We’ve come a long way from 1976 presidential candidate Jimmy Carter admitted publicly in an interview with Playboy magazine that he had committed the sin Jesus condemns in our text this week, Matthew 5:27-30. “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” From any other lips it might have been merely a humble bit of transparency that most males would resonate with, but it was an embarrassing moment for Americans who viewed the Baptist Sunday School teacher candidate as a squeaky-clean replacement for the previous corrupt and foul-mouthed administration.
We’ve come a long way because it’s difficult to imagine many people being similarly shocked if a public figure were to make such a statement today. Appeals to lust have become entrenched in our entertainment as never before, and any sort of public moral censure has all but evaporated. Television shows regularly feature dialogue and images which would have earned a movie an “R” rating 20 or 30 years ago.
It is easy for Christian people to come down hard and condemning on all of this because the warnings in Scripture, including our text, are so clear. Yet we must not forget that this deadly sin of lust is not our worst problem. C. S. Lewis says, “The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst sins are spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and backbiting; the pleasures of power, of hatred.”
Having acknowledged that spiritual sins which use and abuse others are worse, we must still face the fact our Lord recognized when He condemned lust, even secret “in the heart” lust. Lust unchecked is horribly destructive both of one’s own soul and of one’s relationships.
Ariel Castro is a poster boy for the destructive effects of lust and of a particular virulent and horrible form lust has taken in our time. Standing shackled in a courtroom, accused of kidnapping, raping and imprisoning three women, Castor said, “I believe I am addicted to porn, to the point where I am impulsive, and I just don’t realize that what I am doing is wrong.”
Easy access to pornography through the Internet is eating away at the souls of men, and of some women, in our time. It’s a 10 billion dollar a year industry in our country and much of that is advertising revenue so that a huge amount of free pornographic material is available at the click of a mouse or the swipe of a finger to anyone looking for it. 12 percent of all Internet searches are for pornography and that becomes 20 percent on mobile devices.
It’s not just that pornography leads to horrific deeds like Ariel Castro’s, although use of pornography is clearly correlated with increased likelihood of using various forms of sexual coercion and with the commission of rape. Use of pornography is also connected with marital problems and divorce. In 2002, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers determined that “obsessive interest in Internet pornography” was a factor in 56 percent of divorce cases the prior year.
When we seriously consider Jesus’ call not to “look at a woman with lust,” we must grapple with the fact that current technology has made that “looking” easier and more tempting than ever before. And we must also not be so literal as to imagine Jesus is only concerned with men or that all “lusting” is heterosexual. I can attest directly to the havoc wreaked by homosexual Internet pornography on a young couple whom I married a few years ago.
Peter Kreeft suggests something to the effect that lust is not the worst sin, just the most popular. And it’s popular from two angles. On one hand, it may be the most prevalent sin of our time. On the other hand, it may be the sin most in the mind of both Christians and non-Christians. Note that the word “morality,” which in its ordinary sense means the whole range of ethical matters, has come to often mean in the popular mind only sexual ethics. So talk about “immorality” and many people will automatically assume you are talking about sexual misconduct. It’s almost as if there were no other sins.
But even if it’s not the worst, the sheer popularity and prevalence of the sin of lust make it a major challenge for Christians today, particularly Christian men. We must look honestly into our own hearts and dig deep into God’s Word for the help and grace to stem the tide of lust and its destructive force in our lives.