Is lust always a sin?

[Dan From Smithville]

Unwholesome lust (toward other than spouse) i think is a form of sin.
But maybe the attachments to the lust is worse?

It is the unwholesome part and where it begins that interest me.

What do you mean by attachments?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Human animals inherit the urge to mate from our animal antecedents. There is nothing one way or the other about that natural urge.

How that urge is expressed (or not) with whom and when is the issue.

If someone is focused on expressing that desire with another and treats that person just as the means and sole focus, then karma is generated that will be worked out in a future life.

If that desire is expressed in a committed relationship where it's one factor in all the interactions between two people, it's a different matter. Ideally in this case, the emotional lives of the individuals dominate and the biological urge becomes secondary. From a karmic perspective, that to me is quite different.

So you see it not as the urge, but the direction that urge takes a person and how they apply it as well as the context in which it is applied?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Someone had written a story of an adulterous woman and entered it into the New Testament. The Pericope Adultarae. In that Jesus supposedly speaks to the group of people and makes them feel guilty. It could very well be that he was appealing to their lust which no one can deny. But this story is not authentic. I am just reiterating it.

But the issue is in Matthew Jesus supposedly says that if you lust after a woman you have committed adultery in your heart. This is supposedly Jesus increasing the intensity of faith and purity of ones faith. This would mean, lusting after "another" is a sin.

I have not come across any scripture that says lusting after your spouse is a sin. I doubt its even considered lust as we refer to it. If you note the mentions of lust across the Bible, it is grouped with other things like orgies. Never as a thought in your mind with your own spouse. Unless I have completely missed something in scripture and I would like to be corrected if I have.

How you authenticated Pericope Adultarae would be an interesting topic for another thread. I know of nothing that supports or rejects its authenticity.

I am more interested in where interest, attraction and arrousal become lust as much as I am the advice and mandates surrounding what happens following lust.

While I do not think anything goes within the bounds of marriage, scripture doesn't offer any guidance on lust within the marriage. Other than love, I do not know of any barrier that would prevent the potential possibility for lust even in marriage.

I notice that you indicate Islam as your religion, it would have been interesting if you had included what your religion says about lust.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Sexual lust for one you are not married to is a sin, yes. It's not merely finding someone attractive but fixating on them sexually and feeding the desire. In marriage, it wouldn't be regarded as lust, but it is right and proper for a husband and wife to desire each other. All people are to be chaste in Christianity. For the unmarried, that entails celibacy. For the married, that entails only directing sexual desire towards the spouse in a mutually holy and loving way.

So far, this fits with a lot of the responses. Simple appreciation, attraction and even natural arousal are not seen as lust, but acting on those feelings and escalating them appears to be what most of us think of as the lust.

 

[Spirit of Light]

It is the unwholesome part and where it begins that interest me.

What do you mean by attachments?

Attachments in the sense of not being not able to stop doing something

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Yes. And IMO, emotions cannot be "sins", only actions. And in Heathenry we more define "sin" as things which directly and negatively affect the community as a whole. Observable, not just assumed and insisted upon.

Generally, I agree, though I think you can lust without action, but it may be that is the lusting that proceeds action.

That is an important point I think. The consideration of the impact of lust on others outside of the luster and lusted after.

Can you tell me more about what you mean by "insisted upon". I think I know, but I am not sure if my thoughts capture your meaning.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Attachments in the sense of not being not able to stop doing something

Thank you. Where lust takes control and reason and morality no longer hold sway. If I understand you correctly. The path that we are advised to avoid.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Sin is a religious concept so not relevant to non religious peeps.

And i think lust is a normal emotion, we all lust for someone or something at sometime during our lives.

While I am using the religious concept of how it is viewed, I am interested in all views on the subject and how different people and groups define lust and its perception. Whether religious or not, lust appears to exist and has both a personal and a larger impact.

Through this discussion, I am looking to to increase my understanding, but also to find threads that connect all of us. Mainly, I am curious about the conditions where basic and natural feelings become what most would generally agree is lust regardless of the position any of us holds.

I think it is normal to find attraction and interest in others. Where those natural feelings of attraction becomes what is generally perceived as negative is the main, though not only focus for this thread.

What I have noticed about myself is that I do not even have to have ever met a person to become attracted. Simply a perception of another person that develops as you learn about them from extended communication seems to be enough to form an attraction as I have discovered. I wonder if others experience something similar. I think that it is not all that uncommon. The distance may add mystery that enhances the feelings.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

There are two ways of looking at this, in lust one has already committed the rape. One is not a rapist because he raped, he rapes because he is a rapist. Much as a thief is not a thief because he steals, he steals because he is a thief.

That would eliminate free will from the equation and has much wider implications in life in general if your hypothesis were confirmed.

What about a mother--for whom theft is the only means left--that steals food for her child? Does a mother in the same situation that is not a "born thief" let her child starve to death?

What if "being a rapist" isn't the basal state and it is the lack of something else and rape is the expression of that missing something else? It could also be the addition of something else--chemical, brain state, etc.--that exists that leads to the expression as rape or theft.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

You're condemning people before they've even acted. In this way everyone would be guilty of almost everything, which is absurd and unfair.

It would require some method to determine future action that was absolute in its determinations of that future.

 

[ChristineM]

Simply a perception of another person that develops as you learn about them from extended communication seems to be enough to form an attraction as I have discovered

I think it goes further than that, i think we all lust after the unreachable. A tv or movie actor/actress can be an object of lust. Passing someone in the street can bring about pleasant daydreaming.

I am here speaking for everyone when my experience is very limited. However, if my thoughts were not those of everyone (or most) a simple internet search for the celebrity of your lust would be a very different experience

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I've just realised reading this that lust means different thing to different people.

When i lust its 'wow, I'd like to get him in the sack'

Some peeps seem to think if you lust for someone you have already raped them in your mind.

No wonder the "men" who wrote the religious "do as i say, not as i do" rules considered lust to be wrong if they considered it rape.

And who says RF is not an education?

I was confident when I thought of this thread, that my simple question would produce a variety of responses and definitions of lust. Lust seems to be a series of events within the mind. I think most of the difference is where in that series one chooses to see as the formation of lust.

I am hoping to come to a better understanding of lust and where it truly begins. The problem is, that it may truly begin at different places for different people. Though, there may be a general consensus to a degree based on the responses I see here. The big difference may be the basis that we all use to arrive at much the same conclusion.

 

[MASS_debater]

Even the most uptight reaches of the Catholic church seem to allow that sexual desire is not ipso facto sinful, for instance this: The Capital Sins: “Lust”.

But there seems to be a distinction between the sin of lust and simple sexual desire. Lust seems to be treated like drunkenness, a loss of reason and control arising from unbridled sexual desire, which is frowned upon, just like loss of reason and control due to inebriation.

My dad grabs his girlfriends butt and stuff when he was drunk on birthday so I guess he’s both inebriation and lustful. Lmao.

 

[ChristineM]

I was confident when I thought of this thread, that my simple question would produce a variety of responses and definitions of lust. Lust seems to be a series of events within the mind. I think most of the difference is where in that series one chooses to see as the formation of lust.

I am hoping to come to a better understanding of lust and where it truly begins. The problem is, that it may truly begin at different places for different people. Though, there may be a general consensus to a degree based on the responses I see here. The big difference may be the basis that we all use to arrive at much the same conclusion.

Lust is easy, desire, usually sexual, sometimes material.

How one personally reacts to that desire is where the difference lies.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I think it goes further than that, i think we all lust after the unreachable. A tv or movie actor/actress can be an object of lust. Passing someone in the street can bring about pleasant daydreaming.

I am here speaking for everyone when my experience is very limited. However, if my thoughts were not those of everyone (or most) a simple internet search for the celebrity of your lust would be a very different experience

I agree with you. I think most of us experience this. I am coming to see or cementing an existing understanding that this isn't the lust I think of when I think of the negativity of lust. In that series of events that could lead to the negative, what you describe is the initiation stage. Simple desire that often leads to positive outcomes as well as possibly negative. Or it could go no further than a desire and no where else at all.

For the religious, I do not think a pleasant, unplanned and ephemeral daydream sparked by a passing in the street is a sin and grounds for damnation. For anyone, it would be if that is allowed to persist and escalate. A crush on a celebrity is nothing new or sinful, but taking that many steps forward and stalking that celebrity is not just a moral breach, but a crime.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Which is illegal, the rape or thinking about it?

As far as i am aware the though police are still a figment of fiction

I am the only thought police I have and the only thought police I ever want to exist.

I think the point I am trying to form for myself is where should I be policing. Would I be unjust to myself for arresting my mind for something that isn't a crime even in my mind. If desire and arousal are not lust, I would be beating myself up needlessly for experiencing them if I did not understand they are natural and not worthy of being condemned.

 

[Spirit of Light]

Thank you. Where lust takes control and reason and morality no longer hold sway. If I understand you correctly. The path that we are advised to avoid.

You understood correct

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Lust in and of itself isn't sin. Obsessive objectification and the wreckage it creates is more like a sin.

I tend to agree. It is the obsession, objectification, negative action and wreckage that I believe is the real lust and the results of that lust.

 

[firedragon]

How you authenticated Pericope Adultarae would be an interesting topic for another thread. I know of nothing that supports or rejects its authenticity.

Manuscript evidence.

I notice that you indicate Islam as your religion, it would have been interesting if you had included what your religion says about lust.

Islam does not work on that kind of thing. The word Shahawa is the closes to the word lust, but it doesnt mean lust. It is more like "wanting" as in "wanting" or even something like "yearning" but not in a bad way. This is in the Quranic context. For example if I tell you "if you have a pet and you want to take her out, you can go where ever you want, other than the neighbours garden" as an example, that "where ever you want" will be Shahawa. Its used nonchalantly.

 

[Rival]

Manuscript evidence.



Islam does not work on that kind of thing. The word Shahawa is the closes to the word lust, but it doesnt mean lust. It is more like "wanting" as in "wanting" or even something like "yearning" but not in a bad way. This is in the Quranic context. For example if I tell you "if you have a pet and you want to take her out, you can go where ever you want, other than the neighbours garden" as an example, that "where ever you want" will be Shahawa. Its used nonchalantly.

I believe the word 'lust' is used on German to mean 'want' or 'desire', and obviously is etymologically linked to English.