Explainer
Creed
Seven Deadly Sins
Sin
6 min read

Lust: disordered desire

In the fourth of a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, Belle Tindall explores how Lust minimises or sensationalises sex and desire.

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Illustration of Aubergine

In the Emmy-nominated HBO show, White Lotus, we’re introduced to three generations of a glamorous Italian-American family: F Murray Abraham, Michael Imperioli and Adam DiMarco play a grandfather, father, and son, two of whom are in an ever-present battle with a sex addiction. Lust has made a home in this family, it has dug out and paved its own neuropathways, and ultimately blown these people apart. Scene after scene, we witness these men pathologically view women as nothing more than bodies to conquer, much to their own despair. You could say that Lust is the unseen, unspoken, yet undeniable villain of the entire series. We witness it obliterate relationships of all kinds and ultimately make way for danger and death to ensue.  

It’s a masterful case-study in how destructive of a force Lust can be when left unchecked, not only to the objectified, but also to the one who can’t help but do the objectifying.   

I conducted a little experiment in preparation for writing this piece, I asked five friends of mine who would not, and never have, identified as Christians, for the three things that they most associate with Christianity.   

Out of those five people, four of them mentioned Christianity’s rather peculiar sexual ethics. Now, I know that as far as research goes, this isn’t the most scientific finding. But it is telling. An article on lust may just be the least surprising thing one could find on a magazine site that offers ‘Christian perspectives on just about everything’. In popular culture and common thought, Christianity is to sex is what Jamie Oliver is to sugary drinks: an almighty party-pooper, a tiresome force that is out to spoil everybody’s fun. That’s largely a result of Christian sexual ethics being reduced to a set of repressive ‘don’ts.’  

  • Don’t have casual sex, or any kind of sex outside of the confines of marriage, for that matter. 
  • Don’t watch pornography  
  • Don’t explore self-sex 
  • Don’t talk about it  
  • Don’t think about it  

Just don’t. 

As such, Christianity’s view of sex has been regarded as square or prudish at best, and oppressive and cruel at worst. And here you are, having stumbled upon an article which is about to place Lust back in its familiar old ‘deadly sin’ category. Ground-breaking, I hear you cry. 

Well, allow me the pleasure of beginning this piece by saying something that is less predictable: Lust is not interchangeable with sexual desire. The two are not one and the same.  

Sex is good. Very good, in fact.  

According to the book of Genesis, the book that acts as the Bible’s start-line, it is one of the first instructions ever given to humanity. It’s an apparent component of our purpose (pre- ‘original sin’, might I add). We’re told to go ahead and multiply, to increase in number, to have sex. But it doesn’t end there. If it did, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Bible presents sex in purely practical and procreational terms. But, not so. From one biblical poem to another – this time, the Song of Songs. This book is nothing short of erotic literature, it is a fully-fledged sex-scene. The composition and inclusion of this book speaks volumes, it does away with the notion that sexual pleasure and desire are some kind of inherent evil. On the contrary, if it’s a biblical perspective that you’re after, here it is: sex was designed by God and gifted to humanity. For procreation, yes. But also, for pleasure, intimacy, and well-being.  

So, in summary: sex is a gift, a very good one at that.  

With that firmly in mind, let’s return to Lust. If Lust is not sexual desire, per se, what exactly is it?  

It is a perception of sex, and a corresponding desire for it, that has been either minimised or sensationalised. Sex is a gift, that is the Christian insight at least, but Lust wants to blur your vision, it wants you to believe that sex is either more or less than a good gift. Lust seeks to disorder your desire.  
 

To only desire one third of a person, to regard them exclusively as a body, is to undermine their full personhood. 

The belief that sex is inherently meaningless, that it can be devoid of any kind of sacred or unique value, often acts as a wide-open door to Lust. It is also the predisposition that tends to normalise Lust, allowing it to hide in plain sight. That is, until it has damaged us and/or others. Lust tells us that we can obtain a person’s body, without paying any heed to the rest of them. It lessens them in our sight, it reduces them, it de-humanises them. This may sound a little dramatic, but if we are the sum of our bodies, our minds, and our souls – then to only desire one third of a person, to regard them exclusively as a body, is to undermine their full personhood.  

A more subtle, yet just as pervasive, form of a disordered sexual desire would be to regard sex as more than a gift, to sensationalise it, to mistake it for love. Lust’s other tactic is to suggest that sexual activity is tantamount to value. It seeks to convince us that to be sexually desired is to be appreciated, and being sexually active must equate to being actively loved. Lust wrongly offers us sex as a source of worth, affirmation, and significance. In such cases, we may not be regarding someone as a means to a physical end, so much as a means to an emotional one.  

Whether its tactic is to minimise or aggrandise, Lust whispers in our ear, encouraging us to regard another person as an object to possess, a tool of gratification. All the while, telling us that it doesn’t matter, because sex doesn’t matter.  

As is the case with all of the deadly sins, it’s not that you possess them, as much as they begin to possess you. Lust can be a demanding master, indeed. Insatiable, even. And indescribably harmful.

The demand for restraint on the part of the powerful, purely for the protection of the poor and the vulnerable was nothing short of jaw-dropping. 

Lust has much to answer for. In its darkest and most insidious extremity, often intertwined with toxic perceptions of power, Lust has led to atrocities being committed against people who were ever-so-wrongly treated as objects.  

There is a reason that Lust is regarded as ‘deadly’.  

Tom Holland recalls that in Graeco-Roman households, for example, it was utterly taken for granted that the bodies of enslaved people were objects to be possessed, owned, and utilised for physical gratification. In fact, Holland recounts how their bodies were spoken of in the same terms as urinals. People were regarded as nothing more than literal places/products for their masters to relieve themselves. 

When placed in this context, the sexual ethics that were being adopted by early Christians were radical, not square. The very idea that there was something morally good about standing up against the whisperings of Lust was unheard of. The demand for restraint on the part of the powerful, purely for the protection of the poor and the vulnerable was nothing short of jaw-dropping. Historians note that as the Christian movement began to bubble up, so did a rather radical sexual revolution.  

Not quite so Jamie Oliver-esque after all. 

This revolution was fuelled by the idea of imago Dei, the notion that every person was made in the very image of the one who did the making. Therefore, every person is worthy of being treated as such, of being afforded unconditional dignity and worth, of being acknowledged for the uniquely valuable individual that they are. It was also, in part, a defiant re-enchanting of sex; it was a bold reminder that sex was always supposed to be healthy, enriching and inherently good. That it is precious and fragile, and therefore needs to be guarded with the utmost care. Such notions leave very little room for the reductive tendencies of Lust. Christianity, in its very essence, wages a war on such things.  

This is not to say that Christians have won such a war, nor have they always fought this war well. To say so would be telling only half of the story, and do a significant disservice to those, for example, who have had shame heaped upon them in the name of purity culture (ironically, a culture which was/is also fuelled by reducing a person to the sum of their body parts).  

But the war itself is one that is still worth fighting, surely? For the sake of others, ourselves, and sex itself.  

 

Article
Character
Comment
Justice
Music
6 min read

A fan’s eye view of the fall of Sean Combs

We believed he was a good guy because we wanted to believe someone was

Giles Gough is a writer and creative who hosts the God in Film podcast.

Sean Combs sits on a golden couch.
Sean Combs, 2019.
Justiceonthebeat, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

As the weeks-long trial of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs draws to an end, the world at large has seen an insight into his life that we wish we hadn’t. Combs has just been convicted of transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs had pleaded not guilty and vehemently denied all allegations against him. 

Podcasters and influencers have kept us up to date with every twist and turn of the prosecution’s case, along with a jury member being dismissed and a bizarre visit from Kanye West. Trials of powerful, successful men (and it invariably is men) have become a semi-regular occurrence in the last few years. The #MeToo movement brought justice for victims of abusers like R. Kelly and Harvey Weinstein. But something about the Diddy trial feels different. For hip hop fans of a certain age, the accusations against Diddy were both shocking and hard to accept. Let’s take a deep dive into why that might be.  

For fans who are forty or older, one night looms large in the history of hip hop; the 1995 Source Awards, which distilled the entirety of the East/West coast beef into one evening. West coast rap music was in the ascendence, and New York, the birthplace of rap music and hip hop culture, was not coping with it very well.  

The atmosphere was further exacerbated when a red-shirted man, as big as a house and twice as broad, took to the stage. Marion ‘Suge’ Knight was the head of Death Row Records, a West coast label that had been hoovering up talent like Snoop Dogg, 2pac and Dr. Dre. Suge was an intimidating presence to say the least. His red shirt was a sign of his affiliation with the ‘Bloods’, the notorious L.A. street gang. It was an image of notoriety that Suge leaned into and it was well-earned. In his award acceptance speech, Suge said the most infamous lines he was ever to utter:  

“Any artist out there wanna be a’ artist, and wanna stay a star, and don't wanna – and won't have to worry about the executive producer try’na be all in the videos, all on the records, dancin’ – come to Death Row!” 

This was widely perceived as an attack against Sean Combs, ‘Puffy’ or ‘Puff Daddy’ as he was known back then. As the head of Bad Boy Records, Puffy was not content to simply be behind the scenes; he constantly interposed himself into the songs and videos of the musicians on his label. Whilst these interventions might seem annoying to some, the success that Bad Boy’s artists had achieved couldn’t be argued with, and as a New York native, the audience at the Source Awards saw Suge’s words as an attack on one of their own. So, when Puffy took to the stage later, a response to Suge’s barbs was hotly anticipated. 

But on that occasion, Puffy took a different approach. He acknowledged that he was the executive producer in question, and added: “contrary to what other people may feel, I would like to say that I'm very proud of Dr. Dre, of Death Row and Suge Knight for their accomplishments... and all this East and West [conflict], that needs to stop. So give it up for everybody from the East and the West that won tonight. One love.” 

In this interaction, we saw the aggressive antagonist Suge be met with nothing but love and respect from Puffy. It seemed like a refreshing antidote to the perception of rap music being only violent and misogynistic. Without wishing to overstate the point, Puffy showed that hip hop could be measured, mature and positive. This was an image that, until recently, had held for decades. Yes, there was a fair amount of hedonism thrown in to his public image, but that is priced-in to the cost of being a fan of famous rappers –the excess comes with the territory. For decades we have been dealing with this false dichotomy that Suge Knight was the ‘villain’, and Puffy was the ‘hero.’  

This image of Puffy as, at the very least, a decent man, was further underscored following the deaths of Tupac ‘2pac’ Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. aka Christopher Wallace. The murders of those two impossibly talented, painfully young men, less than a year apart, represent the point from which all other historical events are judged as ‘before’ or ‘after’. One of the things that came after was Puffy’s release of I’ll Be Missing You, a song in honour of B.I.G, his most popular artist and friend. Sampling The Police’s Every Breath You Take and featuring Biggie’s widow, Faith Evans, on the chorus, Puffy evoked explicitly biblical language with lines like:   

“It's kind of hard with you not around, / know you in heaven, smiling down / watching us while we pray for you / every day we pray for you.” 

These combined with the images in the video, hands in prayer, candles, children dressed in white all served as a fitting tribute. It could have been mawkish, but it met the moment and consolidated Puffy’s good guy image in our heads. We believed he was a good guy because we wanted to believe someone was. Other hits followed, with videos filled with shiny suits and relentless dancing; it was fun, and served as a counterbalance to the grit and grime of gangsta rap. For over two decades, Puffy, now going by ‘Diddy’, had an image that fans still associated with lightness and positivity. Critics like Murs from HipHop DX led conversations painting Diddy as the Superman to Dr. Dre’s Batman. Rumours about Diddy would occasionally surface, but without the mainstream media devoting much time to them, they were easily dismissed. That was until Cassie Ventura, Diddy’s ex-girlfriend, filed a civil lawsuit. 

If there are any lessons to be learned by his fans, they’re lessons that have sadly already been learned by fans of countless other powerful and successful men.

In late 2023, Cassie’s lawsuit accused Diddy of rape and sex trafficking. These allegations were explosive, but just one day later, both parties reached a settlement. The fire of Ventura’s accusations was dampened down by the release of the joint statement a day later. It seemed as if the whole thing was over and done with before many hip hop fans could even hear the news, let alone process it. Fans of Diddy clung to shreds of denial, whilst noticing that no-one else from the hip hop community seemed to be springing to his defence. Almost as if the people who knew him in person had a very different image from that of the persona he cultivated. 

But Cassie’s lawsuit was the first crack in the dam. Law enforcement agencies began investigating, Diddy’s property was raided and by the time CNN got their hands on the surveillance video of Diddy attacking Cassie, the dam had well and truly burst. The video from a Los Angeles hotel dated March 2016, shows Miss Ventura attempting to leave one of Diddy’s freak offs 'parties'. Only to have Diddy chase her down the corridor, grab her and violently assault her. Each kick, drag and object thrown at her slammed another nail into Diddy’s reputation. The ensuing apology he posted on his Instagram was completely invalidated by his earlier statement that his accusers were making false claims in search of a “quick pay day.”  

For those that loved Combs’ music and what it meant to us, it felt like something repellent had crawled into it and died, forever tainting those songs by association. If there are any lessons to be learned by his fans, they’re lessons that have sadly already been learned by fans of countless other powerful and successful men. Firstly, the more powerful a person is, the more they can hone and control their public image, and that they must be taken with a grain of salt. Secondly, always be ready to question a dichotomy. Is this really a hero versus a villain? Or in this case, an example of two demonstrably evil men, one with substantially better public relations.  

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