Where is the Enemy?

Temptation outside

Modern Western popular culture, which is all we have much right to comment on, is incredibly obsessed with sex. Yet, somehow, we can find it easy to overlook even though it's all around us. Viewing things critically, however, gives a seemingly inexhaustible source of temptations which range from the unintentional, to the subtle, to the cynically exploitive.

Modern fashions, particularly for females, are often not very modest. Young girls want to look cool and attractive, but often they don't even know what they're doing to themselves or the people around them.

Many forms of advertising and media often have a great emphasis on sensuality, usually through images of women. Magazines, newspapers and catalogues, billboards and TV and radio ads. All they want is our money, and if making us feel dissatisfied or lustful is effective, they'll do it. TV shows and movies are full of immodestly dressed people, sex, dirty jokes and references. Popular music is loaded with sexual innuendo, not to mention the video clips.

Homosexuality, premarital sex, divorce and living together are all well accepted. R and X rated movies and magazines are cheap and easily available, and as for the internet, it's basically free or cheap, instant, and private. Very dangerous!

Compare all of this to when the Bible was written. We seem to have it much tougher these days as far as external temptations go. Doesn't it seem likely that overexposure to, and preoccupation with sex results in a more difficult job combating lust? Satan must love the current state of our society - he does have power over it, after all.

We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. 1 John 5:19 (ESV)

Take responsibility

It might seem like we don't have a choice or chance, or that we somehow aren't to blame. But this isn't right. We still have to take responsibility for our own sins. The world may be rotten, but we don't have to bow down to it. We just choose to, because we are sinful. Sin comes from within us, not from outside. Temptation is what is outside. Sin is each person's own personal fault. Our hearts, not our TV screens, are the true homes of lust.

Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. James 1:13-15 (ESV)

This is a problem within us. We have to defeat it if we are going to be God's children. As already noted, we can't be slaves to sin and slaves to Christ.

We make things more difficult for ourselves by immersing ourselves in the sinful world. It can also be easy to escalate. Watching the aerobics show on TV in a lustful way might not satisfy for long, not when there's a bad movie on tonight and porn a few seconds away on the computer. People can find themselves doing and looking at awful, evil things frequently, feeling paranoid and alone, because they've made sure no human who loves them knows about it.

But God knows.

"His eyes are on the ways of men;
he sees their every step.

There is no dark place, no deep shadow,
where evildoers can hide. Job 34:21-22 (NIV)

All of these secrets are going to be revealed someday.

"But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. Luke 12:2 (NASB^®)

We must give up immorality and live holy lives. And through Jesus it's quite possible to do so. On to the first of this article's six major Biblical elements involved in defeating lust.

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