Lust and Original Sin

What does it mean to look lustfully at a woman? In what does the evil of lust consist? Where did lust come from? While the apostle John does not explain what lust is in itself, he nonetheless indicates its origin. Lust, St. John says, “is not of the Father but is of the world” (1 Jn. 2:16-17). Lust is not the fruit of the mystery of creation. It is the result of man’s Fall, springing up in man’s heart as a result of original sin. It resulted from our broken covenant with God. Because of sin, the “world” which, in creation, was originally good, became the “the place and source of lust.” Because of sin, the “man of innocence” becomes the “man of lust.”

In what does original sin, the origin of lust, consist? Sin fundamen-tally was the breaking of the Covenant when man radically questioned the Gift of creation and the Divine Love from which it sprang. Recall that creation is fundamentally a gift, an act of radical giving on the part of the Father who is Love. Original sin, says John Paul II, was “the questioning of the Gift and of the Love, from which creation has its origin as donation.”

Yielding to the suggestions of the tempter, Adam and Eve made a “fundamental choice” against the will of God-Yahweh. Questioning in their hearts if creation really is an act of God’s love, they turned their backs on the Father and cast Him out of their hearts, detaching and almost cutting themselves off from what “is of the Father.” Thus, what remains in them is what is “of the world.” The Covenant of love into which man and woman were invited by God to enter as “partners of the Absolute” was broken in their hearts.

Lust, says our Catechism, “is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated for its procreative and unitive purposes.” (CCC, 2351) Lust is evil because it reduces the person to a mere object of one’s selfish sexual gratifi-cation. Because of lust man looks at a woman merely as a sexual object to be used and enjoyed, not a person to be respected and loved for his or her own sake. It reduces the body of the other person to a mere object of sexual enjoyment, not as an expression of his or her person, created in the image and likeness of God. Lust distorts and is blind to the nuptial meaning of the body.