“You have
heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you
that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already
committed adultery with her in his heart.” – Matthew 5:27-28 (ESV)
In response to the 2011 World Health Organization’s charge to
“pay greater attention to the shorter life expectancy of men,” Brown
University’s B-Well Health Services Program announced that they would offer a
new initiative for their male identified students titled, “Unlearning Toxic
Masculinity.” According to the description of the program found on the
university webpage, current cultural expectations of masculine behavior
encourage risky conduct and an unwillingness to seek help when overwhelmed.
(Baker et al., 2014) Brown University Health Services goes on to note that “the
way that young men are conditioned to view sex and their need to be dominant
and have power over others also [contributes] to instances of sexual assault
and other forms of interpersonal violence on college campuses.” While I am
reluctant to fully agree with the University’s vision for masculinity, I can
with confidence say that the kind of possessive, aggressive, and self-serving
sexuality they describe has been a problem long before the advent of the
western university system. Jesus, in fact, addresses this very problem in
Matthew, Chapter 5.
Jesus tackles our perversion of God’s holy standard for sex
by showing how we twist and distort His Word. During His teaching, Christ turns
to the law of Moses, a text that would have been exceedingly familiar to his
audience. Many of the religious leaders of the time opted for an extreme
literal interpretation of the law. Thus, when it states “You shall not commit
adultery,” many religious leaders narrowly interpreted this command as simply a
prohibition of extramarital intercourse. By definition, then, it would be
permissible to “look but not touch,” as it were. We hear this kind of logic all
the time in our culture when people lust and then excuse it, saying things
like, “I’m married, not buried,” or “I’m only human.” As Jesus later points
out, this kind of textual interpretation is not God’s intention because it
leads to a life where we “honor [God] with [our] lips, while [our] hearts are far from
[him].” (Isaiah 29:13 ESV)
Jesus demonstrates
the original intention of the commandment on adultery by providing what at
first appears to be an extension of Mosaic law. Christ follows his quotation of
Moses by stating, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has
already committed adultery with her in his heart.” While many biblical scholars
note that this passage demonstrates our inability to meet God’s righteous
requirements—signifying our dependence on Christ’s sacrifice— it also speaks to
our perversion of the good gift of sex. The Greek word for lust (ἐπιθυμέω)
means more than a sexual attraction. According to the Liddell and Scott Greek
Lexicon, the word means to “set one's
heart upon a thing, long
for, covet, [or] desire.” The word includes a sense of possession, a longing to
own the object of the desire and to consume it in order to gratify that desire.
Consequently, Jesus does not add to the Mosaic law, but instead
reinforces the divine truth in the original command. As Christ indicates, when
we lust after others we seek to possess and consume them. I have found that we
typically believe that this kind of consumptive sexuality will satiate a hunger
that we feel in our souls. However, the key to satisfying all of our soul
longings can be found in the foundational first commandment: “You shall have no
other gods before Me.” (Exodus 20:3) When God commands “you shall
not commit adultery,” he indeed means that we should not have extra marital affairs.
However, he also indicates that we cannot look to anything else to fulfill us.
When we do, we commit adultery against Him.
The next time you feel the desire to lust after another
person, ask yourself, “What hunger am I trying to meet in this moment?” Perhaps
it is a hunger for love that God desires to meet through intimate time with you
or through his Church? Maybe it is a hunger for significance that he
demonstrated by his willingness to sacrifice his Son? Whatever it is, we must
be willing to turn to Him to fulfill our hungers rather than hunting and
consuming others. If we do not, we will, in the words of the prophet Haggai, “eat,
but never have enough.” (Haggai 1:6 ESV)
References
Baker, P., Dworkin, S., Tong, S.,
Banks, I., Shand, T., & Yamey, G. (2014). The men’s health gap: Men must be
included in the global health equity agenda. Bulletin of the World Health
Organization, 618-620.
A Greek-English Lexicon: With a Revised Supplement, Ninth
Revised Edition.
Edited by H.G. Liddell, R. Scott. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996. s.v. ἐπιθυμέω.
“Unlearning Toxic Masculinity.” B-Well Health Promotion: Brown University.
https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/health/services/promotion/general-health-emotional-health-mens-health-sexual-assault-dating-violence-get-involved-prevention
