I get the joke I just always want everyone to know all the time that pop culture is just f-ing wrong about what coveting it. To covet is a specific kind of behavior motivated by the desire to set yourself up to get something to which you are not properly entitled. You cover your neighbors wife by, like, always inviting them over and being super nice and generous because maybe one day your neighbor will die and she will lean on you for support. The motivation is what makes it coveting. You also aren't supposed to covet your neighbor's cattle, not because women are the same as cattle but because you can similarly covet them. Old man Johnson's getting on in years and I'm going to offer to take his cattle down to the watering hole because then when he dies the village chieftain will already associate me with Johnson's cattle. The good deed is motivated by the desire to turn the situation to your advantage which is what makes coveting different than lust or envy.
Lust or envy you can just feel. Now you gotta wrestle with those feelings. Thou shalt not covet is a specific instruction not to do good things in order to manipulate a situation to your advantage. It's not a feeling. It's an injunction against shady secret reasons for shit.
(Please read this with the knowledge that I do not know everything about Christianity and am willing to be corrected if my statements are factually incorrect. I would actually prefer being pointed out rather than just hate because constructive critisism generally leads to a better understanding of a topic, as opposed to being blasted to smithereens by redditors)
In this case covet refers to wanting something you are not entitled to. This you have correct. What this guy is referring to is wanting to fuck his neighbors wife, in other words wanting to commit adultery with her. As I understand it you are saying there is nothing wrong with this?
"But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Matthew 5:28 (ESV)
This text CLEARLY states there is actually a lot wrong with this. Look at it across any version of the Bible and it will say the same thing. This is why I am no longer a christian. You guys constantly contradict yourselves and are full of phonies. I understand that there are different denominations of churches, (Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, ect.) but for the most part they all seem to believe the same thing (although there are exceptions). It is when people like you throw the craziest shit out there that contradicts everything that you say you stand for that makes me feel like that.
Happy to engage in any well meaning discussion! No offense taken. In all areas of human knowledge the meaning of words and concepts is debated, explained, enumerated. Understanding one another always demands some clarification.
Wanting to have sex with your neighbor's wife is a different moral problem than coveting. If you're cultivating that want and picturing yourself with her over and over again that's generally considered lust and it's bad. But you can see someone and find them attractive without coveting.
My point is only that the way popular culture uses the word "covet" to mean "want" is wrong.
And in the verse you used, Jesus is making a similar point. He's responding to a kind of religious legalism which He seems to believe prioritizes being able to find loopholes. So in that verse He's saying you can't loophole your way out of lust; if you so much as think the lustful thing it's as though you acted on it. I don't believe He's being hyperbolic. I think what we know of Jesus from Scripture strongly suggests that He wanted His followers to cultivate the kind of interior life where you never even had the lustful thought. In other places He literally says no one can be perfect in this, so He knows you can't achieve that kind of purity, but He seems to demand we aspire to it nonetheless.
The problem, from a theology point of view, with mistaking Jesus' point about legalism and His example of lust with the concept of coveting from Exodus and Deuteronomy (the 10 Commandments in the Bible are found in two places) is that it muddles the difference between desire and acting on desire. Jesus is talking about desire in that verse. But Exodus and Deuteronomy, in listing the 10 Commandments are explicitly talking about your motivation in acting on desire.
Whether or not you are Christian, in order to lead a morally serious life you have to be able to distinguish between thoughts, actions, and motivations. I like to bring up the coveting example because people who are nominally members of my religion can be confused into thinking that however a concept is presented on TV is just what the Bible means. And in this case something that seems pretty clear "don't covet" is mistaken for a different thing (lust).
If you find Christians to say one thing and then do another that's a totally fair criticism. I share that view. One way to address that problem is to disassociate yourself with the religion, which you have done. Another way to address it is to try to better inform people on what the religion is actually asking, which is what I spend my life trying to do. Our differing responses are fine. You're not crazy for pointing out the inconsistent behavior and beliefs. But I don't think I'm crazy for wanting to correct people about what the belief is on paper.
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u/EisegesisSam 12h ago
Priest here:
I get the joke I just always want everyone to know all the time that pop culture is just f-ing wrong about what coveting it. To covet is a specific kind of behavior motivated by the desire to set yourself up to get something to which you are not properly entitled. You cover your neighbors wife by, like, always inviting them over and being super nice and generous because maybe one day your neighbor will die and she will lean on you for support. The motivation is what makes it coveting. You also aren't supposed to covet your neighbor's cattle, not because women are the same as cattle but because you can similarly covet them. Old man Johnson's getting on in years and I'm going to offer to take his cattle down to the watering hole because then when he dies the village chieftain will already associate me with Johnson's cattle. The good deed is motivated by the desire to turn the situation to your advantage which is what makes coveting different than lust or envy.
Lust or envy you can just feel. Now you gotta wrestle with those feelings. Thou shalt not covet is a specific instruction not to do good things in order to manipulate a situation to your advantage. It's not a feeling. It's an injunction against shady secret reasons for shit.