It was shocking. A Baptist deacon running for president granted an interview to Playboy magazine.
This caused Jimmy Carter to blow an 18-point lead in the polls two months before the 1976 presidential election. Much of the U.S. population was still mad at President Gerald Ford for pardoning President Richard Nixon for the Watergate debacle. Still, Carter’s interview led to him winning by a mere 2.06%.
Despite his substantial lead, Carter granted the interview to Playboy to connect with — literally — the common man. Besides him granting the interview in the first place, the Christian community in particular became enflamed by Carter’s response to being asked if he ever had committed adultery.
Brad Bull
Carter’s answer alluded to a portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5:27-28: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Carter said he had “looked on many women with lust” and, thus, “committed adultery many times in my heart.”
That sounds like a pretty straightforward admission. However, while the incident created political problems for Carter, an arguably more significant impact has been the toxic guilt of those accepting his implied adulterated definition of lust. I mean, what if Carter had been asked about murder and had drawn from the earlier verses of Matthew 5:21-22? “I have been angry at people many times, so I’m guilty of murder.”
My seminary ethics professor said he could have saved Carter a lot of hassle by talking about what it actually means to lust in this context. Many people take “lust” to mean attraction, desire or merely thinking about having sex with someone. There’s a big problem with that. If we feel guilty about thinking about something, we’re in danger of throwing up our hands and throwing off our pants and saying, “Well, if I’m already guilty, I might as well enjoy it.”
No, lust isn’t just thinking about sex. The American Heritage Dictionary defines lust as “intense sexual desire” or “an overwhelming desire or craving.” The word “overwhelming” infers an impact on behavior.
“My seminary ethics professor said he could have saved Carter a lot of hassle by talking about what it actually means to lust in this context.”
Addressing the meaning in Matthew 5:28, Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers says: “The intent is more strongly marked in the Greek than in the English. It is not the passing glance, not even the momentary impulse of desire, but the continued gaze by which the impulse is deliberately cherished till it becomes a passion.”
The Pulpit Commentary asserts the Greek wording “primarily denotes purpose.”
We today can understand the issue to be “the intent to act upon desire.” As I once heard: “We can’t stop a bird from landing on our head, but we can stop it from building a nest.” Linking lust to intent helps us clarify a moral line.
Consider this illustration: Three people are admiring a painting in a museum. Person A thinks: “That is a beautiful painting. The security system here is outdated. I could come back here tonight and steal that painting. That would be fun, and I would love to hang that painting in my bedroom. I can see it.”
Person B and Person C have the same initial thought. However, unlike Person A, Persons B and C both resolve to actually come back and steal the painting. That night they leave their respective homes equipped to steal the painting. Person B badly twists an ankle and has to limp back home. Person C successfully steals the painting and mounts it in the bedroom back home.
Now, what’s the moral difference between these three observers of a painting? Which are you going to be all right with babysitting a child? One thought something but had the moral fiber not to act on it. Of the other two, the only difference is lack of success; the intent was the same.
Jesus wasn’t talking about passing glances or thoughts. He was talking about not splitting hairs between those who are brazen and succeed and those who would if they could.
The context comes from earlier in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:17 and 20 report Jesus saying, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. … For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Like the legal hair splitters of old, many modern legal systems like to focus on rote facts. Consider the difference between these two cases: With malice and aforethought, Person A shoots Person B in the back of the head and Person B dies; Person X shoots Person Y in the same way, but Person Y remarkably lives with no permanent injury (as happened to comedian Trevor Noah’s mother when a bullet went between her brain’s hemispheres). Simply because the victim doesn’t die in the scenario, the perpetrator is charged with attempted murder.
“Jesus was saying there is no moral distinction between the person succeeding in immoral behavior and the person who would succeed in it if they could.”
Jesus was saying there is no moral distinction between the person succeeding in immoral behavior and the person who would succeed in it if they could. As the adage goes, “Character is what you do when no one is watching.” This raises the bar for the goal of moral maturity.
By contrast, equating mere thought with intent bogs us down in the very oppressive hyper-legalism from which the gospel of Jesus offers liberation. Jesus healed a person and led his disciple to pluck and eat grain on the sabbath. This got the legalists all bent out of shape. But Jesus said to chill out.
While we can thank Jimmy Carter for most things he did in public life, we need to free our minds from the oppression of Orwellian thought police. Still, we do need to follow Paul’s charge to “be transformed by the renewing of the mind.” That goal involves refining thinking processes that cross the line to intent — even if we wouldn’t get caught.
A scene in the movie City Slickers gloriously captures this. Billy Crystal’s character Mitch is asked if he would have sex with the most beautiful woman in the world if he knew his wife never would find out. Mitch says, “I would know, and I wouldn’t like myself.”
Mitch could not have had the conversation about adultery without thinking about it. Having thought about it, he chose not to pursue it — even if he wouldn’t get caught. That is the kind of moral maturity Jesus called people to fulfill.
Brad Bull earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Carson-Newman University, a master of divinity degree in pastoral counseling from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in child and family studies from the University of Tennessee. He has served as a hospital chaplain, pastor, professor and therapist.