What Is and Is Not Lust

Lust, for the person committing it, has detrimental consequences.
Lust is commonly believed to be an interior disposition that if harnessed does not manifest in external behavior.
Hence the retort of the one who uses pornography, AI sexbots, or has unbridled sexual imaginations, or interiorly imagines himself sexually engaged with another, “I’m not hurting anyone.”

Lust, however, like all sin cannot be restrained and retained to the interior person.
Our interior life gives our exterior life form.
Who we are on the inside will eventually manifest itself in our external behaviors.

“He that soweth in the flesh shall reap corruption. Now the sowing of the flesh refers to venereal pleasure. Therefore, these belong to lust.”
—St. Thomas (Summa Theologiae > Second Part of the Second Part > Question 153

Eventually, lust will manifest in one’s external behaviors.

If a person interiorly is patient, forgiving and sacrificial, these manifest itself in external acts of charity.
If one is interiorly lustful, seeking out and thinking of sexual acts, his external behaviors will eventually become marked by self-preoccupation and using people for one’s gain.

Lust rots a man’s mind and soul…and therefore, he passes on the ruins of this evil to the world around him.

Welcome to the world we live in…selfishness….Self-preoccupation.
Using others for one’s own gain and promotion…we live in a world that is submerged under the waves of lust.

But what is lust? And how do you know if you have committed it?

According to St. Thomas, lust is the abandonment of reason for a disordered pleasure of the flesh.
The act of lust gives carnal fleshly desire a greater importance than spiritual well-being.

Is it lust?

5 Signs that It’s Lust

1. It is disordered.
The sexual act is against God’s proper order and intended design.

2. It is outside of marriage (fornication)…
With someone besides one’s spouse (adultery), or wanton pleasure with a person to whom one is not wedded.

3. It intentionally avoids or mitigates procreation.
Contraceptives and even NFP, if used to avoid pregnancy indefinitely, are a means to ingratiate one’s lustful disposition.

4. It isn’t aimed at the unification of the spouses.
This includes marital rape, coercing, shaming, guilting, and bullying a spouse into having intercourse.
Even and especially citing certain scripture passages that appear to give credence to this sexual coercion.

5. It doesn’t uphold the other’s dignity.
The act or thought reduces a person to being an object of use, from whom one obtains pleasure. This act is void of disinterested (non-selfish) love.

What isn’t lust?

1. Finding a woman physically attractive.

2. Being magnetically, instinctively attracted to a woman’s body and shapeliness.

3. Desiring sexual intercourse with one’s spouse.

4. Deriving pleasure from sexual intercourse with one’s spouse.

What then are we to do when we are faced with the temptation to lust?
Check out the 7 F’s to Overcoming Lust here…

In a future post, I will outline the devastating consequences of surrendering to lust and leaving it unchecked.