For this command is a lamp, this teaching is a light, and correction and instruction are the way to life, keeping you from your neighbor’s wife, from the smooth talk of a wayward woman. Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes. (Proverbs 6:23–25)
ADULTERY AND THE EMPTY HEART. Verse 25 tells us not to “lust in your heart after . . . beauty.” To lust is to crave as an empty stomach craves food to fill it. Lust, then, is imagining that someone’s beauty will bolster your flagging self-esteem. If our ego is like an empty stomach we will not be able to resist, we will be “captivated.” And yet this biblical text assumes that we can control what happens in our hearts. Tell yourself that lust desires to take, while love wants to give. Remember that lust is something you are doing for yourself—because of how it will build you up. Love, however, is a desire to serve someone else. If you are tempted to commit adultery, there is some kind of emptiness that you must turn to God to fill. Mere stoic self-control won’t be enough.
Reflection: In light of this, what is the appeal of pornography? How can it be resisted?
Prayer: Lord, “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” (Augustine, Confessions 1:1). Let us rest in your love so that we do not lust after the beauty of anything else. Amen.