A Lustful, Lecherous Heart

“One of the most powerful stories I have ever heard on the nature of the human heart is told by Malcolm Muggeridge. Working as a journalist in India, he left his residence one evening to go to a nearby river for a swim. As he entered the water, across the river he saw an Indian woman from the nearby village who had come to have her bath. Muggeridge impulsively felt the allurement of the moment, and temptation stormed into his mind. He had lived with this kind of struggle for years but had somehow fought it off in honor of his commitment to his wife, Kitty. On this occasion, however, he wondered if he could cross the line of marital fidelity.
He struggled just for a moment and then swam furiously toward the woman, literally trying to outdistance his conscience. His mind fed him the fantasy that stolen waters would be sweet, and he swam the harder for it. Now he was just two or three feet away from her, and as he emerged from the water, any emotion that may have gripped him paled into insignificance when compared with the devastation that shattered him as he looked at her. ‘She was old and hideous . . . and her skin was wrinkled and, worst of all, she was a leper. . . . This creature grinned at me, showing a toothless mask.’ The experience left Muggeridge trembling and muttering under his breath, ‘What a dirty lecherous woman!’ But then the rude shock of it dawned upon him—it was not the woman who was lecherous; it was his own heart.” [An autobiographical excerpt quoted by Ian Hunter in Malcolm Muggeridge: A Life (Toronto: Totem, 1981), 40.]

Jesus said: "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matthew 5:27-28)

One of my professors used to say: "The only man who does not deal with this temptation to sin is the one who is six feet under (i.e. dead) or the one who is lying."

"God, have mercy on me, the sinner--the one with the lecherous heart! Thank You for Your forgiving and restraining grace."

Understanding Evil In Our Own Hearts

"The person who understands the evil in his own heart is the only person who is useful, fruitful, and solid in his beliefs and obedience. Others only delude themselves and thus upset families, churches, and all other relationships. In their self-pride and judgment of others, they show great inconsistencies." (John Owen, Sin and Temptation)

"This same point of recognition also awakened the slumbering spirit of journalist Terry Anderson, who had been held captive by terrorists in Lebanon. Anderson said that during his captivity he saw much in his captors that he hated and despised. The more he saw them and talked to them, the more he was repelled by them. 'Yet,' he added, 'in a strange way there was nothing in them I had not also seen in myself.'" [Quoted in Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God?, Dallas: Word, 1994), 143]

"The heart is deceitful and wicked above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings." (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting." (Psalm 139:23-24)