Nobody wanted to pose for Lust. Not at first, anyway! There is something about sex-related sin that has a special stigma even in our over-sexualized North American society. Finally a fellow named "KM" allowed me to take photos of him for this series. This fellow is a family man, and has one of the better marriage relationships that I know of. So "lust" was a little hard for him to do. We had to use the review mode on the digital camera to view the photos as we took then, in order to move a little closer, with each picture taken, to this final pose. It was the low-browed eyes and the tongue pushing out the bottom lip that did the trick. KM, by the way, works in a psychiatric prison, and much of his work has to do with inmates who were convicted of sexual offenses. Go figure!
The Sin
The modern Church's view is that we fall victim to "lust" when we express our sexuality outside the context of heterosexual marriage. But the Latin word for lust was "luxuria", and the sin it described wasn't specific to sexuality but to sensuality. Luxuria was an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body, and it was a sin because of its dulling effect on the spiritual senses.
Lust, as we moderns see it, seeks to consume another person's sexuality and to treat it as a commodity and an object whose sole purpose is to meet one's carnal (fleshly) desires.
Those who lust also treat their own sexuality as something that is independent from their spirits. What they do with their bodies, they believe, will have no effect on their souls. Indeed, this has proven to be a dangerous and costly error in our society, the consequences of which are displayed for us on TV, in magazines and newspapers, which chronicle the results of adultery, fornication, rape, sexual abuse in homes and residential schools and promiscuity among our youth.
The power to tempt us to lust lies in hiding the consequences of lust from us. It is said that "Sin will take you where you don't want to go, keep you there longer than you wish to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay." This maxim applies ever so well to this particular sin.
Our sexuality is such an important component of our humanity and a powerful means by which God seeks to bless us, but only if we choose to abide by His commandments for the proper enjoyment of it. Apart from God's way, lust becomes one of the most destructive of the deadly sins, in human terms.
