame, which can protect, needs to not refuse and close their heart and life to people who might express lust. Some people have so much protection that they shut down the God-given languages of masculinity and femininity—the true attraction—which are beautiful languages of the spirit (TOBSL, 85).