Can It Really Be So Bad To Covet And Lust After Others? It’s Healthy To Be Attracted To People, No?

This will be my most humbling and embarrassing blog to date. I’m a story-teller, it’s what I do, so sometimes my stories definitely don’t shed me in the best light. Much of what I write is for me; reminders on what to do or what not to do. If someone else can benefit from my stories, I’m glad to tell them.

In 2011, our family was stationed in the middle of nowhere in California. Edwards AFB was our home out amongst the sagebrush, tumbleweeds, Joshua trees and nothingness of the Mojave Desert. One day, my husband came home and told me that he had to drive over to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas for work. He asked if I wanted to join him for a short getaway. We found friends to watch our kids for two days and off we set on the three and half hour drive across the barren wasteland.

We arrived midday and decided that it would be fun to see a show that evening since we were without kiddos. We’d always heard that Cirque du Soleil shows are worthwhile and so we called up the ticket office to see about prices and showtimes.

Since it was a Wednesday, not much was showing. The operator told us that we could watch Ka, O, or Zumanity. We didn’t know much about any of them, so we inquired about the general gist of each show. The lady said, “Well, Ka is about martial arts, O is about water, and Zumanity is about animals. Since I’m not super big on martial arts and O was too expensive, I told my husband to get tickets to Zumanity. “I like animals,” I thought. I imagined it was along the lines of a Lion King theme. Boy, was I wrong.

When we showed up, alarm bells started going off in my head. As we were waiting in line to get in, I started to notice that everything around us was well….very sensual. I wasn’t completely surprised, I mean, it is Vegas. However, I wasn’t getting much of an “animal” vibe. I leaned over to my husband and whispered, “I’m not so sure this is about animals.” We proceeded to enter the theater with caution.

The second I entered the theater, I wanted to leave. I knew immediately that this was no Lion King type production. For some pathetic reason, we didn’t leave. I don’t know if it’s because we paid for tickets or if we had just never been in this type of situation before where we needed to walk out. Mostly, I was just a coward, I guess. I didn’t want people thinking I was some prudish religious nut. So, we found our seats and settled in for the show.

Porn on stage is about the nicest description I can come up with for Zumanity. Every second of this show made me and my husband uncomfortable. I saw waaaaaayyyyy more body parts than I cared to see. I was embarrassed for the women and men on stage who were parading around as spectacles and being objectified for an hour and a half. For most of it, I held my eyes downcast. It was as close to being an orgy as you can get without actual sexual intercourse being performed on stage. I hated every moment of it.

I was so thankful when it was over. My husband and I walked in silence to our car and the only thing that was said between us was, “I feel like I need to go to confession.” As I said before, we shouldn’t have been surprised, but the lady was OBVIOUSLY promoting false advertisement when she claimed the show was about animals. Give me a break.

Nowadays, if I find out someone is going to Vegas, I immediately pipe up and tell them NOT to see Zumanity. I don’t care who they are–religious or not. Most people nervously laugh at me, but I’m dead serious. I hate that people are objectified (and I’m not a feminist activist) and are thrown up on stage for people to lust over. I hate that the sexual act, which is a beautiful sacred thing between a married couple, is degraded. I hate that the whole point of the stupid show is to make people covet the actors on stage.

The 9th Commandment is “Thou shall not covet your neighbor’s spouse.”

What does my story then have to do with coveting your neighbor’s spouse? Zumanity is a stage show, a raunchy stage show at best, but still a show. I have no idea if some of the actors are married or not, however, they are still considered my neighbor by Biblical standards.

I’m sure someone will read this and think, “My word, this is exactly why I don’t want to be religious. This woman is a no-fun, stick in the mud.”

Others will say, “My spouse and I have no problem with either one of us looking at other people. It’s healthy and natural.”

There will be people who believe pornographic things are healthy and harmless. (It’s not, but people believe that.) And you know what, I don’t really care what they think. As Matt Fradd says, “Use things, not people.” But, I digress.

Christ takes this commandment and pushes it even further when He says, “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:28

I mean, my goodness, are we not even supposed to be attracted to people?

What is the point of all this talk about coveting and lusting? The point is to look at what makes us better people and what helps us love people well. Does it make us better to covet what we can’t have, like someone else’s spouse? Absolutely not. In fact, all this does is cause bitterness, jealousy, and selfishness to grow within us. It may even lead us to act upon our desires and try to break up a marriage. If a married person begins to covet another person’s spouse, this causes discord and comparison within their own marriage which is never healthy. And let’s not kid ourselves about lust. Lust is purely selfish. We want a person because of what we imagine they can give us. We want to use them for pleasure. This never brings out the best in us and it causes us many times to use people and then discard them.

What makes us better people is to seek to treat people with dignity, even if they have forgotten their dignity. What makes us better people is not to desire things that aren’t available to us or that would be bad for us. Our marriages are strengthened when we don’t let our eyes wander in order to wonder about another person, especially another person’s spouse.

What bothers me so much, even years later, about going to Zumanity is that nobody involved was made better. It didn’t strengthen my marriage or add anything positive to it. It’s designed to make people, even married people, covet the actors and actresses. It promotes lust which leads us to use people for selfish reasons. For most people, it is a temporary pleasure show that offers nothing good, true, or beautiful. For me, it wasn’t even a temporary pleasure, just a shameful experience that I will NEVER repeat.

Catholic Pilgrims, when we desire things or persons for selfish reasons, it never looks good on us. Striving to love well all those that come into our lives is one of our greatest goals. This will mean putting our selfish wants aside and being grateful for what we already have. Christ sets a high standard for our lives but it’s always for our good and the good of others.

This year, I was asked by a follower to go deeper into the Ten Commandments. Today I covered the 9th, but be sure to check out my other blogs on the different commandments.