Josh Altonji 6/16/05
BLIND SPOT:
Reflections on the Nature of Lust
Lust is a serious problem, especially for males, in society today. I have even begun to have some trouble with it myself this year. The problem is how it seems so completely natural! In actuality, sexual desire is natural and something God built into humans, as part of their sexuality to be used for procreative and unitive purposes between two people. The human sexuality also serves as a foretaste of the union we’ll experience with God and each other in heaven. After careful reflection on the subject of lust, I think I’ve gained some insight as to how it works and why it doesn’t work for good Christian people!
From the beginning, God created humans as both body and soul. Healthy sexual desire uses bodily pleasure in order to bond two people in a godly love for each other similar to that which we’ll experience as part of the Communion of Saints in heaven. This desire becomes distorted and fractured when members of the opposite sex are viewed through the prism of lust. The whole trouble with lust is that it seeks bodily pleasure with no regard whatsoever for the soul or for our spiritual wellbeing. All three purposes of the sex instinct God programmed humans with are thrown by the wayside when we indulge in lust.
I think that, ironically, the human soul is probably far more interesting and worthy of love than the bodies attached. (How else would 90-year-old couples stick together?) The trouble is that right now we all live in a very physical world where direct interface with the soul of another person is practically impossible. We can only see the effects that a person’s soul has on his or her body. The human body, on the other hand, can be perceived perfectly well by all our senses here on earth.
The person who indulges in lust falls into the trap of thinking the body is more important than and independent from the soul. In fact, lust disregards the soul entirely. A person governed by lust is like a small animal that spends the whole day chasing a laser point around a room, trying endlessly to capture the beam in its paws. This sort of behavior would not occur if we had faith in the gift God offers us (i.e. that He will give us the laser pointer if we stop trying to snatch the dot for ourselves).
Love and lust may be easily confused at times, but in actuality they have nothing to do with each other. In the words of Catholic apologist Jason Evert, “we know when we confuse love and lust because we are left longing for something more.â€
