C.S. Lewis on Women and Lust

From the "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" to "Mere Christianity" C.S. Lewis is one of the biggest names in writing. But what did this great mind have to say about the struggle against lust? Matt dives in.

[Augnatius]

Hey Matt, just wanted to say thank you. I grew up an athiest and 3 years ago started question my beliefs. You, among other Christians, helped me come to Catholicism and I’m pursuing an RCIA in October. Thank you, God bless you

[ltjdyev]

As a woman, I needed this Matt. Matt can you create a course for women too? We need it.

[kinghoodofmousekind]

The part about the harem is the best; and the most terrifying: I am, and forgive the scandal I may cause by writing this, a furry, and suffer from SSA. My porn addiction was justified for many years by this idea: I am not fantasizing over someone's daughter or son, these are fictional characters drawn to appeal to my fantasies alone, and thus I am not causing at least harm in that regard. But, indeed, the issue is maybe even graver, for I am: engaging in and with phantasms; destroying my desire to be with a real woman; and entrenching the hedonistic desires which often are the backbone of why many do suffer from SSA.

[joetunon]

Amazing choice of CS quotes! Thank you for sharing. My favorite: A man is prowling the streets. He "wants" a woman. Strictly speaking, that's exactly what he does not want. He wants the pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. Man, does that effectively pinpoint the problem with lusting after women!

[MrNoobed]

I love Lewis so much. That line about the harem gave me chills

[sethgilbertson]

Lewis’ quotes are excellent and helpful, as is your summary and commentary on them. You’re doing great work, Matt. Thank you!

[philobailey]

You are very honest and open. I was in that trap for too many years. The blessing I received was impotence which made me drop it and haunts me to this day. Carry on with your advice, very godly advice.

[acephilosopher]

I love Four Loves and the quotation you used....it was immediately striking when I first read it years ago. The full quotation from Lewis on what it is to truly love a woman is as follows, and it is well worth reading:

"To the evolutionist Eros (the human variation) will be something that grows out of Venus, a late complication and development of the immemorial biological impulse. We must not assume, however, that this is necessarily what happens within the consciousness of the individual. There may be those who have first felt mere sexual appetite for a woman and then gone on at a later stage to "fall in love with her". But I doubt if this is at all common. Very often what comes first is simply a delighted pre-occupation with the Beloved--a general, unspecified pre-occupation with her in her totality. A man in this state really hasn't leisure to think of sex. He is too busy thinking of a person. The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself. He is full of desire, but the desire may not be sexually toned. If you asked him what he wanted, the true reply would often be, "To go on thinking of her." He is love's contemplative. And when at a later stage the explicitly sexual element awakes, he will not feel (unless scientific theories are influencing him) that this had all along been the root of the whole matter. He is more likely to feel that the incoming tide of Eros, having demolished many sand-castles and made islands of many rocks, has now at last with a triumphant seventh wave flooded this part of his nature also--the little pool of ordinary sexuality which was there on his beach before the tide came in. Eros enters him like an invader, taking over and reorganising, one by one, the institutions of a conquered country. It may have taken over many others before it reaches the sex in him; and it will reorganise that too.

"No one has indicated the nature of that reorganisation more briefly and accurately than George Orwell, who disliked it and preferred sexuality in its native condition, uncontaminated by Eros. In Nineteen-Eighty-Four his dreadful hero (how much less human than the four-footed heroes of his excellent Animal Farm!), before towsing the heroine, demands a reassurance, "You like doing this?", he asks, "I don't mean simply me; I mean the thing in itself." He is not satisfied till he gets the answer, "I adore it." This little dialogue defines the reorganisation. Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved.

"The thing is a sensory pleasure; that is, an event occurring within one's own body. We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he "wants a woman". Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes). Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give. No lover in the world ever sought the embraces of the woman he loved as the result of a calculation, however unconscious, that they would be more pleasurable than those of any other woman. If he raised the question he would, no doubt, expect that this would be so. But to raise it would be to step outside the world of Eros altogether. The only man I know of who ever did raise it was Lucretius, and he was certainly not in love when he did. It is interesting to note his answer. That austere voluptuary gave it as his opinion that love actually impairs sexual pleasure. The emotion was a distraction. It spoiled the cool and critical receptivity of his palate. (A great poet; but "Lord, what beastly fellows these Romans were!")

"The reader will notice that Eros thus wonderfully transforms what is par excellence a Need-pleasure into the most Appreciative of all pleasures. It is the nature of a Need-pleasure to show us the object solely in relation to our need, even our momentary need. But in Eros, a Need, at its most intense, sees the object most intensely as a thing admirable in herself, important far beyond her relation to the lover's need.

"If we had not all experienced this, if we were mere logicians, we might boggle at the conception of desiring a human being, as distinct from desiring any pleasure, comfort, or service that human being can give. And it is certainly hard to explain. Lovers themselves are trying to express part of it (not much) when they say they would like to "eat" one another. Milton has expressed more when he fancies angelic creatures with bodies made of light who can achieve total interpenetration instead of our mere embraces. Charles Williams has said something of it in the words, "Love you? I am you."

"Without Eros sexual desire, like every other desire, is a fact about ourselves. Within Eros it is rather about the Beloved. It becomes almost a mode of perception, entirely a mode of expression. It feels objective; something outside us, in the real world. That is why Eros, though the king of pleasures, always (at his height) has the air of regarding pleasure as a by-product. To think about it would plunge us back in ourselves, in our own nervous system. It would kill Eros, as you can "kill" the finest mountain prospect by locating it all in your own retina and optic nerves. Anyway, whose pleasure? For one of the first things Eros does is to obliterate the distinction between giving and receiving."

[thepaxtribe]

I relapsed hard and just now trying to clean up. This video is spot on.

[thegadflygang]

Who would have thought that this staunch and adamant agnostic would become the greatest Christian philosopher of the 20th century (thanks to a bit of help and guidance from Uncle JRR Tolkien).

Brilliant channel friend. It is just small enough to make it feel like we have discovered this rare and untouched gem... Free of VPN and Bitcoin ads.

Keep up the good work

[AidanRKelly]

Awesome! Helps to share the truths of our faith with my secular friends in a way that can reach them!

[davezerhusen]

I heard masturbation described as: having sex with the person you love the most…

[designbuild]

I have only read a few CS Lewis books and found Screwtape L and Mere Christianity to be helpful with thinking about the potential "why" behind reality and in relating to God's ways and precepts. Analogies don't prove the way things are but help us visualize them and also realize that analogies can make an argument for what is probable: that is, there are real world signs of how the transcendent world works as per Christian doctrine and God's revealed attributes (creator, humble servant, judge, etc).

The danger or warning is that we ultimately have to follow God, not for temporal / pragmatic reasons only, but because He is who He is and is to be trusted as the author of purpose and for the eternal results we can't see or comprehend. Just thought I would share the potential of missing the forest for the trees.

But I also agree sometimes we have to be shown pragmatic reasons to inhibit destructive trends in our personal lives and culture.

[eoinMB]

Masturbation is covertly accepted in the church. Nobody ever talks about it openly, its one of these unspoken rules that if you're not married then you are perfectly entitled to masturbate. I mentioned this recently to some christians and the awkward atmosphere that suddenly descended on the room was very telling. It was like I was drawing something from the shadows that others did not want to look at in the light. If its not talked about then they can "Fudge" the system so to speak. They can continue to masturbate if nobody comes right out and condemns it. But it is a sin, it is sexual immorality and christians do not want to face this because then they'd truly have to live celibate and that seems like scary, too much to take. It has to be faced though and removed from your life. I gave it up in 2015 and my life has improved dramatically because of this decision. What I realised is that masturbation increases feelings of loneliness, it increases depression and anxiety, Masturbation begets more you do it, the more you'll want to do it. You will never get satisfaction from this, it will instead torment you, make you feel incredibly lonely, it will make you its slave so you're not free and it will always demand more and more. Its a foolish thing to do really, it makes no sense to masturbate because it doesnt relieve sexual urges, it only increases he craving for more and in the end it will ruin you, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

[humberto]

I liked the one on the great divorce: I remembered when I read it and the man was telling me to kill the little reptile and then I did and he became a beautiful horse

[Polones]

Third part of space trilogy was pretty cool

[stephenrice]

Have you looked at The Pilgrim's Regress? There are relevant bits throughout the book, but the really in-your-face one is Book Ten, Chapter Seven: Luxuria. It's very short, but it will change you.

[johnbartholomew]

This is True - any man who's been there; knows this is irrefutable.

[verdadverde]

From my experience, there is difficulty in abstinence from musturbation rather than peace in the body. That doesn't mean it is right, simply that abstinence is a cross to bear. I have had weeks of difficulty sleeping and then very peaceful sleep after masturbation. And I am graciously free from porn etc.

[justinchamberlain]

3:40 “one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes”
7:01 Lewis on masturbation “a haram of imaginary brides”