Isn’t lust an emotion that God gifted humans just like love or pain? If so should it be suppressed?

Human emotions are a gift from God, though we are meant to control our emotions to a good end. However, lust is not an emotion. Sometimes the word “lust” gets used interchangeably with “attraction” but the two are entirely different.

To have feelings of attraction is completely normal. We are made for beauty–one of God’s attributes is that he is beauty, as he is goodness and truth. So it’s almost inevitable that when we see someone beautiful, that would bring about some reaction within us. Up to this point, what we’re experiencing is an emotion: attraction (and maybe other emotions will come along with that, like excitement or nervousness!). An emotion begins as a reaction to something–it starts as something that acts upon us, which is why they are also called passions (they’re passive). However, after that initial moment, we’re responsible for what happens with that emotion.

That is where lust enters the picture. “Lust” is a sin where I take my feelings of attraction and use them to a bad end, rather than a good end. Lust is where a person holds onto whatever caused that initial attraction and uses it to a selfish end. Lust causes us to reduce a person to an object for use. Instead of treating that person with dignity as a child of God, we think about or act in ways that go against that person’s dignity. Lust makes us take beauty for cheap–and it is without love.

When you feel sexual attraction, it’s up to you to deal with that feeling responsibly and virtuously. Even married couples can act toward their spouses in a lustful way, because lust is about taking someone else’s beauty for selfish purposes. Love–marital or otherwise–is always meant to be giving, not taking. This is where the virtue of chastity comes in! With the help of God’s grace and good habits, we can guide our feelings of attraction to a good end, rather than to the sin of lust.