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Photo by Toho Scope [CC BY-SA 2.0] |
Sabio Lantz (Triangulations) brings us one of many good passages from a book many Christians insist is "holy" to illustrate something relevant here: "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." This bit of "wisdom" is from Matthew 5:28 [NIV], and it gives us a good opportunity to ask ourselves a question we should probably raise more often: How would a Christian who really believed this behave? How similar is this to how most Christians behave now?
Adultery, if I am not mistaken, is supposed to be "sinful." In the bible, it probably carries some fairly severe punishments, both in this life and the next. And yet, it is fairly normal for healthy young heterosexual men to notice and even desire women they regard as attractive. What we have here looks an awful lot like Christian thoughtcrime. Thinking impure thoughts is equated with behavior. And that could mean that having such thoughts is more than enough to justify punishment.