Am I Missing Something Here?

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What qualifies as ‘lust’? I know that things like deliberately thinking about sex, etc., is wrong, but what about looking a girl and finding her attractive? Is there any way of telling? It seams like people are hardwired to be attracted to opposite sex, it this lust? :confused:
 
Lust is the desire to use someone else for sexual pleasure, or deriving willful arousal from them. Finding someone attractive isn’t lust. Thinking about how much you’d want to have sex with them is.
 
Pure and OK: Wow, that girl is is really pretty! God makes amazing creations!

Lustful and sin: Wow, look at her… man, the things I would do… insert nsfw content here
 
HGF said:
What qualifies as ‘lust’? I know that things like deliberately thinking about sex, etc., is wrong, but what about looking a girl and finding her attractive? Is there any way of telling? It seams like people are hardwired to be attracted to opposite sex, it this lust? :confused:
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No.
Your will has to be employed in a disordered way. If you see an attractive woman and appreciate her beauty that is one thing. If you then choose to dwell on her, stare at her, or go home and pursue it further, then you are venturing off.
In well ordered sexuality, your will and actions are ordered chastely.
In lust, your will and actions are ordered toward ideas and actions that are not chaste.

Chastity is the proper integration of sexuality within the whole person, for the true good of the person and others. Chaste sexuality is ordered toward the goods of marriage (or other states of life…long discussion). Lust is not.
 
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No! If looking at women and finding them attractive were sinful I’m sure that heaven would be filled with women and hell would be full of men. Admiration is fine, just don’t make it sexual.
 
Any sexual arousal outside marriage which is deliberately intended or voluntarily consented to is a grave sin of lust. Placing oneself in proximate danger of consenting to illicit arousal, without a proportionately grave reason and proper safeguards, is also gravely sinful. So too is placing oneself in a situation or performing an act which by its nature tends to induce great sexual arousal, unless it has little effect on you or there is a proportionately grave reason. Otherwise, engaging in acts which cause sexual arousal, without intending the arousal or consenting to it, is a venial sin, unless there is a just cause.
 
So, if I am in a situation that I be become aroused, but know I won’t take any pleasure in it, is that a sin?
 
Is this in the catechism > Placing oneself in proximate danger of consenting to illicit arousal, without a proportionately grave reason and proper safeguards, is also gravely sinful.
 
HGF said:
So, if I am in a situation that I be become aroused, but know I won’t take any pleasure in it, is that a sin?
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Strictly speaking, spontaneous arousal is not sinful. However, practically speaking, I doubt if arousal happens spontaneously very often. You usually have to entertain lust for arousal.

Lust is connected to other sins. Pride especially. It sounds like you are obsessing a little over the legalities of sexuality. Don’t do that. Know the rules, and go out to help others. Don’t make your struggle with lust the whole focus of your spiritual life. If you do, it is by definition enslaving you.

Chastity means the proper integration of sexuality in a whole person, which goes beyond knowing the rules to make morality fruitful for others.
 
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goout said:
Strictly speaking, spontaneous arousal is not sinful. However, practically speaking, I doubt if arousal happens spontaneously very often. You usually have to entertain lust for arousal.
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been to a beach in the past year? what passes for a bathing suit these days…
 
Been to a high school in the US lately? There’s less clothing reach year, and what is there gets tighter and smaller. I dare say that public education is becoming a near occasion of sin.
 
Capta(name removed by moderator)rudeman said:
No! If looking at women and finding them attractive were sinful I’m sure that heaven would be filled with women and hell would be full of men. Admiration is fine, just don’t make it sexual.
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Hmm… It’s a slippery slope. The person is admiring beauty one moment, then lusting the next. I think it was saint Francis of Assisi who didn’t look at women directly for fear of lust. Something to think about…
 
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I mean, he was also a priest and not a hormonal teenage boy. I think it’s best to never look below the shoulders and then you should be fine.
 
Essentially it’s a matter of the interior.
Women are not sex objects, so don’t think of them like that.
Beauty is not only a sexual thing, and attraction can mean something much more than mere base desires.

Do not will to think in a way that treats them as though they were sex objects; do not will to think in any way that is arousing.

Do this not in a form of keeping things at bay, but in a way of letting love, true love, come forth and fill your being.
 
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Just be careful not to get to DEFCON 1. That will cause the cover on your missile silo to open.
 
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