Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Desire

I have been invited as of late to consider what it is that I truly desire. The quick answer would be things like a month long vacation in the Colorado mountains, or new siding on my house. But the answer to this question lies much deeper, buried beneath the rubble of my life.

As I have been reflecting on my desire, I have come to realize that much of my Christian experience has been largely Buddhist in this arena. If I may, as an outsider, condense Buddhist teaching - the elimination of desire is the primary aim. Desire is responsible for the corruption in the world and in self, so says Buddhism. And much of my Christian experience has embraced this approach to desire. I am instructed that "all desire is sinful," according to James 1. I am told that the heart is full of sin, and so the desires that come from it cannot be trusted. And so, I have been taught that to consider my desire, as anything more than a case in point of my brokenness, is dangerous.

I recall the first time I read a little book by C.S. Lewis titled "The Weight of Glory" in which he challenges this Buddhist/Christian approach to desire. If I may paraphrase, he argues that God finds our desires NOT to big, but to small. He wrote that we are much like a small child who is content to play in a mud puddle because we cannot fathom the idea of a vacation at the beach. And so we desire much less than what God would have us to desire. And perhaps as we "grow up" in the faith, we learn to supress our desires for something more because we can't imagine that something better than what we are experiencing might be available to us.

Perhaps one of the reasons that the idea of desire has been missing in my life of faith is that the answers are to be found at such a deep place that I have tended to go about my life without even noticing them. And when they have errupted through the surface of my life, I have quickly supressed them and labeled them as momentary lapses in an otherwise desire-free Christian life. As I have in recent months spent some time considering my desires with God, I have come to realize both holy and broken aspects of myself. Desires that both surprise me and frighten me. Desires that sound very much like the image of God in me, and desires that resonate with my own sinfulness. Only in the presence of the Spirit have I felt free to consider such desires.

So Jesus comes to me and asks me, "What do you want?" "What do you want me to do for you?" And only now am I beginning to realize the answer to that question.