Blake Robert Templeton argues believers should hate lust outright rather than manage it, citing the biblical command to flee sexual immorality. He uses the metaphor of retraining taste buds to create automatic aversion to sinful thoughts, and warns that entertaining lust lets the enemy know your name.
The enemy hates this about me. I don't play with lust. No compromise, no rationalization. Look, scripture says, "Flee from sexual immorality." So how do we do that? Through the hatred of evil. Not manage it, not flirt with it, but I destroy the schemes of the enemy. Look, I train my eyes to hate evil. I change my spiritual taste buds. All right, think about it like this. You know when you were a little kid and you ate your favorite beef jerky or something and your stomach got messed up and then you threw up? And then you never wanted to touch that beef jerky ever again. That's what we do with spiritual things, our emotions and our thoughts. So then when the battle shows up, when the temptation shows up, I don't try to strong-arm it and fight the temptation. No, my automatic response is, I have no desire for that evil thing. Because every time you entertain lust, you surrender a piece of your soul. That's how the enemy knows my name. Does he know yours?
