Men and Their Wandering Eyes!
Has your wife ever caught you staring at some other woman?
Has your mother or sister ever caught you with your “wandering eyes”?
Who was your last victim?
The teenagers at the mall?
The new trainee at work?
The beautiful girl at church?
A poster made of paper?
Few people are aware of the fact that behind every single FIR lodged in Indian police stations against rapists or molesters, you will find culprits with wandering eyes.
As a man, I am certain wandering eyes are one of the key factors that lead men across India – and the world- to perpetrate widespread, unending rape and violations of women and children alike.
“Be careful, little eyes, what you see”
But what are “wandering eyes”?
I would define it for the sake of this post as men, consciously or unconsciously, looking at women who are not their wives, in a manner in which or at parts of their bodies where the Lord Jesus Christ would not have looked, not even once.
It’s looking at women with a self-satisfying, greedy, lustful attitude that cannot be justified in God’s beautiful and holy book, the Bible. It’s looking at them in a way that makes one guilty of lust.
And while it breaks God’s heart that immodestly-dressed women abound today, wandering eyes are not the woman’s fault, hard as it is for me to type it. As Jesus said – “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ” (Matt 5:28)
Do you know the words Jesus uttered right after that?
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. – Matt. 5:29
“He that hath slight thoughts of sin never had great thoughts of God.” – John Owen
Do you recognize this moral cancer, this spiritual disease inside, dear reader?
If you’re anything like me, you’ve let your eyes wander time and again. You either don’t care whether this is right or wrong- a momentary lapse of reason- or you do know deep down that your wandering lust-attacks have no excuse. You might not plan to do this today but if you’re not vigilant, chances are you will let your eyes wander and commit adultery, as God defines it.
Wandering eyes become a signpost on the road to uncontrolled fantasy. Participants enter a devious world we create in our minds where Jesus would not even enter dead.
Wandering eyes become a signpost on the road to another bout of masturbation, the stone at the edge of the cliff that gives way so you can gleefully tumble into the valley of the shadow of the private browser-tab, full of filthy, heart-breaking porn.
Wandering eyes eventually become a signpost on the road to extra-marital affairs, prostitution and other terrible consequences.
Here’s what one woman, commenting at a blog online, thinks of wandering eyes-
“A husband`s wandering eyes is hurtful for a wife – he is giving away something that was only to be hers. While I agree that confronting him over and over again probably won`t make it better and that only the Lord can totally change a person’s heart, I would point out that when a husband chooses to spit on his own marriage by looking at others and not being willing to quit, he must also bear a significantly big part of the responsibility for not having a very happy marriage. ”
“I caught you looking at me”
If this is just the judgment of merely one woman, what would be the judgment of the Creator, in whose image she is made, the One whose eyes are too pure to look upon sin (Hab. 1:13)?
By no means does this excuse the single man or women. The words of Jesus about lust were not said at some exclusive marriage seminar for men. Any man- Christian or otherwise- shall be judged by these standards at the end of the world.
If you are a Christian man, chances are you, dear friend, are very familiar with “wandering eyes”. You either have taken it in your stride with statements and thoughts like-
“We will never be perfect here on earth, you know”.
“This is a weakness common to us all”.
“I am just appreciating beauty that God made yaar, chill”!
“Men have life-long sin struggles that are understandable”, or-
you want to fight it out of your mind-space, out of your desire-engine room of the ship, but the beast is like dirty flood water, coming in through a locked door, that seals you inside with almost no way to escape drowning.
How do we fight wandering eyes?
First, know that “wandering eyes” are not the real problem; your evil, wandering heart is.
Our hearts often don’t want to love Christ, we are lazy to zealously consider Him who loved us to the end. Instead, we believe lies that looking at someone other than one’s wife will truly satisfy one’s heart. Truth is, a heart that’s willing to rip a woman out of the God-given context of her soul, her relationships and her choices and look at her body to desire things that don’t belong to it, is indeed a heart that has evil as a paying guest.
And your evil will make you pay.
But none of the consequences the wandering eyes cause is more grievous and terrible than the greatest tragedy it ignores, the apex of evil it achieved long ago – Your sin caused the death of Jesus Christ.
Your sins are against a holy God. Your wandering eyes made Jesus, the pure one, equal to ugly sin (2 Cor. 5:21) so that God the Father would be justified in crushing the Son of God himself.
Can Christians ever be people who can not have wandering eyes? In one word, Yes.
But how can we stop wandering eyes? Only by the life of God, that dwells within every Christ-follower, can he or she fight and overcome this sin. Only the new nature, that is indeed dead to this sin, can say no to it (Rom. 6:6,7,11). That is God’s promise. Can we plead with him for vital faith so you and I can walk accordingly, as those who walk according to the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:10,11)?
Here’s Tim Challies offering a life-changing realization on this matter.
And there is really no other solution to the problems we create due to our wandering eye during our short tenure here on earth, other than the victory of Holy Spirit by putting to death our sinful, wandering eyes.
And there is no other lasting preventive for rapes and molestation in India, but you and I loving Jesus Christ more than our sin, which will let us truly love and honour our neighbours, the women who plead for relief from deadly eye-sight.
“On Christ’s glory I would fix all my thoughts and desires, and the more I see of the glory of Christ, the more the painted beauties of this world will wither in my eyes and I will be more and more crucified to this world. It will become to me like something dead and putrid, impossible for me to enjoy.” – John Owen, The Glory of Christ
Resources
This powerful Gospel Project post teaches how to actually look at women instead of with lust.
This post offers helpful methods to fight our sinful eyes. While doing this, remember to love Christ deeply or else to merely trying to obey is in vain.
John Owen’s helpful book Mortification of Sin in Believers summarized! A must-read if you want to learn further how to put sin to death. (I do not yet know this blog author, so read his remaining posts at your discretion, please).
