To many people desire is good – even great. Sure, it might sometimes be the cause of worry and sadness when our desires aren’t fulfilled, but desire is still something we like – after all, it makes us feel alive.
However, to some Christians desire has become a bad word and a bad work. Churches sometimes tell us to kill our desires – they tell us desires are bad. One of the Christian accounts I follow on Twitter tweeted last year, “The remedy for curing desire does not lie in satisfying it, but in extinguishing it.” This is a quote from Martin Luther and while I do not know the context in itself it’s saying exactly what Christians do not need to hear. It helps NO ONE to tell them that their desires are bad. Yes, there are bad desires, but that does not make desire and desiring bad. There is bad food, but I’ve never heard people argue that because of that all food is bad.
Humans are creatures of desire – we are desiring beings – we are defined by our desires. Human beings are ordered by our desires. And some of our desires are common with other animals – food and sleep, for example. Other desires – such as desires for deep relationships and for community are in many ways particularly human desires. There is a reason that blog posts about dating and relationships stir up so many readers and comments – we all, rightly, desire those things. We desire to be loved and to love. We desire to find meaning. We desire to be important. And we desire to be successful. We desire to be in relationships – we desire friends – we desire a spouse. And finally, we desire the divine – we desire God.
None of these desires in themselves are bad. What can be bad is how we act or how we don’t act on our desires.
So what are we to do with desire?
First, we must stop seeing desire as bad and we must stop seeking to completely extinguish our desire. For when we extinguish desire we extinguish life. Instead of extinguishing desire – we should re-shape desire – then cultive and increase desire. It’s not that we desire too much, it’s that we don’t desire enough. Our desires, like our God, are often too small…
We desire meaningless things when we should desire meaningful things. We desire meaningless relationships when we should desire meaningful relationships. And we desire meaningless sexual release when we should desire the meaningful sexual relationship that occurs within marriage.
And we desire meaningless idols when we should desire the meaningful God.
By reordering and increasing our desire we not only have life, but a fulfilled life because it is the life God desires for us. But this only happens when we realize that we are worth more than we desire. We don’t desire too much – we desire too little.
In fact, this is one of the great hopes that we as Christians have to offer the world. The desires of the world lead to disappointment because they can never be ultimately fulfilled. They might be the same desires as those that Christians have, but they do not often have the same sense of meaning that the desires of Christians do. The desires of the world exist for themselves whereas our desires are for another – or the Other. Christian desire is only ultimately fulfilled when the desire of the other is also fulfilled.
Desires can be twisted and desires can be wrong, but we don’t just throw away desires. Sometimes our desires need to be defeated and extinguished. And at times there are things that we desire that aren’t sin, but trying to fulfill them in an inappropriate way would be sin.
Desire is not bad. Bad desire is bad. So let’s let God re-shape our desires and then trust him that in his time he will fullfil all and more than we can desire.
