Is it Lust?

I remember being in a prayer circle many years ago (you know, the type where you 'popcorn' around and different people get chances to pray and after the long, awkward silence someone finally closes... much to everyone's delight). In this particular prayer time, one of the guys threw up a prayer rather passionately: Jesus, we just lust after you!

Uhh...
We do?
What?
Is that... okay?

But it's made me ask an important question that I'm not sure many people are even asking: what is lust?

We talk about it a lot, we say it's sin, we tell people to avoid it... to flee from it... but do we even know what it is? Can it be defined? Is it subjective? Are there certain degrees of lust? Does simply finding someone else attractive mean that you're lusting after them? Scripture/Jesus tells us that if a man even looks at a woman lustfully he has committed adultery in his heart.

So let's make sure we know what lust is... and let's make sure we know what lust is not.

Dear old dictionary tells us that lust is a 'very strong sexual desire' or a 'passionate desire for something' (in this second definition, I think my friend's prayer may have actually been a-okay...although it certainly tends to have a 'sinful' connotation to it).

I asked the professor I had for Human Sexuality this question, too. She thought lust had a lot to do with objectification, a sexual longing for someone else that made them more of an object of your possible gratification instead of an actual person.

Maybe it's all blurry and fuzzy and the moment we start to think that someone is attractive, that's the moment that we immediately go to sex land in our head... but I don't think it always has to be that way, meaning that I don't think we need to be scared of finding others attractive. (I don't think we need to be scared of being attractive, either. In the world of modesty, it can be easy to feel like we're sometimes not allowed to want to be attractive because of how it might cause others to 'lust' after us.)

I guess I'm not sure if there's a specific line that you can cross that means you've automatically moved into lust-land, either. It's easy to want to create that, to create boundaries, to create universal rules for how someone can know when they've started lusting... but, unfortunately, I don't think it's as easy as that. I think, for every person, it's going to look different. It's going to be this smattering of how we were raised, where we were raised, what we've been exposed to, what choices we've made, how our bodies function. I think it's unfair to say that what might cause one person to lust will always cause another person to lust. I think it's unfair to say that lust is always the result of finding someone attractive.

I do think my professor was onto something. At the point when someone becomes an object (especially a sex object) as someone to daydream over, fantasize about, consider 'dating' only because you want to get physical with them... I think that's the point in which we can call it 'lusting'. But to find someone attractive beyond just the physical (remembering that they're a person and not just a body), then I think it's different.

Mostly I just don't want us to be people who are scared of attraction. People who are so scared of finding the opposite gender desirable because we think it's intrinsically linked to lust. Yes, flee from lust. Flee from allowing your mind to exist in a place where sex/sexual thoughts are all consuming, the place where it doesn't matter who people are but what they might be able to offer you physically or how their looks satisfy your eyes. Flee from anything that separates the person from the body and allows them to be glorified solely for their outward beauty.

Because we have to be willing to look beyond that.
To see people as people. People with stories, lives, dreams, brokenness, families, fears, imperfections.

I can't tell you that lust is going to happen when you do X (fill in whatever thing you want here)... but I can tell you that it is certainly more likely to happen when you participate in things that strip people of their being. When you're ogling and sexually fantasizing about all the possibilities... (and yes, this can still happen even when you deeply care about someone outside of their physical beauty).

It's a fine line.
It's a line that many would rather not play with, but one that we inevitably seem to. Because we are sexual beings and it's hard to separate ourselves from that sometimes. But, we must. We must be willing to have self-control, to flee, to step away from situations and people who cause us to move into that place of separating body from soul.

Just don't be scared of real, genuine, beautiful attraction. Don't be scared to see others as wonderful creations... just know where your line is, what your limits are. I'm not trying to give any sort of justification for lusting... or give you a reason to think that you're not lusting when you are. I think you probably know when it happens. I think you probably know what lusting is for you. Don't adopt someone else's line for yourself. Being willing to be honest about what lusting is for you, and steer clear.

Be aware of what lusting is not. And be aware of what lusting is. Be willing to have conversations with people you know/trust (probably older, wiser people) about it, too. I think the more willing we are to engage in conversations about seemingly uncomfortable things, the more we are able to learn and grow from them.

It's an interesting topic...this thing called lust. May it not be something that ever defines us, but another thing that the Lord redeems us from, saves us from and refines us in.
(And yes. Girls do lust.)

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