Lust Series

Don’t turn tempter

Even as we try to arm ourselves against temptation, we need to make sure that we don’t become tempters ourselves. Jesus warns: “Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!” (Matthew 18:7). Here are a few things we can do to protect others. Dress modestly. Avoid foul language and coarse humor. Don’t be too touchy-feely in your contacts with members of the opposite sex. Avoid the subject of sex in conversation and in correspondence. Be cautious about the type of eye contact you make. Pray.

The Virtue: Chastity

Newspapers recently reported a thirteen year old East Sussex schoolboy as Britain’s youngest father. Alfie Patten made his girlfriend Chantelle Steadman pregnant when she was 14 and he was just 12. It shocked everybody in England (and hopefully everybody everywhere else) but should it really have come as a surprise?

We live in a culture where virtues are universally resented, and chastity is perhaps the one resented the most. It is not seen as something that is good, noble or life-giving, but is portrayed, rather, as something that is harmful! The reasoning is that since sexual desire is natural, it is bad to restrict it in any way. Another argument is that chastity is the enemy of love. If two people love each other they should be able to express that love. It all sounds reasonable enough on the surface, until we examine what love itself is, and how it relates to sexual desire.

Karol Wojtyla, in the book Love and Responsibility that he wrote before he became Pope John Paul II, says that one of the main reasons we view chastity with such suspicion is because we associate love primarily with the emotions or the sexual pleasure that we receive from a member of the opposite sex. “Such emotions,” he writes, “give love a ‘relish’, but do not always contain its objective essence, which is inseparable from reciprocal affirmation of the value of the person. It is impossible to judge the value of a relationship between persons merely from the intensity of their emotions. The very exuberance of the emotions born of sensuality may conceal and absence of true love, or indeed outright egoism. Love is one thing, and erotic sensations are another.

“Love develops on the basis of the totally committed and fully responsible attitude of a person to a person; erotic experiences are born spontaneously from sensual and emotional reactions.”

While sensual desires and love are not mutually exclusive, these responses do not represent love itself. What does represent love is a desire to do what is best for another person and the desire to help the other person pursue what is best for them. When we give in to sensual desire, we are often so thrilled by the pleasure that we obtain, that we are tempted not to follow through and grow in real love. Many people get stuck here and never experience the deeper meaning of real love. As the intensity of such emotions can’t be sustained over a period of time, the feelings of “love” that one professes to feel begin to diminish, with the result that one begins to seek someone else to provide the thrill of the sensual and emotional experience.