This post is a very rough sketch of ideas and may include unfinished, incomplete, or erroneous ideas that will later be corrected. This post will be part of a series that will form the basis of a new book I’m writing following on the themes of my last book, Thoughts From Reconstruction. All of these themes center around the New Covenant. You can find everything published so far in this series on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section.
Dating, Attraction, Lust
Conservative Christianity has long had an uncomfortable relationship with youth romance. Baptists have long been the butt of jokes about bans on dancing. Evangelicals love talking about, teaching about, and writing about sex, though, as they reached late stage Evangelicalism. The topic has always been couched in heavy moral language, however, and leans more than other issues into ‘legalistic’ views of the Bible. For good reason, perhaps, as teenage pregnancy and parental commitment can have tremendous consequences for any children brought into the world. There’s one admonition that towers above them all, however, and that’s lust.
Jesus told us that looking at a woman with lust is the act of adultery in the heart. Men are rightly and regularly told not to look at women with lust in their hearts and to treat other women as sisters in Christ. But how does this go over with youth, just discovering relationships, and how they understand their relationship to the opposite sex? What are youth to think about ‘committing adultery’ just by looking? What are they to do with their hormones? And have we done right by youth in discouraging them away from teenage marriage and traditional family rearing, expecting them to withhold themselves until marriage?
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. -Matthew 5:27-28
Jesus makes it clear that a man looking in lust is adultery of the heart, a violation of our commitment and loyalty to our spouse. Adultery is the physical or emotional violation of one’s own marriage or the marriage of another. Yet, there must be a difference between attraction, lust, and adultery or we’d be sinning in just looking at those who we are attracted to. Certainly, the Bible affirms the righteousness of marriage.
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. -Genesis 2:24
“Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” -Hebrews 13:4
We fail boys and unmarried men by placing this burden upon them when it is not there’s to bear. They are not married and so they cannot commit adultery looking at another umarried woman. It is a weak argument and Biblically lacking to pseudeo-spiritualize this as “cheating on the Holy Spirit”. If we are being honest, we know that it is impossible for men and women to completely avoid looking at others with ‘lust’. It is particularly difficult to avoid with the onset of puberty and the hormonal changes puberty brings. Lust in this case is “intense sexual desire”. Who would argue it is possible to not have these feelings, particularly in younger years? These complications are a hint we’re missing something.
The point of Jesus’ words is not to make yet another rule but to establish the context for true righteousness by using an example his audience would clearly understand as many of them would be men, married, and religious elite. Only moments earlier, Jesus had spoken in the same manner about hate being the heart equivalent of murder. The point was not to make one more rule but to clarify the underlying truth of the existing rule.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. -Matthew 5:17
Jesus finishes His teaching on sins by teaching about what’s behind the regulations on those sins.
You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. -Matthew 5:43-45
Jesus is saying, here, that there is a deeper moral understanding than his audience knew and one that was closer to God’s heart. With both hating a neighbour and lusting, God is pointing to the deeper truth of what you are doing when you refrain from these: You are loving your neighbour and loving God by following His ways.
So, how can we properly communicate what Jesus is teaching? First, we remember that Love God and Neighbour is the prism through which Jesus is teaching. Second, we can be clear and specific about what adultery is and is not. Third, we can be honest about sexual desire: When it is more healthy, when it’s less healthy, and when it becomes sin. The focus should not be on the letter of the law but on the spirit of the law.
By teaching that the adulterous sin of lust is founded on the principle of loving your neighbour, we move the perception of lust, itself, away from the sin of adultery. We clearly know that lust, itself, is not a sin by how our natural desires are for our lovers in healthy relationships of dating, courtship, and marriage. Husbands and wives lusting after each other in marriage is not, in itself, a sin so far as you are truly loving them. Loving your neighbour–your wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend–in a righteous context, allows for the proper and righteous expression of sexual desire.
“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” -Mark 10:6-9
Marriage is God’s intention for men and women therefore we fulfill Love God by seeking marriage and by refusing to participate in adultery which separates “what God has joined together.“
By taking Jesus’ teaching on adulterous lust in its context, we see Jesus moving his audience away from mere rule following and closer to embodying the truths he would make clear only moments later, love your neighbour. Now we have the freedom to teach on dating, attraction, lust, and adultery in a way that doesn’t contradict what we clearly see and experience or basic human drives and yet still preserves our neighbour in righteousness.
This series will continue. Please check back from time to time, if you’re interested in reading new parts as they become available. The entire series will be made available on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section as each part is published.