Matthew 5:28
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
Discuss.
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Once again the Prophet David has given us a great insight!
More evidence that the early apostles were gay.
This is WHY the Church, with its requirement that priests be or at least behave as homosexuals, wanted to demean the “old testament.” Can you imagine the prophet Samuel telling King David such a thing?
Some truths are obvious.
I am that I am.
Jimmy Carter was right!
Misogyny and general hatred/fear of sexuality lies at the heart of the control exerted by ‘the Church’.
Convincing people that a basic human sensation – sexual pleasure – is in fact evil has been one of the most ghoulish, and effective, acts of manipulation perpetrated by organized religion.
Held up as paragons of virtue are the church fathers – as Maher put it, to paraphrase, are a bunch of elderly male virgins who go do work in dresses. Or a pedophile cult run by an ex-Nazi.
It’s similar to the Republican trick getting poor and uneducated and resentful to vote against their interests – the Institutional Church telling people that the being they are is inherently evil and flawed – and at the heart of that is their evil sexuality, particularly women’s sexuality.
They have built an edifice of fear and self-loathing as a means to control people, to convince them that the only way to wash away the stain – the concept of Original Sin – is to do what the institution says. To prostrate themselves before The Church – it all flows from there.
The focus on women is telling as well. In this passage, the woman is object (surprise, surprise), but women in general are seen in these organizations as either possessions needing protecting, or sluts as the source of sin (Eve gave Adam the apple after all). Part of the Limbaugh schtick is to tap into a very deep vein of this in our culture. But it is seen elsewhere as well – the second class citizenship of Catholic women, the segregation and covering and controlling seen in this tradition and others – obvious among the Orthodox Jews and Muslims alike.
The sooner we throw aside the shackles of this mythology and superstition, and base our actions and societal institutions on reason and mutual respect and the well being of all, the sooner we’ll begin to engineer a healthy and joyful society.
@3 lib sci
You are so full of anti Christian hate that truth escapes like steam from a broken radiator and burns the mechanic ……….
Tell that to the authors of the Lama Sutra or the priestesses of Isis or the celebrants of Dionysius.
What BS. The Jewish people have had numerous national leaders who were women .. from Devorah to Golda. All Israelis recite the words of the grat hero Hannah Senesh. Here in the the US, Jews have been led by Emma Lazarus, Barbara Boxer,
You REALLY ought to keep your bias against Christianity away from judging others’ beliefs in Me!
I am that I am.
@4
Piffle, Steve.
I knew the line linking Jews and Muslims and Christians in all of their misogynistic tendencies would get your goat.
Relevance, please?
Goody for them, however the women bus riders in Jerusalem had better watch out for the “Modesty patrols”…from Haaretz:
And you know as well as I that this is not an isolated incident, God (rolls eyes).
Do you need links for Muslim women in Burkhas? Catholic woman disenfranchised from their church?
All of these institutions, yours included, trade on the oppression of woman, and act our of fear/repugnance of their sexuality and control of their fertility. Need I remind you of this image, where I see at least two, possibly three, Roman collars and one yarmulke in the mix.
No, Steve, just indicting the anti-sex, anti-woman, anti-reason aspects of our more common forms of institutionalized mythology.
BTW, and very slightly off topic, Hunter over at dailykos as an excellent diary regarding climate deniers wrapping themselves in God’s protective and supportive words.
An excellent read, as usual.
Steve, could you direct me to any local houses of worship for either of these deities?
Hatred of Christians is a Progressive Value here at HA.
If Goldy’s weekly hate thread, and most of the above post, were directed at any other group, they would be labeled as racist, homophobic, or some other title of hatred against others.
And sorry, the attempt to cover it up under the veil of politics, is an epic fail.
Oh, my, the poor, poor abused Christian victims. They’re so put upon, have no access to power or advancement, mistreated at every turn. Oh, the humanity!
No, Bruce Wayne, just indicting the anti-sex, anti-woman, anti-reason aspects of our more common forms of institutionalized mythology.
Changed moniker in solidarity with sluts everywhere!
@9
Nice try at justification. I think Hitler and the KKK, among others, also used the same tactic.
You seem to be in good company.
Funny how the haters always seem to fall back on some sort of reasoning that makes their hatred “logical” and justified.
I’m out, final period of the Bruins game is on.
Godwin, oh Godwin, where art thou?
Lib Sci ..
Why did you you address me? With Daylight savings time, I just got up!
I will leave God to say what she wants, but as for me …I think your conflation of Roman Christianity with other religions is all to typical of small c christianity. Western society uses this brush to paint everyone else’s religions and cultures.
I think you “non” christians ought to keep your bigotry closer to home.
As a Jew, I do not see religion as you do. There are good ones and bad ones. Religions and religious affiliations are no different then any other human organizations …
Would you blame the girl scouts for the Hitler Jugend or denigrate socialism in modern Germany for the socialist sins of Mao?
Would you diss MLK and Maimonides because they were religious?
As for the Roman Church, we agree that it has been an exceptionally evil human institution but would that make you dismiss the motivation of St. Francis, John XXIII, or Cesar Chavez?
Finally, I have no idea whether God maintains a registry of where folks worship Dionysius or Isis … why did you ask? Would you feel better about going on a sex fest in Thailand if you did this in the name of Bacchus?
Ok, “God”, Steve, SJ, whatever.
@14: If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people.
@11: What a pussy!
Does that mean that since you’ve already committed lust in your heart that you might as well go ahead and fuck her?
@15
Indeed. Did you read Hunter’s diary at Dk this morning?
I think the conceit of speaking for ‘god’ above (eg upthread, not in heaven) is making Steve obtuse.
His wrapping his religiosity around MLK and Cesar Chavez is misguided, at least in a critique of what I wrote.
As I have said many times here, if your religion leads you to do good, wonderful, keep it up.
HOWEVER, the tendencies of tribalism/religion to mainifest anti-sex, anti-woman, anti-reason, anti-happiness irrational dogmas, are manifest. My point about the orthodoxies of Christianity/Judaism/Islam and their nearly indistinguishable misogynistic ways certainly seemed to hit a nerve.
I am merely advocating rationality as opposed to patriarchal, corrosive, dehumanizing mythology.
@17
Only if she (or he) says, “Yes! Do me, baby!”
@18: Yes. You beat me to sharing the link. I’m a big fan of Hunter.
You should be disqualified from holding any public office (leaving aside fucking US Senator) if you actually say shit like that out loud.
Generally, if you say shit like that then you should be sequestered in a trailer in East Tennessee or Kentucky with the rest of the mouth breathers (I’ve been there, he’d fit right in).
Afganistan would also be a good place for the Senator — after we leave.
@19
Good point.
We could change the name to Bubbastan!
Stupidity is an asshat troll value..
Funny. I seem to recall most of Goldy’s bible quotes come from the Old Testament. (Goldy was raised how again?)
Jesus Christ wasn’t even born when that part of the scripture was set down.
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
I’m guilty as charged, you honor!
“Jesus Christ wasn’t even born when that part of the scripture was set down.”
That brings up an interesting question about the Bible and Revelations, the last book of the New Testament. Revelations was written by some hermit-like dude who lived in a cave in what is now Turkey. Revelations was written about 90 years after Jesus died, so it’s unlikely that this character, John the Divine, ever even met anyone who knew Jesus pesonally. Yet Revelations was included in the Bible because Roman Emporer Constantine wanted it there when they were putting the Bible together at the First Council of Nycea. I think Constantine (who never gave up on his Pagan gods) wanted to have a good and scary last book for the Bible so as to keep the riff-raff of the then-Roman Empire in line and obeying the Roman authority, from the Middle East and Africa all the way to Hadrian’s Wall and the thick forests of what was to become Germany.
The Bible and Christianity, in a way, represent the final triumph of the Roman Empire.
Just because someone spews garbage and hides behind religious sounding language, it doesn’t make them the spokesperson for everybody else. If they use religion to spout hate or to contol dissent, then they are full of it.
“Hatred of Christians is a Progressive Value”
We don’t hate Christians.
We hate the damage their ignorant, anti-intellectualism has wrought.
We hate the fact that despite over a hundred years of teaching science, over half the American population still believes in a “creator God” who explains nothing other than we should do what we are told.
We hate the fact they point to a ridiculous collection of fables about an iron age tribe and their petty squabbles as a source of ethics and morality. When in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
We hate the fact that religion was born of and evolved to be a tool of cultural and political control. And the outcome has been a disaster.
We wish you would all just go back to your domiciles and leave us the hell alone. We have no further use for your nonsense.
Thanks for listening.
Founding family takes their ball, goes home.
Even the members of the religious left?
There is a problem that when we hear the word Christian today we tend to think of the political right, but there’s apolitical Christians, middle of the road Christians, the Christian left-which even includes some Catholics.
@27, @29 Are there any Christians in America? Where? Practicing Christians, I mean, not people who just wear the label.
@30
Sure, my mom and my sister would qualify as would a friend of mine who’s a hospital chaplain at a public hospital the Bronx (and has a PHD in medical ethics).
@30
Catholic Economics provides a pretty good model for the left.
@30
And don’t forget George McGovern!
@27
Word.
@25 – The name of the book is NOT “Revelations.” The name of the book is “Revelation”.
Jesus know that your actions will follow your heart. Heal your heart, and you won’t have to worry about what you tweet.
A fellow I know used to have a wondering eye. This upset his wife, but he used to argue that “there is no harm in looking”. One day she complained about it to my wife. She said that she had always envisioned her husband as being one who “only had eyes for her”. Once she told him that, he finally saw it from her perspective.
When a man checks out every attractive woman, he may see it as simply “eye candy”. But to his wife, he seems to be constantly searching for something better, and eventually he will find someone who looks a bit better than her and is willing to have him. This is obviously not the basis for a trusting long-term relationship. And someone who is constantly looking will eventually find temptation which he will find difficult to overcome.
@35,
So? The point is the same.
@rhp
Get with it. Human men are male, males pursue females, as I made them and as they will always be. Conforming to the social norm you make for yourselves is a good thing, but failure of men to be blind to women is …. well not My will.
I Am That I Am.
The message of the scripture seems clear enough:
You corrupt you soul (or your mind, your psyche, your “being,” you “self” or whatever)by the thought, not merely the deed.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? If you’re really wanting to screw another woman, that’s dissing your wife, whether you carry through or not.
When talking about “sin,” aren’t we talking about what’s wrong? Isn’t it wrong to really want to kill someone, even if you don’t commit the murder? I think it’s wrong to lust after someone’s death, and the damage done to oneself harboring such dark thoughts is not really negated by the fact that you don’t actually kill that person. If you want to lie about someone or to steal that person’s money, isn’t that wrong? Is the wrongness of that thought really erased by the mere fact that you decide not to tell the lie, not to actually steal the money?
Jimmy Carter was severly lambasted and lampooned for mentioning this concept of lust as adultery in his interview with Playboy magazine in the ’70s. Thinking it through, I couldn’t understand what all the dustup was about. Adultery is a sin of the mind as much as of the body.
Is lusting after another woman in your heart the same thing as cheating on your wife? No.
But it ain’t right.
Is really, really wanting to kill someone the same thing as killing someone. No.
But it ain’t right.
All of the literary types who weigh in on this site surely realize the value and intent of the Bible as metaphor, and recognize the “lust in your heart” business as just that.