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
Creed
Death & life
Easter
Film & TV
9 min read

Harry Potter and the mysteries of death

Horcruxes and our digital consciousness

Jonathan is a priest and theologian who researches theology and comedy.

Hermoine rests her head on the shoulder of Harry Potter.
Harry and Hermione at the grave of his parents.
Warner Bros.

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with some friends that has stuck with me. One of them is a palliative care doctor, and we were discussing medical trends which seek the extension of life at all costs. My friends are Jewish, and we as were comparing religious notes, it was unsurprising that they asked me: "well what do Christians think about death?" 

I replied, without really thinking: "Well, death is the enemy that is defeated." Somewhat to my surprise, their response was quite negative. "Oh, I don't like that idea. That pushes us towards denying our mortality, and trans-humanism, and the inability to let aged relatives go. We need to become better at welcoming death, at recognising it as part of our humanity." 

And as I groped to try and explain why that wasn't quite what I meant, the best analogy I could find for articulating what Christians think about death came from Harry Potter. And in the years since that conversation, it is still the best analogy that I can find to talk about mortality. 

So, here is the version of what I wish I had said. 

The Harry Potter books have many themes, but above all they are about death. That may sound unlikely for a series of books apparently aimed at children, but the evidence stacks up... 

The main character is an orphan, and the majority of people he comes close to will die across the seven books. (Now seems as good a time as any to mention that the rest of this article will basically all be spoilers, so maybe stop now if you've been putting off reading the books for the last 20 years. I'm also going to assume you are at least reasonably familiar with the plot). 

Harry's life is defined by the death of his parents and his own close shave with mortality as a baby, and as the books continue the body count gets almost ludicrously high. 

Indeed, the author J.K. Rowling has said that Harry is "the prism through which I view death in its many forms." 

Unsurprisingly, given how central the theme is, there is a certain amount of explicit reflection on death, even if it is somewhat vague. Thus, we find that: "to the well organised mind, death is but the next great adventure." Dying hurts not at all, but is "quicker and easier than falling asleep." Those who die can "go on," perhaps by "boarding a train." 

If all of this sounds a touch sentimental and the sort of thing that might appear in bad funeral sermons, it is paired with descriptions of grief that are visceral and deeply moving. (I may have cried more than once whilst doing the "research" for this article). 

But where the discussion of death gets really interesting, at least to me, is in the plot, and the metaphysics that underpins it. By metaphysics I just mean the whole picture of the structure of reality that makes the world of Harry Potter work. 

And in this metaphysics we find that death is indeed an enemy. This becomes clear partly through the sheer excruciating depiction of loss that runs through the books - how could something that causes this much pain be anything but an enemy? - but in book seven it is also made explicit. 

In one of my favourite moments of the whole series, Harry stands before his parents' gravestone, and reads the epitaph: 

'"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death"... A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. "Isn't that a death Eater idea? Why is that there?" 

"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," said Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means... you know... living beyond death. Living after death."' 

In Harry and Hermione's reaction to the quote on his parent's tombstone we find that there are multiple ways for death to be an enemy. 

The Deathly Hallows sounds eerily like a current technological advancement: the rising trend of griefbots.

Book seven, in fact, presents three ways to defeat death, and they are highly illuminating. 

Firstly, there are Horcruxes. This is Voldemort's project for immortality: the division of his soul via murder and the darkest magic, and the implantation of those parts of the soul into objects which guarantee that, even should he die, he will live on.  

This is, I think it's fair to say, not a vision of the death's vanquishing which the books present as appealing - Voldemort is the darkest wizard of living memory, and the creation of his Horcruxes takes him deeper into evil than anyone has ever gone. Yet it has strange parallels to various current attempts at death defiance. Dividing your soul up and placing it in objects sounds pretty similar to me to uploading your consciousness into a computer. 

Now I'm not saying that all transhumanists are evil wizards whose projects rely on murder, but I do wonder if the same impulse lies behind Horcruxes and downloaded consciousness. 

There is, in both, the same fear of death, the same refusal to accept that my life might end. And there is the same default assumption that the body doesn't really matter - that the centre of my being is somewhere else, and that I can separate it from this inconvenient vessel which is so subject to injury and decay. The inevitability of bodily death is acknowledged, but life can go on even if my body fails, because I can place myself into objects. What matters is my consciousness, and that can be made eternal. 

The second option is a little more complex: the Deathly Hallows. These are three strange, mysterious objects, possession of which promises to make the bearer "master of death." The wand that gives murderous power. The stone that brings back the dead. The cloak that conceals. 

The Hallows dress up their promise in esoteric garb - they offer a quest for the initiated that requires a certain embrace of mystery, and they certainly seem friendlier than Horcruxes, since no one has to die to make them.  

But in the end, as Dumbledore admits, they are not really that different from the Horcruxes, for those who seek them also respond to the temptation to defy death, just like Voldemort. And if Horcruxes are about preserving the soul in the face of the inevitability of bodily death, the Hallows tease the possibility of avoiding death altogether, through the exercise of power. 

The wand gives the power of invincibility and conquest: the avoidance of death through the murder of all who might threaten to kill. 

The cloak gives the power to hide, to keep out of trouble, to evade death by escape. 

And the stone? The stone overcomes the loss of death by bringing its victims back, by refusing to accept that those we love might leave us.  

Again, the Deathly Hallows sounds eerily like a current technological advancement: the rising trend of griefbots. There is the same attempt to respond to grief by clinging to simulations of those whom we mourn, and the same despair at the end of the line. For the dead do not belong with the living, we are told, and legend has it the first owner of the stone was driven to suicide. 

The Hallows attempt to deny death through power, and this is why Dumbledore found them so alluring, and so destructive: they promised to wind back his own loss while giving him the victory he thought would give his life meaning. 

And yet, in reality, even when Harry unites them all, they don't give what they promise. Indeed, they only work to their full power when they are used for humbler ambitions: to hide friends from danger, to perform wondrous magic without boasting in the glory of the wand, or to face death with the comforting presence of those who have gone before. 

For the stone only becomes available to Harry when he finally embraces the third way to defeat the death. The way his parents believed in.  

Death, in the Potter books, is defeated by dying. Or perhaps more specifically, by dying for love - love of children, love of friends, love of a world gone tragically wrong.  

Harry's mother protected her son from dying multiple times, through the power of her sacrificially loving surrender. Dumbledore, in a complex way, protects Malfoy and saves the Elder Wand from Voldemort, thereby protecting the whole wizarding world, through his voluntary death. Even Snape, in the bitterest and most twisted story of them all, ends up giving Harry what he needs to win and finding a measure of redemption, in and through his own murder. 

And, in the climax of this long, convoluted story, Harry avoids death by going willingly to die. Because he loves his friends. Because he hates others dying for him. Because he recognises the terrible duty he faces, the terrible path Dumbledore has laid out for him, and he loves too much to run. 

Voldemort is wrong. Love does conquer death. 

The parallels to the Christian vision of death are stark. The quote on the tombstone which sparks these reflections for Harry (and for me) is in fact from the Bible. "The last enemy that shall be defeated is death" is a profoundly Christian idea. 

Yet my friends were right to react negatively to what they thought I meant by death being an enemy. 

For, just like the good guys in Harry Potter, Christians have traditionally been suspicious of attempts at immortality on our own terms. The Bible, I would suggest, knows nothing of a technological defeat of death, whether through downloading our consciences, or radical life extension, or technologies of power. Death cannot be staved off by any of our own work. 

But this does not mean that death is a good thing, simply a part of human existence which we would do well to welcome and learn to get along with (though I do think we would do better to think about death more, and be more honest about its existence).  

Death is an enemy. It is the final enemy. We are right to rage against it. To grieve those whom we lose. To feel its existential weight. 

Yet, perhaps paradoxically, we should not fear it. For death is an enemy that has been vanquished, but vanquished through Jesus' death.  

Immortality is not, for Christians, something we achieve, but something that is given to us. We believe in the Saviour who dies, and who rises again, and in whose resurrection, as strange as it may sound, we also will be raised. Death is defeated by love, but it is not our love, it is God's love for us. 

This gift, according to the early Christian writers, can only be received by going through death, not by avoiding death. Indeed, Paul's letters, which make up most of the New Testament, are full of the insistence that the pattern of Christian life is always death first, then life. Death in baptism, to new life in Christ. Death to sin, to life in freedom. Bodily death, to bodily resurrection. 

And so, what I should have said to my friend, is that Hermione is right. Death is the final enemy to be defeated, but this does not mean the ways of the Death Eaters. It does not mean projects of immortality, whether rooted in science, or a mystery cult, or power over others. 

Rather it means it life after death - a life that is given to us, by our saviour who has been through death and defeated it. 

Death is the enemy but it is not our enemy to defeat. That victory was won for us, on Easter Sunday 2000 years ago, in a cemetery near Jerusalem, when Jesus rose again. 

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