Article 2: Lust as Liberation – Sex, Selfies, and the Performance of Desire
In the first article of this series, I reflected on how the seven deadly sins have been quietly rebranded as the 7 Deadly Virtues in our time—and how the selfie, virtue signaling, and the Evil Queen’s “mirror, mirror on the wall” have become spiritual x‑rays of an age walking “in a vain shew” (Psalm 39:6).
If we want a clear case study of this inversion, we hardly need to look further than lust.
Historically, lust was understood as disordered desire—using another person as an object, reducing the mystery of sex to appetite. Today, it is often hailed as liberation, authenticity, or even a moral imperative: “sex‑positivity,” “living your truth,” “owning your desire.” To question this framing is, in many circles, to be dismissed as repressed, judgmental, or hateful.
Isaiah saw something like this coming.
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;
that put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! …
Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!”
—Isaiah 5:20–23 (KJV)
If you wanted a prophetic description of a culture that markets lust as virtue, you’d be hard‑pressed to do better than that.
When desire is unmoored from God and from love, both scripture and history agree: the soul grows sluggish, the heart dies, even while the body and the marketplace grow ever more fevered.
Jesus, Lust, and the Heart of Hypocrisy
Jesus doesn’t leave us much wiggle room on this topic. In the Sermon on the Mount he says:
“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her
hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
—Matthew 5:27–28 (KJV)
Notice what he does. He doesn’t just tighten the rulebook; he moves the battleground inside. Lust is not merely “what you did with your body,” but what you willingly cultivate in your imagination and will. He doesn’t abolish the commandment; he intensifies it, targeting hypocrisy: the gap between the image we project and the desire we actually nurture.
It’s not hard to see why this is uncomfortable in the selfie age.
We’ve built systems that invite us to sexualize ourselves and others constantly—while simultaneously giving us tools to present an image of moral enlightenment, progress, and compassion. Outwardly: enlightened, consent‑focused, anti‑objectification. Inwardly: often driven by the same appetites as every generation before us, only now multiplied by screens and metrics.
The New Testament’s end‑time warnings land here with troubling precision:
“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
For men shall be lovers of their own selves…
lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.”
—2 Timothy 3:1–4 (KJV, excerpt)
“And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”
—Matthew 24:12 (KJV)
A culture that treats eros as ultimate inevitably forms people more in love with self, sensation, and performance than with God or neighbor—and, over time, love itself grows cold. We become connoisseurs of bodies and experiences, but illiterate in covenant, fidelity, and sacrifice.
Shoghi Effendi, surveying the moral landscape of the United States and Canada in the 1930s, saw the same pattern from a Bahá’í vantage point. In The Advent of Divine Justice he calls on the North American Baha’i Community to manifest:
“...a holiness and chastity that are diametrically opposed to the moral laxity and licentiousness which defile the character of a not inconsiderable proportion of its citizens…”
—Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice
That “moral laxity and licentiousness,” has only intensified in the decades since he wrote. What we now call “sexual liberation” he already recognized as part of a broader spiritual disease—one that numbs the heart and corrodes the foundations of any just and loving society.
Isaiah 5 as a Lens on Sexual “Progress”
Isaiah 5 is framed as a song about a vineyard: God painstakingly clears, plants, and tends his people, expecting grapes—and getting wild, bitter fruit instead. Then comes the series of woes, including the one that should stop us in our tracks:
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil…”
We did not wake up one morning and decide, in a committee, “Let’s call lust a virtue.” The shift happened gradually, through stories, images, jokes, and—very powerfully—advertising.
In the launch article for this series I incorrectly referenced BBDO as the source of ads for the 7 deadly sins. In reflecting and researching the history, it was actually a Harper’s Magazine initiative in which they asked leading advertising firms to create these ads. Click on this link to see them. This illustrates that by the mid‑80s building clever promotions around the seven deadly sins was not shocking; it was brilliant creative. Sin had become a creative palette, especially sexual sin. We were already well into Isaiah’s pattern: we no longer feared certain things; we found them amusing, edgy, and useful.
The prophets warn that when a culture systematically re‑labels what God calls destructive as “freedom” or “fun,” the rot goes deeper than we think. The fallout is not only personal shame or broken relationships, but a society where justice itself is distorted—“justifying the wicked for reward”—and where those who seek righteousness are marginalized or mocked.
Our sexual culture is not an exception to that pattern; it is one of its clearest examples.
Bahá’u’lláh uses even stronger language to describe a civilization intoxicated with its own desires:
“Consider the pettiness of men’s minds. They ask for that which injureth them,
and cast away the thing that profiteth them.”
—Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, CLIX
Calling lust “liberation” while we discard chastity, fidelity, and restraint is precisely this: asking for what injures us, casting away what would heal.
A Brief History of Lust in American Marketing
So how did lust become a marketing method?
Scholars of media and advertising trace a rough trajectory over the last century:
- Early 1900s: As mass advertising emerges, agencies begin to use the female form to draw the eye—still modest by today’s standards, but the seed is there: attention through allure.
- 1920s–1940s: The flapper era, Hollywood’s golden age, and pin‑up art make sexual appeal more explicit. Ads and posters lean on curves and coyness; the suggestion is clear even when the copy isn’t.
- 1950s–1960s: The old production codes weaken, magazines like Playboy launch, and “sex sells” becomes a widely accepted principle in the ad world. Cigarettes, cars, liquor, even cleaning products are sold with innuendo and skin.
- 1960s–1970s: The sexual revolution declares old norms oppressive. Advertisers happily ride the wave. Birth control’s spread, no‑fault divorce, and changing mores break down practical barriers to casual sex. Eroticism becomes mainstream.
- 1980s–1990s: MTV, music videos, and fashion campaigns (think Calvin Klein) fuse youth culture and hyper‑sexualization. Music, movies, and ads cross‑pollinate imagery: desire is loud, glossy, and everywhere.
- 1990s–2000s: The internet detonates old boundaries. Pornography, once relegated to back rooms and brown paper bags, becomes ubiquitous—often free and just a click away. Banner ads and pop‑ups use explicit imagery to lure traffic.
- 2010s–2020s: Social media completes the inversion. We are no longer just targets of sexually charged advertising; we become the creators of it. Influencer culture, “thirst traps,” and subscription platforms like OnlyFans turn self‑sexualization into a monetizable “side hustle”—often framed as empowerment.
Along the way, academic and activist language adapts. Terms like “sex‑positivity” and “body positivity,” which can name legitimate goods (freedom from shame, acceptance of one’s body), are often co‑opted to mean “no moral boundaries on sexual behavior as long as there is consent.”
Isaiah 5’s “call evil good, and good evil” is not a finger wag at any one campaign; it is a sober description of what happens when the entire storytelling and selling apparatus of a culture is harnessed to normalize and monetize desire.
‘Abdu’l‑Bahá warned of precisely this drift in another context:
“Children are even as a branch that is fresh and green; they will grow up in whatever way ye train them. Take the utmost care to give them high ideals and goals, so that once they come of age, they will cast their beams like brilliant candles on the world, and will not be defiled by lusts and passions in the way of animals, heedless and unaware, but instead will set their hearts on achieving everlasting honor and acquiring all the excellences of humankind.”
—‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, no. 110
Lust here is not just a private failing; it becomes part of a social “siege,” a set of forces that surround and shape a whole civilization.
From Warning to Virtue: Lust’s Moral Makeover
None of this is to deny the real damage done by shame‑based purity cultures, double standards for men and women, or religious hypocrisy around sex. Those had to be challenged.
But in tearing down some unhealthy structures, we’ve also torn down many of the guardrails that kept us from Isaiah’s cliff. Chastity is now routinely mocked as repression; fidelity is treated as optional; virginity is seen as a pathology to be “fixed.”
In The Hardness of the Heart, I explored how Eve’s first encounter with the forbidden tree hinged on a value proposition to her ego:
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof…”
—Genesis 3:6 (KJV, emphasis added)
Lust, in our day, comes with its own promise:
- You will be wise—experienced, worldly.
- You will be empowered—no one can judge you.
- You will be free—from “repressive” norms.
The result, however, looks less like wisdom and more like what Jesus and Paul warned of: people increasingly “lovers of their own selves… lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God,” and a world where, despite all the sex in our media, love grows cold.
Shoghi Effendi’s words again feel painfully current:
“The corrosive influence of gross materialism…
… threatens to engulf the entire nation in a vortex of moral degradation.”
—The Advent of Divine Justice, pp. 27–28 (paraphrased from context)
Lust, when baptized by materialism, becomes just one more product in a vast marketplace of self‑gratification—another turn of the vortex.
The Algorithmic Mirror: Sex, Selfies, and Comparison
Return, for a moment, to Snow White’s Evil Queen.
Her daily ritual is simple: stand before the mirror and demand validation. When the mirror’s answer wounds her ego, she would rather kill the rival than confront her own heart.
Our world has taken that scene and networked it.
On Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and whatever comes next, we watch—and participate in—a constant marketplace of desirability. The more sexual the pose, the more revealing the outfit, the more suggestive the dance, the more the algorithm often rewards it. This is not accidental; it is baked into engagement metrics. What keeps people watching is what gets surfaced.
Overlay Paul’s warning:
“They measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.”
—2 Corinthians 10:12 (KJV, excerpt)
We no longer need a magic mirror on the wall; we have a global, AI‑driven mirror in our hands. We measure our worth by how our bodies, experiences, and partners stack up against the curated lives of others who “commend themselves.”
- Am I as attractive?
- Am I as adventurous?
- Am I as desired?
And when we fall short, we feel inferior. When we appear to excel, we feel superior. In both cases, wisdom is absent, love is compromised, and the heart grows either desperate or proud.
Meanwhile, the system quietly encourages us to see ourselves and others less as image‑bearers of God and more as commodities in an endless theater of mutual consumption.
Bahá’u’lláh’s alternative mirror is starkly different:
“O Son of Being!
Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee.
Know this, O servant.”
—Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words, Arabic no. 5
The true “mirror” of the soul is not the gaze of the crowd but the gaze of God. Our worth is not established by how many admire us, but by how deeply we respond to the divine invitation to love and be loved.
The Cost: Love Waxing Cold
Jesus’ line in Matthew 24:12—“because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold”—is often read only in terms of violence, betrayal, and lawlessness. But sexual iniquity is very much part of that picture.
Consider just a few of the costs of our lust‑as‑virtue culture:
- Relational Fragility: Serial hookups and easily dissolved cohabitations form patterns where permanency and covenant feel alien, or even threatening.
- Loneliness in a Hyper‑Sexual Age: Surveys show rising levels of loneliness and sexual dissatisfaction even as explicit content floods every device. We are more connected and more isolated at the same time.
- Exploitation and Trauma: Pornography demand fuels trafficking; “revenge porn” devastates lives; children and teens are sexualized before they can process what sex even is.
- Coldness of Heart: When bodies are objects, empathy shrivels. It becomes easier to ghost, to cheat, to use and discard, because what we’re engaging with is an image, not a person.
Our aggregate desires, as I’ve written elsewhere, build systems. In this case, systems that profit from iniquity—and then wonder why love is in short supply.
‘Abdu’l‑Bahá gave the positive antidote in simple, piercing language:
“Therefore strive that your actions day by day may be beautiful prayers. Turn towards God, and seek always to do that which is right and noble. Enrich the poor, raise the fallen, comfort the sorrowful, bring healing to the sick, reassure the fearful, rescue the oppressed, bring hope to the hopeless, shelter the destitute!”
—(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, no. 26)
When lust becomes a way of life, our actions cease to be “beautiful prayers” and become, instead, empty gestures offered to an altar of self.
Back to Hypocrisy and Judgment
All of this brings us back to Jesus’ relentless focus on hypocrisy.
- It is possible to preach traditional sexual morality in public, while secretly consuming the very content you condemn.
- It is possible to loudly champion sexual liberation, while privately using people, ignoring consent, or abandoning them when consequences appear.
- It is possible to present as pure, enlightened, or empowered in our “mirror, mirror” feeds, while our real relationships tell a very different story.
Jesus’ promise cuts through both sides:
“For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged:
and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
—Matthew 7:2 (KJV)
The final review will not simply ask, “Did you check all the right boxes on a sexual ethic quiz?” It will press deeper:
- How did you see and treat the people you desired?
- Did you objectify, exploit, deceive, or abandon?
- Did you use God’s grace as a cloak for indulgence?
- Did you use God’s law as a weapon while hiding your own sin?
The measure we applied to others—whether permissive or strict—will be brought back to us, calibrated not to our public branding, but to our actual hearts.
Shoghi Effendi, describing the Bahá’í standard, could just as easily be addressing any follower of Christ:
“A rectitude of conduct, an abiding sense of undeviating justice, unobscured by the demoralizing influences which a corruption-ridden political life so strikingly manifests; a chaste, pure, and holy life, unsullied and unclouded by the indecencies, the vices, the false standards, which an inherently deficient moral code tolerates, perpetuates, and fosters…”
—The Advent of Divine Justice
This is not prudery; it is an invitation to integrity.
A Different Kind of Freedom
Lust, when rebranded as virtue, promises freedom and delivers bondage: to habits, to algorithms, to ever‑escalating stimuli.
The way of Christ, and the wisdom of Isaiah 5, Psalm 1, and the Bahá’í writings, offers a different path:
- Not repression, but re‑orientation: desire submitted to love, covenant, and the good of the other.
- Not comparison, but calling: seeing ourselves not in the mirror of others’ bodies and lives, but in the gaze of God.
- Not performance, but integrity: allowing our inner life and outer life to converge under the light of truth.
We will come, in this series, to questions of economic, appetitive, and ideological sin—greed, gluttony, wrath, pride. But it is fitting that we begin with lust, because so much of the modern “vain show” revolves around it, and because both the Gospel and the Bahá’í writings identify purity and chastity as foundational to any genuine spiritual civilization.
The good news, for all of us who have stumbled here—which is to say, all of us—is that God’s concern with hypocrisy is not to crush us, but to heal us. He unmasks the heart so that it can be remade.
We were not created merely to chase images. We were created to bear one—the image of God—and to love others as fellow bearers of that image, not as props in our own stories.
In the next article, we’ll turn to Greed as Ambition, and look at how covetousness has been elevated into an economic strategy. For now, perhaps it’s enough to ask ourselves, quietly:
Where have I called lust “good” in my own heart?
Where has my desire cooled my love?
And am I willing to let the One who sees behind every mirror begin, at last, to tell me the truth?
—Wade Fransson
