Articles
Lust Objectifies
Lust turns people into objects. When we lust, people are no longer people. They have no feelings, no personality, no dreams or goals in life, no value, and no soul. They exist for no other purpose than to please me, and then I can throw them away when I’m done with them. In 2 Samuel 11, when David lusted after Bathsheba, he didn’t care that she had a husband. He didn’t care how such unfaithfulness would make her sin before God. He didn’t think of the shame of Bathsheba bearing a child by a strange man. He didn’t care about how she would feel after losing her husband in battle. In the heat of his lust, Bathsheba was an object, not a person. So it was with David’s son Amnon and his sister Tamar. Amnon could not have cared less about the horror, trauma, and shame it would bring on Tamar to be violated and defiled by her own brother. After using her, Amnon sent her away, locked the door behind her, and left her mourning and wailing in her own disgrace. She was just an object to him with no feelings (2 Sam. 13:11-19).
Solomon knew the adulterous woman was an objectifier too, so he warned his son that she would not care about him. “For on account of a harlot a man is reduced to a crust of bread.” (Proverbs 6:26). She doesn’t love you. She has prepared her bed while her husband (whom she also doesn’t love) is away. You are her prey. You are her object. When you follow her, you may have momentary pleasure, but “many are the victims she has cast down, and numerous are all her slain” (Prov. 7:26).Some think pornography is harmless to others. Sure, we know what Jesus says about lust in Matthew 5:28, but that’s between me and God, right? It doesn’t affect other people, does it? WRONG. There is a reason pornography destroys marriages and keeps many single people single. It destroys relationships with every person in our lives because it perverts our view of relationship. To have real relationship, we must love people. Yet pornography turns people into objects with no feelings. That’s why husbands and wives who watch pornography become self-centered, they don’t listen, they don’t know how to empathize with real human emotion, nor do they care to. There is no emotion, no humanity, no real relational connection in pornography. Relationship is sexually objectified, and people given over to lust are divorced from reality. Those addicted to porn hurt the people they “love” all the time and don’t even realize it. Thus, they are isolated, lonely, with no real relationship except the ones they keep trying to find with the “people” on the TV or computer screen, and their world crashes in around them. It’s why they lose spouses, children, brethren, and, most importantly, they lose their relationship with God. Pornography and lust bring people to a world God never created, where man is always alone, and where there can be no love because love is found in people, not objects.
