When does it cross the line?

Readership: All
Theme: The Snares of Sin
Length: 1,100 words
Reading Time: 6 minutes

Donal Graeme wrote a landmark post, Knowing when to escape (2013/12/15), in which he broke down the step-by-step process of how women fall victim to their own desire to be humbled / validated / ruled over by a man in an inappropriate context. The complementary pitfall for men is Lust, and yet, we don’t have a playbook that defines lust in communicable words and describes how to deal with it. This post will attempt to fill in this gap, although I think it to be insufficient in itself.

A Description of Lust

First of all, male and female sexual desire is not sinful. Desire is only sinful when it mutates into Lust and is acted upon in an unrighteous manner.

Secondly, Lust is not Attraction, neither is it about the intensity of sexual attraction, as this is a healthy and normal response.  Making efforts to establish Sexual Attraction is not Lust. Taking action in response to Sexual Attraction in order to find out if the person is suitable for marriage is not Lust.

Third, some people equate Sexual Arousal with what the Bible refers to as Lust.  Arousal is not necessarily Lust, but Lust always involves Arousal somehow.

For Men, Lust is when sex in general, or the idea of having sex with a particular person, engulfs one’s conscious awareness to the point of idolatry.

img-1783681570-6a50d222ddbbe4.31124160.jpg

For Women, Lust is not so obsessed with the act of sex as it is for Men (although it is for some), but is instead focused on the prospect of being Humbled, Objectified, and Validated (HOV) by a HSMV man.

For both Men and Women, Lust is a different and separate paradigm of consciousness in which everything is viewed through sex or HOV colored lenses, respectively. It is a vanity of the mind as described in Romans 1:18-32 and Ephesians 4:17-19. For most, it is a faux fantasy characterized by a poverty mentality. For some, it is a lifestyle. There are subcultures that revolve around Lust.

The Spiritual Fruits of Lust

The Bible describes the consequences of Lust in Romans 1:18-32 and Ephesians 4:17-19. At worst, people become base, depraved animals, separated from God. Not good…

The spiritual problem with Lust is that when one is in this state, it is impossible to be spiritually tuned into the Holy Spirit and to have a Christian sense of Detachment from the Flesh and the things of this World. Worse, it also destroys one’s discernment of righteousness, thus rendering him a spiritual FOOL. Moreover, Lust alters a man’s consciousness such that he becomes oblivious to any real opportunities he may have otherwise had while malingering in a state of Lust, intersexual or otherwise. And the longer one lingers in this state, the more difficult it is to develop (or recover) spiritual Discernment. Therefore, many men cruise through life in this state, experiencing The Quiet Desperation of the Autopilot and never wake up from their delusions.

I believe it is possible for a man to be so deeply entrenched in lust for so long, that he is unaware of his own mental state and believes it to be normal, especially if he fell into this state of mind during adolescence. It is also easy to hide from all but the most discerning.

Lust blossoms into Sin when a man is lazy about snapping his brain out of the vanity of a Lustful mindset and PASSIVELY gives mental assent to entertain fantasies in his imagination and/or act on his desires. If Lust is not proactively nipped in the bud, it WILL lead to Frustration and Sin eventually.

img-1783682945-6a50d7816f9ed7.60874122.jpg

Expressions of Lust

Women who live in a perpetual state of Lust tend to present themselves as Bimbos, e.g. the “Nightclub Vibe”, heavy sculpted makeup, hoop earrings, dyed hair, revealing clothing, and so on, or otherwise, any costume or get up she deems appropriate and/or necessary to attract a suitable man into her life and bed. With continued sexperience, the typical S1ut Tells begin to show. (To offer visual examples, check out the females frequently featured on Fresh and Fit’s After Hours Podcasts discussion panel. Listen to what they talk about. These women live a life of perpetual Lust!)

The ways men act out Lustful desires come in a few varieties.

If a man has a SMV high enough to attract women or the charisma to attract one particular woman, Lust is internalized in the ego, leading to a faux-confidence and detachment. I believe women can detect this and it becomes a spiritual / visceral vector of attraction, especially when reciprocality is in play, as I wrote about in The Sweet Aroma of Love (2022/2/14). If this trajectory is started early enough in life, it can become a stronghold of fornication. The temptation is to exercise those opportunities to get a woman (or women) into bed. Christian men in this state should NOT be putting themselves in that kind of situation with any woman he would not be willing to marry, and if it does happen, he should be proactive about pressing towards marriage.

For men who don’t have such opportunities with women (and the number of these men is growing, unfortunately), Lust remains as an objective fantasy. The ever present temptation is to click on P0rnHub and Flog the Log. However, Masturbating is just as much a Sin as fornication. Men should not think they are more righteous simply because they’re NOT an Alpha Chad S1utmaker. Furthermore, Men should not deceive themselves into thinking they can avoid the Sin of Fornication by tossing a load on a virtual centerfold, because they are still giving their minds and bodies over to their idols of Lust. Jerking the Joystick DOES reduce temptation, but only because it culls desire, dulls the senses, and destroys one’s discernment of temptation, as I mentioned above.

img-1783683159-6a50d857e81df7.47810242.jpg

In some ways, Jerking Off is worse than fornication, because it removes a man’s motivation for pursuing a real relationship with a woman, and if done with P0rn, it introduces to his mind concepts of sexual liaisons that are not realistic and which will only lead to frustration. It also increases his expectations for a woman’s attractiveness such that normal women can no longer arouse him. (Note: The secular Manosphere views this as beneficial to a man’s ability to “ignore her beauty”.)

There are other ways men express Lust, but these tend towards perversion. Going G@y or Tr@ns, Ped0ph!li@, etc.

As Jesus said in Matthew 5:28, Sin starts with Lust. Once Lust is established, it is still Sin, no matter how one acts on it while in this state of consciousness.

Conclusions

The challenge to the Christian man is to recognize the moment Lust begins to creep into his psychological paradigm and to respond by righting his spiritual posture. He must be aware of tempting situations, and avoid those specific media outlets, certain women, and men who would introduce temptation. He must be decisive and proactive in doing this, because it is too easy to be lulled into the comforts of fantasy and the stimulation of desire.

Readers are encouraged to share how they escape or deal with Lust.

Related