FAMILY 06 – ATTRACTION
- Attraction is a common human reality. It simply shows you are alive. Attractions happen to unmarried and married persons alike.
- Most attractions lead nowhere, they are temporal, they come and go.
- Attraction itself is not sin. In Heb 4:15 it says about Jesus “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Clearly, then, temptation, like an attraction, is not sin in itself, tough yielding to it may be.
- Many attractions are to a person who is not an option > attractions like this must be ‘starved’. Example: being attracted to another person when already married, being attracted to a married person, a close relative, a same-gender person, a child, a non-believer > all these have no future. Their fulfillment would be immoral.
- Some attractions may have a future, that is: have a real possibility to lead to a marriage. The more hope you have for it, the more careful you need to treat it
- But what to do with attractions that are ‘not an option’?
Prv 5:1-14 warning against adultery
“Be attentive to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding, so that you may hold on to prudence. … Listen to me, do not depart from the words of my mouth. Keep your way far from the adulterous woman” (Prv 5:1-2, 5:7-8)
- A call to listen, to heed, to desire understanding, to be wise
“For the lips of a loose woman drip honey, … but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death …” (Prv 5:3-6)
- A vivid description of the contrast of appearance and reality.
“you will give your honor to others, and your years to the merciless, your labor will go to the house of an alien … I am at the point of utter ruin in the public assembly” (Prv 5:9,14)
- A vivid description of the contrast of appearance and reality.
- Consequences of adultery: shame & dishonor, hostility, economic loss, long-term
- Why only addressed to men? As Lev 18? Or: are only women seducers?
- Neither, God holds men and women equally accountable to law.
- Yet warnings are more frequently addressed to men. Why? Possibly because they are often initiators, are more (quickly) visually tempted, have stronger hormones, are often given more ‘freedom’ in the eyes of society, are often more powerful within the relationship
- This is a call to listen, obey reason, to be aware of the ‘pull’, to recognize the vast consequences, to choose well. That implies that:
> temptation is real & common to all humankind …God here gives 3 chapters to it
> temptation can be overcome, no ‘fatal attraction’, no ‘inescapable temptation’
> the heart & mind can and should rule the body
> don’t ignore or deny temptation, rather honestly & actively address temptation
> No endorsement of the dramatic ‘Can’t live without her so I’ll force her or kill her’ - How to resist temptation? “Keep your way far away…”
> be aware of the power of temptation, don’t think yourself ‘immune’, stay away
> there are many small choices on the road of ‘losing control’
> wise prior choices greatly reduce the amount of ‘pull’ or ‘temptation’
> don’t play games with your own mind. Carefully protect and prevent.
Prv 5:15-23 Warning against adultery / enjoying marriage
“Keep the commandment, bind them upon your heart, tie them around your neck … when you walk, they will lead you, will watch over you. For the commandment is a light … to preserve you from the wife of another.”
“I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you” (Psa 119:11)
- > to the degree I fill my mind with God’s word, to the degree I agree with him, to the degree I think like God … to that degree I will be able to resist temptation
- But the opposite is also true: “Do not desire her beauty in your heart … Can fire be carried in the bosom without burning one’s clothes?
- What do I let my heart & mind dwell on? … to the degree I feed myself on such thoughts, to that degree I will find myself unable to resist.
- The metaphor is powerful: fire cannot be carried ‘close’, it will burn everything. Do not fool yourself. Do not play games. It can’t be done. Protect yourself.
- To use another metaphor: pull up ‘the weeds’ while they are small, then it won’t be too hard or painful. If you wait and let them grow big and deeply rooted, it becomes harder and harder.
- You have to learn to resist temptation anyway, unmarried or married.
- Do not think this problem will go away when married. Also married people might find themselves attracted to people other than their spouse.
- But also: If you do not have self-control in a marriage, if you do not ‘prefer the another’, if you are selfish within marriage (Example: sex on demand), you will trouble and eventually destroy your marriage.
- Many spiritual leaders have fallen into the trap of adultery
- Do not say: “How can they?”. Rather say: “Where in my own heart are the beginnings of this same thing?” But yes, it’s disastrous when leaders sin:
“But he who commits adultery has so sense, he who destroys himself. His disgrace will not be wiped away. Jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, he shows no restraint when he takes revenge” (Prv 6:32-35)
- Adultery destroys, people, marriages, families, futures.
- Metaphor in Prv 7:1-27 > adultery = way to death
- Metaphor in Prv 23:22-28 > adultery = a deep pit, a narrow well
2 Samuel 13:11-16 An example of an attraction, lust and loathing
- Amnon, son of David, desires his beautiful half-sister Tamar. He dwells on it, feeds it and is wrongly supported by a scheming relative. Together they create a situation to make ‘things happen’
‘He took hold of her, and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.” She answered him, “No, my brother, do not force me; for such a thing is not done in Israel; do nto do anything so vile.” As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the scoundrels in Israel. Now therefore, I beg you, speak to the king; for he will not withhold me from you.” But he would not listen to her; and being stronger than she, he forcer her and lay with her.
Then Amnon was seized with a very great loathing for her; indeed, his loathing was even greater than the lust ha had felt for her. Amnon said to her, “Get out!” But she said to him, “No, my brother; for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other you did to me.” But he would no listen to her.’
- Tamar is respectful, wise and totally Biblical in her words to Amnon. He twice completely ignores her, rapes her and then rejects her.
- Lust turns into loathing, you cannot respect whom you can control. You cannot love whom you can force. Amnon doesn’t even attempt to take any responsibility for her, for his actions, for the situation he created. No attempt at fairness, no attempt at restitution (Deu 22:28-29 the man must pay the bride price, marry her and is not allowed to divorce her).
- David tragically does nothing to bring justice to this case (2 Sam 13:21), so Tamar lives as a desolate woman (2 Sam 13:20). Her brother Absalon silently feeds hatred in his heart (2 Sam 13:22) and eventually murders Amnon (2 Sam 13:28-29). Sin has run its full course to create destruction and death.
Matthew 5:28 Jesus on lust and adultery
‘But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
- Many people are discouraged by this verse, for no one can control his mind 100% of the time. So people feel defeated and have no hope that they will ever achieve this and so give up all together.
- How are we to understand this verse? Jesus says this to combat a self-righteous and overly self-assured attitude like that of the Pharisees, showing that God’s standard is so much higher than just ‘do not commit adultery’.
- Another point: Jesus says ‘whoever looks at a woman with lust’, or ‘whoever looks at a woman to lust after her’, meaning not a random glance or random thought, but an intentional action.
- Proverb: “You cannot prevent the birds of lust to fly over your head, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair.”
- In the same way a lustful thought may well cross my mind, but the question is what I do with it. Am I dwelling on it? Feeding it? Letting my thoughts go there? That means to set myself up for sin.
Watching mind & heart
(male) … so distracted visually (female) … so distracted being pretty
(male) … where do I put my eyes? (female) … where do I let my thoughts go?
(male) … a warning against looking (female) … a warning against daydreaming
(male) … stay away from pornography (female) … stay away from romances
- If we continue down the path of feeding lust, the problem is that we will ‘reduce everything to one thing’ until only one thing is left in our minds. The very influential (disastrous) German doctor Sigmund Freud maintained that sexual urge underlies and motivates all human behavior. If you believe that (and give your mind to that), it will be increasingly true in your case. But that doesn’t mean it has to be true for everybody. Rather: learn to be a true friend to people of both genders.
- Why did God create something so powerful, so dangerous as attraction?
- Well, what do you want? … either it’s a world with no temptation, no danger, no true ability to act, no choice and therefore no love
- Or it’s a world with temptation, with power to choose wrong, but where your action really means something, where there is risk, choice … where there can be love.
- Do we really want God to abolish love and human sexuality because it can be used wrongly? Actually everything can be used wrongly.
- C.S. Lewis in the book “the great divorce” addresses it in this way: Hoses are powerful … Learn to ride them!