Website owner: James Miller
On love and lust
I recently encountered the following sentence in a Spanish language workbook:
Don Juan tiene un anillo para su dedo y la luguria por su cuerpo.
(Don Juan has a ring for her finger and lust for her body.)
The sentence started me thinking. It refers to a phenomenon that is very universal in this world, a phenomenon that accounts for so much in life. It is very closely associated with that great romantic adventure called “love” that is so much celebrated in countless love songs in every culture and language. It refers to that powerful sexual desire that the male of a species can feel for a female and a female can feel for a male in that mechanism that nature has provided for the propagation of the species. It refers to definitions 2 and 3 of the following definition of love:
Def. Love. 1. A deep devotion or affection for another person or persons: love for one’s children. 2. A strong sexual passion for another person. 3. Sexual passion in general or the gratification of it.
Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary
It can be seen from this definition that the word “love” can have two very different and unrelated meanings. The love of definition 1 is a very different creature from that of definitions 2 and 3. It is regrettable that the same word is used for two such disparate phenomena. The result is a lot of ambiguity, nebulousness, confusion in thought, concept and language. Let us consider some other words closely related to the sexual passion referred to by definitions 2 and 3:
Strong sexual desire. Lust, desire, sexual passion, lasciviousness, lecherousness, licentiousness, sensuality, profligacy, dissoluteness, dissipation, debauchery.
Let us note that lust, lasciviousness, etc. is fundamentally selfish, self-interested, self-seeking. It is all about self, self-gratification, self-indulgence. There need be no real care or concern for the other person. It desires, it wants. It wants badly. And it will lie, cheat and steal to get what it wants. And what it wants is the other person’s body. Like Don Juan. And it just needs it for a short time. Just enough time to copulate. It has an urgent bodily need that it badly needs to gratify. It wants to “use” the other person for its own pleasure. It doesn’t have any special care for the other person or interest in him. It is interested only in his body. It just wants his body for its pleasure. Its interest in him is purely physical. It doesn’t care what kind of person he is in a moral sense. It doesn’t care about his character, what he is spiritually. Because it is fundamentally selfish, self-interested, self-oriented it is in the same category (from a Biblical standpoint) as such things as envy, jealousy, greed, pride, hatred, etc.. The Biblical outlook on it is that it is (along with envy, jealousy, greed, pride, etc.) serious sin. Lust, like envy, jealousy, greed, pride, etc. is an ugly demon that can take control of an individual, muddle his mind and good judgment, and wreak great havoc.
Let us now consider the type of love referred to in definition 1 above, the type of love exemplified by the love of a mother for her children. This kind of love has no sexual component. In contrast to lust it is kind, good, pure, selfless, self-sacrificing, self-denying, long-suffering, humble, sincere, honest, just, fair, thoughtful, patient. It is genuine, true friendship. It honestly cares. It is sympathetic, understanding, overlooking faults, failings and weaknesses. In the Biblical outlook, it is virtue of the highest order.
We have thus compared the two different kinds of love. How very different they are!
All these multitudes of illegitimate children being born today. It is all about lust. A male and female in high heat. No morality or self-discipline. Just high passion.
Jan 2015
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