How should Christian moms respond to their son’s looking at girls? How should Christian women respond to their boyfriends looking at other women? How should Christian wives respond to their husbands looking at other women?

This is first of a three part series on this issue of men looking at other women, and how Christian women should respond to this. In this first part, I just want to setup the situation as it occurs, with a little bit of what is normally the conventional thoughts on it.  In the next two parts we will dive deeper in this issue.

Before we get into how a Christian woman should respond to this issue of men looking at other women, let’s examine how many women react when they catch their men looking at women.

The mothering or jealous reaction

This response could either come from a position of jealousy, or of mothering.

The mothering reaction is not usually from a position of hurt or anger, but is more of a corrective reaction. If this woman is coming from the position of an actual mother with her son, she feels it her duty to keep her Christian sons from lusting after women, and this is the primary reason for her calling out her son’s looking at girls around him.

A Christian wife, can also have this “mothering” reaction. This woman typically does not have hatred for the male nature, and is relatively secure about how her husband feels towards her. She simply feels it her Christian duty as a wife, to keep her husband’s eyes off other women, because she believes for him to take pleasure from looking at any other woman is lust.

But this reaction could also be a jealous reaction. When it is, it is more of a controlling action. This is more of the “I am the only woman you are allowed to look at buster – and you can only look at me when I say so”.

The insecure/hurt reaction

Typically this a reaction from a Christian wife or girlfriend, but it could also come from a Christian daughter.

A Christian daughter might have this reaction, when she sees her Dad look at another woman other than her mother. She thinks – “Does Dad not love mom anymore? Does Dad think mom is not beautiful anymore?” “Is my Dad going to cheat on my mom?”

The Christian girlfriend or wife may have this same hurt reaction toward her boyfriend or fiancé or her husband. She thinks – “Does he not love me anymore? Does he think I am not beautiful anymore?” “Is he going to leave me or cheat on me?”

The Misandrist Reaction (hater of male nature)

This is the angry and disgusted reaction that some women have toward men looking at other women.

The women believe many men are just scum! If men look at other women, they are or will become cheaters. They believe these men see women as simply sex objects for their viewing pleasure, and not as people.

Many Christians (both men and women) would admit that it is natural for a man (and teen boys) to be drawn to beautiful women.

Teens and pre-teen boys look…

Young men look…

Older men look…

Even famous men look…

But these same people would also admit that it is natural for a woman to be jealous when she catches her man glancing at an attractive woman. Other women who are not coming from the perspective of the wife or girlfriend, may just say this behavior “objectifies women” and they become angry when men look at them.

So we have reached a philosophical impasse – both behaviors are natural in each gender, yet they are contradictory to each other.

The commonly accepted answer in most Christian circles to this dilemma is that the man’s natural instinct to look at other women, even when he is in a committed relationship, or married is part of his sin nature. In Matthew 5:27-28(NASB) Christ says:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

So the Scriptures tell us that if a man lusts after a woman, he has committed adultery with her in his heart – pretty cut and dry right?

The general idea is, it is not wrong for him to be tempted to look, because temptation is not sin, the sin is if he gives in to his sinful nature(to look at any other women than the woman he is with).

The answer to this problem, we are told, is to train our men to look away when attractive women come by and presto! – Christian mothers, girlfriends, fiances and wives have nothing to be worried about or jealous of.

In second part of this three part series, we will look at this problem from a perspective that most Christian women (and many Christian men) may have never considered.

Click here to go to part two of this series