Father Knows Best: Is lust a sin?

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By Martin Elfert

Hey Rev!

Is lust a sin?

– Stan

Dear Stan:

No.

Like a great many things that hang out in the human heart and the human psyche, lust is neither good nor bad in and of itself. What turns dreams and thoughts and yearnings such as lust into sins — or, conversely, what turns them into something good and generative — is how we choose to respond to them.

The inescapable biblical passage about lust is Matthew 5:27–28. There, Jesus says:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Now, we read Scripture in the light and in the shadow of our ancestors in faith. Whether we acknowledge these ancestors or not — whether we are even aware of them or not — our understanding of the Old and New Testament alike is profoundly colored by their work. As one of my teachers puts it, we don’t read the Gospel: we read Luther reading Augustine reading Paul reading the Gospel. A lot of the time, these inherited interpretations are invaluable. It is Augustine, to choose but one example, who teaches us that, “If you understand it, it’s not God,” a bit of wisdom that is as luminous as it is succinct. On other occasions, however, the understanding that we have received is a lot less useful.

In the instance of Matthew 5:27–28, the dominant interpretation that we have inherited is pretty limited and pretty limiting. That interpretation assumes a pathological relationship with the physical body and, in particular, it assumes a fear of and an obsession with sex. And it has given us the standard understanding of Jesus’ meditation on lust. That understanding goes something like this: if you’re holy enough, if you’re good enough, if you’re really trying for the kind of perfection that Jesus had, you won’t have lustful thoughts.

Let’s see if we can put that inherited interpretation aside for a few minutes, Stan, and listen to Jesus with new ears.

Notice Jesus’ statement contains the implied question, “Have you ever looked at another person with lust?” Well, what if the answer that Jesus is expecting to his question — what if what we might call the “right answer” to his question — isn’t “no”? What if Jesus, being fully human, knows that the real and only and inescapable answer to his question is “of course.”

Sexual attraction is universal, it is something that every human being experiences, it is a biological reality. Jesus knows that we all have looked at another person with lust. And, wait for it, Jesus says that makes all of us into adulterers. What do you think about that? Suddenly, his saying is not an invitation into shame or sanctimony but, rather, it is an invitation to you and to me to relax into empathy and into a renewed set of priorities. For crying out loud, Jesus is saying, stop spending so much time agonizing over and trying to make rules about other people’s sex lives! For that matter, stop loathing yourself for being the way that God made you! Start spending your energy, instead, on something that actually matters.

Could there be a lesson here for contemporary society? Could there be a lesson here for the contemporary church? I’m grateful to live in a country that has achieved marriage equality, grateful to be part of a worshipping tradition that has largely embraced marriage equality. And I’m also ready to start talking about something else. Indeed, I believe that the Gospel demands that we start talking about something else. What would happen, for instance, if we put even a fraction of the energy that we put towards marriage equality towards ending hunger? What would happen if we put a fraction of that energy towards ending homelessness? What would happen if we put a fraction of that energy towards ending racism?

Lust becomes a sin, Stan, when we allow it to shape our actions in such a way as to diminish ourselves and others, to engage in exploitation, to forget the humanity of our neighbor. By contrast, when we respond to lust — to feelings of sexual attraction or delight or passion– in an appropriate and respectful way, well, that’s normal, healthy, universal, and consistent with the way that God made us. It’s not worth spending a whole lot of your time fretting about. And it’s certainly not a sin.