Matthew 5:27-30

"'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. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell"

I have heard someone propose that, in effect, 'you may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb' when faced with this teaching. In other words that if you lust you may as well fornicate. Of course that is missing the point which is to expose the roots of sexual sin in disordered desire. It could be argued, I guess, that in any case you'd have then committed two sins; lust and fornication; but that would be to return to the kind of legalistic mindset which was misconstruing the teaching in the first place.



I think the really interesting issue here is 'lust' -now before you get too excited, I should say that I mean how we interpret the word in context here. There is in our culture a tendency to make a simple equation: lust=sexual desire. And sexual desire is a version of 'fancy' or 'like the look of' or 'find attractive'. So this example that Jesus gives of how the law needs to be radicalised to touch our hearts and not just our actions, becomes vulnerable to the charge of inhumane unrealism. It seems to be asking that we turn off our natural responses to people in finding them attractive. We further find this difficult because a part of us doesn't see any harm in finding someone attractive; surely it is what we do with that attraction that matters?



I think that this is probably wrong-headed and the main problem is what we think 'lust' is. I think that what is meant here is that inordinate sexual desire that drives us towards planning to act and acting in ways that would lead to a sexual act or relationship that is out of bounds. I don't think that this means that we are banned from finding someone attractive or that we should feel guilty for doing so. I do think that it means that we should be alert when we do so, though, not to allow that attraction to develop. We do normally have enough control to do so and we can plan rahter than to feed the attraction, to make sure that we don't do so. Attraction is natural and it is okay to find other people attractive, the explicit sexualisation of that attraction is a further issue. Children find people attractive without it being sexual [I recall experiencing a number of such attractions as a child], many a friendship is based on a non sexual [in the sense of not having a genital component] attraction. It is possible to find someone attractive and 'life-giving' without wanting to form a sexual bond with them.



In the section on anger and contempt we looked at strategies for avoiding or pulling out of them. Similarly here. We need to find ways to affirm attraction without making it sexual. In our society that can be quite hard because there is so much sexualisation around: an expectation that any close [or even not so close in some circles] relationship will be sexual embeds into our thinking a trajectory of desire but it is possible to learn new habits of relating and new thought patterns, though the more we indulge the more strongly such trajectories and patterns become established [studies in fetishism show that].



It seems to me that Jesus' teaching means, as a practical level that if our thinking is in certain circumstances drawn down certain lines that are illicit, then we need to be prepared to pluck them out of our lives: avoiding the occasions that kick off the trajectory or pattern may be the first step in some situations. If we have found ourselves in trouble with our level of desire for a certain person, then we need to make sure that we avoid situations that feed that desire. Very often it is not true that absence makes the heart grow fonder rather that the infatuation loses its power.



Other things we can do to control and pull out of inordinately sexualised desire might be to find things about the object [I use the word advisedly] of our desire that are less attractive and to force ourselves to think about the longer consequences of following this desire to its logical conclusion. A lot of sexualised desire is built, in reality, on a fantasy and exposing it to the reality of life and consequences can be a remarkable antidote. It is our escapism that is sometimes the real issue. If so then we also need to take it as a wake up call and work out what it is that we are escaping from and work on our real life in more healthy ways [spiritual direction coaching can be a real help in this].



We can also try to manage the way our 'desire process' works. We can practice noticing when we find someone attractive [and again it can be useful to have a prayer partner, soul-friend or spiritual direction coach to help here] and analyse what is attractive -something that is often more about our needs and upbringing than the person themselves- and give God thanks fro the good qualities in that person and to pray for their blessing, growth and life to be in or continue in God's purposes; especially to pray for their life with the person that they are committed to [assuming there is on] and with their family and friends. This also helps us to recognise that they have a life already and that we are not in it, also a sobering thought. The mindfulness that this involves is actually a kind of plucking out of the normal trajectory of deisre that we might have experienced previous in such situations. Plucking out on its own needs to be balalnced by puttin gsomething positive in its place. It also relates our desire more explicitly to God who made attraction in us to serve the forming of bonds to help people work together and to affrim one another. Our difficulty is often that we want to go beyond that; to draw the sub/ob/ject of attraction into our lives so that we feel affirmed.



Of course there is also the discipline of admitting before God and confession of sin when we do get it wrong. WE should regularly examine ourselves in this area but not simply to say 'I was wrong forgive me' but also to submit our desiring to God and to be prepared to take the necessary action. It can be hard because the feeling of strong desire is often very pleasurable. We need to pluck out the roots of that pleasure in fantasy and anticipated affirmation. Such desire cannot stand too much reality.

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