In love with lust

In Love With Lust

[source: tastytufts]

... and escape the corruption with which lust has infected the world

2 Peter 1:5

Jesus said: He who has known the world has found the body

Gospel of Thomas 80



Although I still don't own a TV and have therefore never watched a Big Brother show in its entirety, I do read voraciously and was horrified to read one time the suggestion that one of the Big Brother Africa contestants was very unpopular mainly because she refused to shower nude on the reality-TV programme. She was then expelled from 'the house'. I was saddened when I then went on to read that the woman apparently had no qualms at all about appearing naked but that Big Brother was simply "too cheap" for a brazen view of her buttocks: she would definitely expose all to a glamour magazine for the right price.

I still have the original reviews of the original Big Brother, and I was concerned about the approach even then. To my mind there is something inherently and fundamentally wrong with voyeurism, which is what Big Brother essentially panders to. Big Brother is only one step away -- and not such a big step either -- from watching child porn on the Internet and subscribing to 'snuff' movies, videos that record in chillingly graphic detail the mutilations, depravations and ultimate killing of many of the innocents who 'disappear' from our cities every day of every year. It seems to me that many, if not most, who watch Big Brother and other programmes like it are tuning in for a quick thrill, perhaps for private pleasure or maybe for something to talk about -- voyeurism makes no distinction between means and ends. Naturally, reality TV is only the logical extension of twenty years of soaps -- why pay writers to come up with lurid scripts when the real thing is possible?

There are many problems here. One is clearly the loosening of morals. Personally, I am glad that previously taboo topics like sex, violence and death -- especially when the three come together in situations such as domestic violence -- are more openly discussed today; but I am disconcerted that this more open discussion has brought along with it an atmosphere of acceptance. Hearing four-year-olds repeating the foul mouthings of the latest degenerate rapper is disconcerting; reading that incest and rape cases are increasing is disconcerting; knowing that so many children and teens have scant respect for their parents and elders is disconcerting. It seems that the more we talk about these problems, the more they are seen as part of the normal way of things, practices so everyday that to complain about them is seen as a waste of breath at best and preaching at worst. Illustrations of this so abound in our culture that they even turn up in popular songs: Tracy Chapman's Behind the Wall from a few years back and the more recent Eminem/Rihanna collaboration Love the Way You Lie are two examples that come quickly to mind.

Unfortunately, it also appears that we are not only unshockable these days, but are actively seeking some new outrage to talk about. Our appetites quickly become jaded. Things that shocked us a few years ago don't shock anymore and we desire to move onto something stronger. This is evidently an addiction; an addiction is something we can't do without.

If a desire controls us, it is properly called a lust and my contention here is that our mass-media displays all the symptoms of a lust that has infected the world. Reality TV may indeed be one of the most lucrative media innovations of the last few years, but that is simply because it provides a potent daily fix. Billions of people daily tune into a TV station or go online to get their needed rush, to try and satiate the restless lust that now consumes and controls them. Saying that people are addicted is an understatement; but unfortunately, even when some agree that they have an addiction, you find that talking about it doesn't really help -- especially when they realise that there are millions of others who share their same desire. If one of the soapie actors or Big Brother contestants confesses a weakness for kiddie porn, will viewers be outraged or sympathetic? My suspicion is that such a confession could actually improve the person's popularity. Other problems include the creation of instant celebrities (felebs, if they're on Facebook) and people being famous for the wrong reasons. Frankly, it's a wonder that David Simelane (Swaziland's very own serial killer) hasn't already sold his macabre story to an international tabloid, and the film rights to Hollywood.

[An earlier version of this article appeared in the Times of Swaziland Sunday on July 6th, 2003.]

Commentary on Thomas, Logion 87

Gospel of Thomas, Logion 87: Jesus said: ‘Wretched is the body that depends on a body, and wretched is the soul that depends on these two.’

Wretched is the body that depends on a body. We live in an age particularly obsessed with sex and bodily image. Millions of people believe that the only way to be happy and fulfilled is to be ‘in love’-- and by ‘in love’, they mean a physical relationship. This belief is supported by thousands of movies, millions of songs, and is all over TV and the global mass media. It fuels hundreds of businesses and ‘love gurus’ and ‘sex therapists’ and Freudian, neo-Freudian and non-Freudian psychotherapists.

Thousands of women--young and old--starve themselves on diets because they think their bodies are too fat. Fat is indeed a feminist issue. But we have other words as well: anorexia nervosa and obesity. And how much do we spend on creams and deodorants and all of the rest?

I also remember some years ago when an R n B star decided to pose for some nude photos in a major Hip-Hop magazine. I don’t know why she decided to do it, but I do remember observing a couple of schoolboys in Swaziland browsing through the magazine in a store in town. They were looking at the photos of the singer and commenting on her body as if it were a piece of meat. Which of course it is: our bodies are suits made out of meat.

A focus on the body as meat is the foundation of the multi-million-dollar porn industry.

But true love is beyond the body; true love is beyond the mind; true love is beyond physicality, in another area altogether.


Wretched is the soul that depends on these two. That is, wretched is the soul that thinks love is to be found in the sexual union of two bodies. We know all about rape and bestiality and ‘casual’ sex. Actually no sex is casual, but here we are concerned with love. Love transcends bodies because it is about energies--living, moving, fusing energies, kinetic energies, not the potential stored energy of bodies. Love is intimately connected with male and female, yes, but it is energies, not sexuality. And it is found in the place where male and female cease to exist, in the place where there is no longer male and female but a blurring of the two. This place, the place where there is a blurring of the two, is the concern of Logion 22:
‘Jesus said to them... you will make the male and the female into a single one, in order that the male is no longer male and the female no longer female... then shall you enter the Kingdom.’