Lust as Justifier

The fact is there are a lot of fine looking women who come to a coffee shop. In the morning, when they step in our store, they have probably just finished putting the finishing touches of makeup and hair spray. Speciality coffee being a niche business, these women are usually educated and well off. They are typically dressed very professionally, but still feminine, in their tight, black suit. I’ve got to stop thinking about it.

Needless to say, our male customers (and employees) can’t help but notice these beautiful women. It’s no surprise to you that comments about these women are inevitable- even if they aren’t audible.

Why do we do this? We’re not telling these women how we feel- so what do we hope to accomplish? Why do we talk about these beautiful women with our guy-friends?

There are a couple of reasons we do this- all having to do with justification.

First of all, men approach women different than women approach men. In my experience, men think of women as something to conquer. When we have objectified a women by lusting over her like this, she becomes a possession that we might be able to attain. Why do we want her, then? Because, we think, if we can get her, we must be good. There’s no difference between this and a customer who drives up to the coffee shop in their Hummer. Why do they need such a hearty vehicle- especially since the typical Hummer can’t preform like a military one? It’s all about status- “Look how great I am. You can tell by my car! I’m rich and I’ve earned it. Now you owe my respect.” We think if we could have this or that women, others would respect me too.

It isn’t necessarily only about getting others respect. Sometimes self-respect is more important. We think, “if she will have me, I could then live with myself.”

The other reason we lust after people is because of our context. I am primarily talking about married men, here. The fact is, marriage is hard. Conflict with our spouse challenges our righteousness every time. We can answer this righteousnes-deficiency in a couple of ways: we can turn to Christ for his sufficient righteousness available to us by faith or we can find another false-righteousness that we can earn ourselves. Faith is hard, so we often resort to the false-righteousness that holds big promises, but never satisfies (which is why we are always trying to find another source of righteousness). Sometimes, this false-righteousness is in the form of another women. We think, “This woman would never think about me like my wife said last night.” Or, we can build our false righteousness by cutting down our wife by saying, “She isn’t as [insert favorite, critical adjective] as my wife.” This is made even more complicated when we actually know the object of our lust, and start to compare our wife with her.

The problem with this is context. Specifically, we don’t have the context with the object of our lust that we do with our wife. If we actually had the same context with the object of our lust that we have with our wife, we’d probably be seeking another person to justify us. To put it simply, if we had to live with the other for as long as we have lived with our wife, whether or not she was as [insert favorite, critical adjective] as our wife, we will probably find out that she is more [insert another derogatory adjective] than our wife. More than that. If we were to spend more time with the object of our lust, whether or not we would hear them say we are [insert wife's favorite critical noun], they would probably have other criticisms of us as well.

The problem is that we are trying to prove ourselves as right with something that can never make us right. Avoiding the one who is challenging our righteousness by lusting after another who seems to make us righteous won’t help us become righteous. The only true source of righteousness for us is Christ, who not only died for our unrighteousness but was raised again for our justification. Once we trust in this, we won’t have to build a false, self righteousness by lusting.