Is “lust” bad?

Christians says God hates sex thoughts! Which was dumb.

For lots of Christians, only two or three verses in the Bible really matter for day-to-day life, and Matthew 5:28 is #1, #2 and #3. Here Jesus says: “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Thinking people are sexy is bad! Even looking at women makes you bad! It’s a helpful verse for Christians attacking people looking at porn. Or attacking anyone, really. We all have sexual thoughts.

Here’s another take?

Christians don’t know how to read the Jewish scriptures.

Maybe the idea is that Jesus comes to the earth to deal with the problem of people looking at people.

But if you believe that, it’s not a nice message for women. First of all, it suggests Jesus is only talking to men—only interested in men! Female lust doesn’t even rate a mention.

Then how are these lusting men to be punished? Adultery is a crime in Jewish law! — a capital crime. You die for it! (cf. Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22)

Is Jesus calling on the lusting adulterers to be executed?

Christians aren’t told to follow the old Jewish law (cf. Heb 8:13, etc.), so maybe it’s all right to hold off on the mass slaughter. But . . . how about we pause, and get some actual information.

“Lust” is translating the Greek word, epithumia, which just means ‘desire’. It’s not a term with any sexual context, and doesn’t mean your inner mental world of sexual thoughts.

It’s just saying you want something. Jesus ‘lusts’ in Luke 22:15 — to eat Passover! In 1 Timothy 3:1, Paul says a church leader has to “lust” for that position. They have to really want it.

Jason Staples, whose treatment of this verse was a blast of facts I’d never heard in church, notes these terms are familiar to Jewish readers. Epithumia is often translating the Hebrew word for ‘covet’.

It turns out that Jesus isn’t saying anything new at all in Matthew 5:27–28. Instead, he directly cites one of the Ten Commands to remind his audience that the Law not only prohibits adultery, it prohibits coveting with the same severity. This is not an intensification of the Law; it’s a reminder of what the Law already says.

We can look at the Old Testament and find the points of reference.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. (Exo 20:17)

Clearly, ‘coveting’ is not ‘lusting’ in the sense of sexual thoughts and intentions. It’s an intention to grab stuff from another man.

If concerned about “lust,” let’s get some education in Jewish references? In the Old Testament, first of all, a wife is seen as a piece of property. She is owned, having been bought by contract. In Genesis 31:15, when Rachel and Lea discuss their marriages to their husband, Jacob, they say their father “sold” them.

‘Coveting’ is a term out of property law. As Jason Staples notes, it is “best understood as forbidding fixing one’s desire upon obtaining something that is not rightfully one’s own.”

Or as Christoph Dohmen notes:

Coveting in itself is not the substance of the prohibition — even if Christian moral theology has often declared (sexual) desire to be sin on the basis of Exod 20:17 — but all that happens with the intention of appropriating someone else’s “goods.”

In view would be situations, Dohmen adds, ranging from one man “taking advantage of another (e.g. as an owner of a large estate), to the seizing of ownerless property, or to the taking of women whose husbands are at war.”

All Ten Commandments, as David J.A. Clines discusses, are concerned with theft of property. The ban is “not concerned with sexual ethics or social stability or anything other than the threat of theft to a man and his property.”

Adultery is theft of a wife, and to ‘covet’ is to want any form of property from another man. Neither are enforcing monogamy or telling you not to find people sexy.

Jewish law allows for polygamy, sex with slaves, concubines, and prostitutes — even for married men! Like Abraham, men can have concubines (cf. Gen 25:6, etc.). Like Gideon in Judges 8:30, men can have seventy sons and “many wives.”

When Samson visits a prostitute in Judges 16:1–3, no violation happens. The great kings have harems. It’s odd to try and find, in the Bible, prompts to non-sexuality. All the heroes and heroines are highly sexual.

So let’s return to Jesus’ comment.

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

The Christian reader thinks he is getting a real translation, when this is misleading. Greek, like Hebrew, does not have a different word for ‘wife’; the word is simply gynē, ‘woman’. (The same is true for ‘husband’, which is only the word ‘man’.)

As Staples notes, the Christian translators see ‘wife’ in Exodus 20:17, but ‘woman’ in Matthew 5:28, even though Jesus is citing the earlier verse.

And so the idea of the woman being owned is lost. Context for the verse shifts from property law to . . . sexual problems?

As if God is scrutinizing your inner thoughts to see if you like people around you, i.e. “lust.” A situation never happening in Old Testament narratives. It’s a Christian misreading.

Finally we’d get to why Jesus, the messiah, is talking about ‘coveting’ to Jews who are, currently, all but enslaved to Rome and demonic forces. This speech may begin with him casting out evil forces from people (cf. Lk 6:17).

Coveting is not a problem people are having. They can’t keep their lands, families, or even their own bodies.

Let’s step back and note a basic fact: In the Bible, gods are seen as ‘men’, and nations are ‘women’.

We see this throughout the Old Testament, as YWHW is Israel’s husband (i.e. Lord or baal, terms for husbands). They get married on Mt. Sinai. There are many tender moments. He wants ‘her’ to love Him in Hosea 2:16.

“In that day,” declares the LORD, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’

But Israel never really understands how to do this. In Ezekiel 16, He pleads with her to stop seeing other ‘men’ —i.e. deities. He lambastes her in Ezekiel 16:15: “You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his.”

The really fun example is Ezekiel 23:20. The NIV translation goes: “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.”

As the Bible scholar Roland Boer discusses in The Earthy Nature of the Bible, a real effort to convey the passage in English might read:

“She was horny [ta’gevah] for her toyboys [pilgeshehem], whose cocks [besaram] were the size of donkey schlongs [besar-hamorim] and whose ejaculations [zirmatam] were like horse cum [zirmat-susim].”

You can think Israel is having hot sex with men with massive penises, or you can realize this is how prophets talk. Over and over, Israel is seen as promiscuous, wanton, ultra-sexed. “The prophets accused Israel of being a ‘spiritual slut’,” as Kyle Harper puts it.

And the context for this onslaught of highly sexual language is gods and nations. When Israel seeks favor from, or worships other deities, it’s ‘adultery’—because she is not keeping to her deity.

Israel is eventually divorced (Jer 3:8, etc.), which brings on the Exile. She no longer has a ‘husband’.

Christians don’t track this spousal-sexual-prophetic language at all, even though it’s all over the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 11:2, Paul says: “I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.”

Paul isn’t saying only ‘virgins’ in physical terms can be Christians, but rather, not to worship other deities. You belong to Jesus!

To turn back to Matthew 5:28, Jesus seems to be talking to a male force—the ‘you’ who isn’t named.

Jesus is probably talking to other deities. As a divine being, he can do anything he wants, and guess what?

This is a sacred text that nobody really knows how to read.

We know that Jesus does try to get humans to see—through higher sight—the spirit beings all around them (e.g. Mark 8:24, etc.).

And maybe he says to them: don’t covet a ‘woman’.

The woman, of course, would be Israel.

The Christian idea would be: Looking at women around you, you can look at them with love.

If it includes a sexual component, that’s fine. Christian ladies are sexy. Maybe fantasy intrudes. Maybe you’re oafish and dumb. That’s not good. To fantasize about someone isn’t to see her reality, or love her very well.

So be part of reality? That’s where you’ll find God.