The Times on sin continues

Such is the peculiar status of lust in our society that one could be forgiven for thinking that it had been transformed into a cardinal virtue rather than a deadly sin. Contemporary culture is saturated with lust in the most banal of ways. So pervasive is this most shapely of sins that it is difficult to think of a sphere in which lasciviousness does not make its presence felt. Sex sells and everybody, it seems, is selling sex.

As a consequence, the word �lust� tends to turn up in phrases where its pejorative sense is all but lost, such as �wander lust� and �lust for life�. Used in this fashion, wantonness acquires a positive spin, a feeling of spiritedness and energy � a flame that burns bright before burning itself out. Lazily we conflate concupiscence with sex and become defenders of both.

Yet lust does not merely describe a state of erotic rapture, but a desire so compulsive that one or both participants objectifies the other, using their body as a means to a bathetic end. Sex in this context is a curiously isolating experience, rendering lovers stripped of their humanity, reduced to a beguiling assembly of limbs.

The traditional punishment for this craving for the pulse of flesh on flesh was to be enveloped in fire and brimstone where once one had been enveloped in one's lover's arms.

Few of us now believe that such a fate awaits the lustful. But still there is a pervasive opinion that sex works best when it means something, even if this is more attributable to D.H. Lawrence than the teachings of the Church. Bumper sticker belief though it be, it would be na�ve to underestimate the social value that this conviction concerning the immanence of intercourse carries. And yet the converse also applies: where sex fails, we are convinced that it must mean something.

For many people affection is synonymous with sexual success. That we have a right to pleasure has become a modern truism, but often it is a right invoked with no sense of responsibility.

With the possible exception of gluttony, lust is accepted as the friendly face of the deadly sin line-up � a soft sin, its perpetrators roguish at worst. Even Gregory the Great considered it least problematic. Yet lust is not a victimless sin.

It is a painful paradox that a vice that children are uniquely free of should so often make children its victims, as families topple where marriages fall apart. The causes of such personal tragedies are impossible to explain to the young because there is no rational cause. Swinburne argued that �love is more cruel than lust�, but he was notoriously unreliable on these subjects.

With the exception of a Christmas knees up or midnight new year lunge, the festive season is not a time when lust comes to the fore. A superabundance of relatives and seasonal nervous exhaustion see to that.

And yet this interlude between Christmas and the start of the new year is a period that could be used for a little Lenten-style introspection; a time to contemplate a resolution to pursue not licentiousness, but self-control in every aspect of one�s life. And with it should come the lesson that those around us are to be valued for qualities other than the brightness of their smile and allure of their physique.