There’s Another Kind of Lust to Avoid, and It’s Not Sexual

In Christian circles today, we talk frequently about the dangers of lust in a sexualized society. We have True Love Waits, purity rings, and accountability groups meant to keep us from pornography or other forms of explicit content.

But there’s another version of lust that can be just as deadening to the senses and just as damaging to the soul, and it’s one that we often overlook, something we often justify for being “realistic.” I’m talking about gratuitous depictions of violence. Bloodlust, a term that refers to someone whose rage leads to slaughter and killing, can be seen in a more mild form in the desire to watch bloodshed.

I was reminded of the power of bloodlust when listening to one of Mere Fidelity’s episodes on Augustine’s Confessions. Derek Rishmawy recalled Augustine’s friend Alypius, a character I hadn’t given much thought to until reading about him in Sarah Ruden’s new translation.

The Temptation of Augustine’s Friend, Alypius

As an adolescent, Alypius, a hometown friend of Augustine, got caught in “the vortex that was the Carthaginian scene, bubbling with time-wasting public entertainments” that “sucked him into the mania for the games put on in the circus.”

Augustine noticed his friend had a “self-destructive infatuation with the games.” Alypius would go to the stadium and watch others compete. What distressed Augustine was not the time-wasting aspect of this infatuation (who knows what he would say about the hours we spend playing games on our phones?) but the effect that witnessing violence had on his student’s soul. In class, Augustine derided people “held captive to a crazed obsession with this pastime,” and his words of derision woke up Alypius and engendered affection toward Augustine as a teacher.

Unfortunately, when Alypius arrived in Rome, “he was carried off by an incredible fascination with gladiatorial shows.” The violence in these shows was initially repulsive to Alypius, much as hardcore pornography first sickens a young man. Augustine recounts how his friend resisted those who would lure him to the stadium, yet eventually succumbed to “these sadistic and murderous sports.”

[Alypius] said, “Even if you haul my body to that place and sit me down there, you can’t aim my mind and my eyes at the show, can you? Though I’m there, I won’t be there, and that’s how I’ll be the victor over what’s going on, and over you, too.” When they heard this, they took him along just the same, now maybe with the added motivation of testing whether he could achieve what he’d said he would.

They arrived and took their places in the seats available, and everything was seething with the most barbaric kinds of entertainment. He closed the doors of his eyes and forbade his mind to go outside into such a terrible wickedness. If only he’d plugged his ears! One of the combatants fell, and a booming shout from the whole crowd struck him forcefully. Curiosity overcame him, and on the pretext that he was ready to condemn and overcome whatever he saw, he opened his eyes.

He was run through with a wound in his soul more lethal than the physical wounding he’d longed to look at, and he fell more pitifully than the one whose fall the shouting was about. The yells came in through his ears and unlocked his eyes, so there was access for assaulting and bringing down a mind that was daring but not yet strong, and was weaker in that it relied on itself when it should have relied on you. When he saw the blood, he guzzled the cruelty at the same time. He didn’t turn away but instead riveted his gaze there; he gulped down the demons of rage, though he didn’t know it. He was delighted at the criminal contest and got drunk on the gory diversion. He was no longer the person he’d been when he came, but now actually part of the mob he’d come to, and he was a true confederate of those who’d brought him along.

From that point on, Alypius was enthralled with the games, to the point he became an evangelist for this form of “entertainment.”

He watched, shouted, got fired up, took away with him an insanity that prodded him sharply to come back—not only in the company of those who’d dragged him there, but even in advance of them, and even dragging others with him.

We are familiar with Augustine’s admissions of sexual promiscuity and lustful thoughts. But the story of Alypius deserves more attention. It reminds us that other kinds of lust are dangerous, including the thrill of seeing violence. When blood seizes our attention and affections, we become observers captive to “gory diversion,” no longer the same person we were before watching the movie or playing the game. We become “part of the mob” that thrills at the sight of blood.

Why We Cover Our Eyes

Why do we cover the eyes of children when there’s violence on TV? Is it only because we think they are not “mature” enough to watch the show? Or is it that we recognize a mindful innocence that deserves to be protected? Does violence shock the 10-year-old girl more than her parent because the adult is older and wiser, or because the girl is more alive to the sensitivities of the world than we are? Perhaps the fact that we can watch gratuitous violence without being disturbed shows that we are the ones who have grown old and weary, comfortable with deadened senses, sadly accustomed to what would and should shock us.

The proverbs consistently warn us of being enticed by violence.

We could explain away these commands by saying, “I won’t become violent just because I regularly watch these movies or play these games,” and perhaps that’s true. But I wonder what we would say to someone who justified their viewing habits of onscreen nudity this way, claiming that this kind of entertainment will not lead to sexual misbehavior, or that a mature Christian can regularly view sex scenes without falling into lust. As Christians, we oppose pornography and decry the increase of overt sexuality in entertainment, because we recognize the effect of these viewing habits. They deaden our senses in a way that makes us less, not more human. Couldn’t something similar be said of explicit violence?

I offer these thoughts not because the church should require a hard and fast rule about violence in entertainment, but because we need to hear from our forefathers and mothers in the faith, to see where we may be more compromised by modern assumptions than we realize. When reading the story of Alypius, we should ponder our society’s lust for blood and how a regular diet of media violence affects our lives and infects our hearts. Surely we want to stand out rather than join with the crowd of unfazed violence-watchers.