Human beings desire.
Depending on who you listen to, you will hear how desire is one of the very best dimensions of being human, or how desire is at the root of evil and misery. What is the deeper truth?
Throughout history, across cultures and sects, there have been many movements seeking to eliminate human desire. In Greek and Roman culture, the Stoics taught a path of detachment from human emotions and desires. They only trouble your soul and cloud your judgment. Moreover, desiring what is beyond your station in life leads to restlessness, conflict, and misery. Solution: detach from emotion and desire. In Buddhism, the “Four Noble Truths” teach that suffering comes from human desire attaching itself to that which is unstable. The “Eightfold Path” allows the cessation of desire and opening up to nirvana. In the sunni Islamic tradition, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292-1350) described how human desire fits into the divine plan: “Allah created angels with reason and no desires, animals with desires and no reason, and man with both reason and desires. So if a man’s reason is stronger than his desire he is like an angel, and if his desires are stronger than his reason, then he is like an animal.”
Within Christianity, if you study the greatest mystics and saints, you will discover an intensity of desire that is indeed far stronger than reason, without denigrating reason. In those holy women and men, we see that their desire is at one and the same time their greatest consolation and their greatest agony. We will see why in a moment.
Unfortunately, many Christians over the centuries have found it easier to cast suspicion on desire. A dualisim easily emerges, separating soul and body, viewing spirit as good and flesh as bad. Such movements have plenty of Scriptures to appeal to as proof texts! The apostle Paul speaks often of a battle between flesh and spirit.
In New Testament Greek, the word for desire is typically epithumía (as a noun) or epithuméo (as a verb). The noun form shows up in 37 passages, and the verb form in 16. In terms of sheer number, the passages overwhelmingly describe desire as something negative that we should flee from – except when they don’t. And those exceptions are well worth looking at!
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus begins the conversation at the Last Supper by declaring, “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). To a Hebrew ear, the double expression of “desire” speaks of an intensity or abundance. Jesus has been pining for this moment. A long-anticipated and long-swelling desire is now reaching a crescendo. Compare it with Jesus’ words ten chapters earlier, when he describes his intention to cast fire upon the earth, and his anguish in waiting until all is accomplished (Luke 10:49-50).
The apostles, meanwhile, are still distracted by their disordered desires, their insecurities, and their fears. As Jesus expresses to his companions the deepest longings of his heart, as he is about to enter into the darkest moments of his human experience, they break into an argument about who among them is the greatest (Luke 22:24). Their desire for greatness is both like and unlike that of Jesus. Jesus does not shame them for having the desire, but instead resituates and reorients it within the Kingdom of God. The greatest among them shall be like the littlest children, and those with authority are to be those who serve. Moreover, he is indeed conferring on them a Kingdom and seating them on thrones of judgment (Luke 22:25-30). Their desire for greatness is inherently good, albeit disordered and thereby diminished and harmful. And Jesus is remarkably accepting of their slowness of heart! He is aware of the impending denials and betrayals. He loves them anyway. Following his Paschal victory, and especially following the gift of the Holy Spirit, they will be ready for their desire to go in a new direction.
Let’s consider the other exceptional case in which the verb “desire” (epithuméo) is expressed as incredibly positive. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus describes how intensely the prophets and holy ones desired to see what the disciples see, and to hear what they hear (Matthew 13:17). Those prophets and holy ones agonized in their desire. Again and again, they cried out, “How long, O Lord??” (Revelation 6:10; Psalm 13:1). They lived by faith, as foreigners and pilgrims who only got to glimpse the promised land from afar (Hebrews 11:13).
It would have been so much easier for those prophets or holy ones to heed the advice of the Stoics and suppress their emotions and desires. It would have been easier for Jesus, too! He cries out from the Cross, “I thirst!” and “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me!” You can hear the intensity of human longing in those cries – the cumulative force of every unmet longing throughout the centuries, welling up from the deepest places of the human heart – for those who had the wherewithal to feel and express that longing, uncertain how it would ever be fulfilled.
To desire and not yet possess; to wait for the fulfillment of desire – it is perhaps one of the hardest human things to do, and the most worthwhile.
And here we can begin to see what’s really happening with all the disordered desires that Scripture and Tradition consistently warn against. The problem is not desiring too much – it’s desiring far too little! It’s allowing our desire to get stuck in this fallen world and the things in it that are passing away (cf. 1 John 2:17) – versus allowing our desires (even our petty or disordered ones) to be consecrated to the Kingdom of God.
Desire grows in the waiting. Our capacity to receive increases as we await fulfillment. Can we learn to be present to our desire, and be okay when it is unfulfilled? Easier said than done!
We speak often of distracting or binging or pursuing addictions as a way of surviving hard stuff or a way of numbing pain. Perhaps that’s partially true. But much more frequently, are we not saying “I can’t bear to feel this unmet desire any longer – I have to release myself from this tension!!”?
Plunging into addictive pleasures is one way of releasing the tension of desire. It’s the path of the younger “prodigal” son in Luke 15. But we can also be like the older brother and live in management mode – burying our desire and staying on the surface with familiar rules and rituals. When I am avoiding my own big desires (as I have been the last couple of days), I tend to ping-pong between the two. When I reconnect with what’s really happening in my body and my heart, when I let the Lord closer, I weep and reawaken in my longing.
I realize it can be a cliché, but the Kingdom of God is “already but not yet.” Hopefully we have had moments in which we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good – those Mount Tabor moments like Peter, James, and John getting a glimpse of glory from Jesus. I must be, as they say, a “stubborn Pollock” because I have had many such moments, and still revert to my game of ping pong. The deeper invitation is for me to abide in the tension, the “already but not yet” – and remember that I am securely loved the whole time. I don’t have to make anything happen.
Such is the witness of the Virgin Mary and her spouse Joseph. They obey God when he invites, but mostly wait in great tension to see how it’s all going to work out. Such was the witness of Simeon and Anna all those long decades preceding the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Such was the witness of the prophets and saints of the Old Testament who desired to see what you and I get to begin seeing.
Waiting in desire is so hard. Experiencing endings of good things, unexpected losses, or betrayals only makes it harder. It’s so much easier to turn against desire and find ways not to feel it. Without belonging in love to a safe and loving community, it’s virtually impossible to abide in desire. And God has placed nothing short of a desire for eternity into our heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
We are indeed meant for connection, for delight, for honor, and for greatness. May we be kind to ourselves as we admit the truth of our minimizing, avoiding, and sabotaging of desire. May we love and support one another as we wait in hope. May our desire grow in the waiting, as we receive and are received ever more abundantly into the Body of Christ that is already real but not yet come to full stature. Come, Lord Jesus!
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