Healthy Desire & Dangerous Extremes
Introduction
This morning as I spent some quiet time writing in my prayer journal, I found myself writing a scary prayer. Asking that God would break and mold my desires according to His will. I thought of these desires as seeds in His hands, praying that He would grow them into something good and healthy. This weekend I was enjoying the company of some great friends of mine (Tucker and Mike), and we found ourselves conversing about how we, as human beings, tend to extremes. There is something perversely attractive about extremes. Being moderate in anything seems unattractive to us at a psychological level. I wrote my obsessive personality and how I can become single-minded in my attention in last week’s introduction. As I reflected more deeply on this idea during my conversations with friends yesterday, I realized that this obsessive personality also tends to reinforce or lean toward extreme views.
With this in mind, as I was writing in my prayer journal, I found myself thinking about how even good and healthy desires can be taken to unhealthy, obsessive extremes. So as I wrote through these desires, I found myself being led to ask that God would break and mold these desires. To take them and grow them into something healthy. This is especially important as our desires can and do often affect others. Another word that in my mind is the brother to desire is expectation, and I think that when we do not seek to cultivate healthy desires, our expectations can also become unhealthy and unrealistic.
I have an unpublished post called “emotional pornography” about this idea. I believe we have created an environment of unrealistic and extreme expectations in our relationships through the media and movies we watch. We watch romantic comedies, social media reels, and pornography. We create in our minds idols of the things we desire. When we finally get the things at the height of our desires, and they inevitably fall short of our expectations, then we become dissatisfied with them because it simply isn’t as good as we imagined it might be. In Biblical terms, we would call this idolatry.
I write this from a place of confession, as I know that I do and have done this. I have created idols of both people and things in my life, and when those idols do fail me, I find myself seeking the next thing, pursuing the thing that will give me that temporary high and fulfill this insatiable hunger. A hunger that can not be satisfied by anything on this earth. As I think through this, I am reminded of a C.S. Lewis quote with which I will close today’s introduction.
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.”
―C.S. Lewis,Mere Christianity
What I Learned This Week
Why Does No One Want Children
The title of this podcast episode was very intriguing to me as it very much aligns with the subject matter of Mothers and Children. However, this podcast didn’t give me any new insights. Interestingly, this is becoming an increasingly common story as more and more young people seem to think that they don’t want children. I can say that I, too, once upon a time, didn’t think I wanted to ever have children. My once fiance always told me she didn’t want children, and I felt I had already raised children as I am the oldest of six children. I figured I, too, would be happy with just not having children. Besides, who would want to bring children into this rotten world, or so I thought to myself and sometimes told others.
Reflecting on this, I realize what a foolish line of thinking it was. The world is just as vile and wicked today as ever; the challenges we face today may appear different, but as the writer of Ecclesiastes writes, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
So I found myself asking where I got this idea that not having children at all is somehow better. As I meditated on this question, I realized that this is the common narrative of the modern Western world. Children are often no longer seen as precious gifts from God but instead as burdens. They are seen as a parasite to be destroyed while yet in the womb. They are seen as a leech on life that will take away all your freedom and leave you as a poor wreck unable to enjoy life any longer.
What a cunning ploy of the devil to take one of the greatest gifts of joy on this earth and seek to pervert it and tell people that will steal all the joy from their life. The problem with the ever-fading happiness in this world is not that there are too many children but that there are far too few. Today, I am so grateful that I came from a large family with five wonderful siblings. They are some of the biggest pains in the butt in my life and yet also one of the greatest blessings. They have been and are some of my greatest friends.
The solution that Malcolm Collins presents is, in many ways, a dystopian one as they discuss the future of artificial wombs and the technologies that may be used in an attempt to right the ship that has now seemingly been set to a global population collapse. Some of the most drastic estimates suggest we may see the global population cut in half within the next hundred years.
Dark Parody and Villainous Clowns
As two of my favorite modern intellectuals, I enjoyed listening to their conversation as they discussed the origins of Matt’s “What is a Woman” documentary. Which if you haven’t seen it, I wholeheartedly encourage you to watch it if you have any concerns about the trans-activist agenda that is seeking to corrupt and mutilate this generation of youths.
As I listened to this conversation, a developing thought came to me. The devil hates children and does everything he can to prevent people from having them. He seeks to stop them from ever being conceived through an endless array of birth control options. When that fails, he goes after them as children seeking to corrupt them or mutilate them to ensure they will never be able to bear their own children. He goes after them while they are yet young and impressionable. He goes after them when they are teenagers and seeks to pervert their minds through media. He goes after those who do choose to become parents.
The devil is indeed in the details, and the more I learn and read, the more I see who he has sought to destroy the family, to disorder, and bring to ruin the good and wonderful blessing that God has given us. The more I read, the more I realize the truth. I remember hearing someone tell me, “The devil hates human beings.” I remember thinking it was a silly idea. Why would he hate us? He hates us because he hates the image in which we have been made. He hates what we reflect and will do anything to hurt, break, corrupt and destroy us because of that.
In some small way tying these two podcasts together, I am reminded that God gave us as human beings one very simple command at the beginning. He told us to be “Fruitful and multiply,” a command that God has never amended that command as far as I know. We are called to live and be a light unto this world, and what better way to be a light than to bring little lights of joy into this world?
Amusing Ourselves to Death
I did finish the book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” it ended up being a great book though it didn’t go the direction I expected. I was expecting it to tackle some modern issues with technology, but I realized only after finishing the book that it was published in 1994, a year after I was born. This made me realize how much and yet how little things have changed in my life so far. It also made me more aware of the truth of the Bible “There is nothing new under the sun” The problems we face are not new; they just look different.
What Did I Do This Week?
Continuing my studies in data analytics and working on getting a certification in Power-Bi
Continuing to try and be intentional with how I spend my time and try to learn to be more interested than interesting.
56 Days without a drop of Alcohol
I was fairly happy with my overall screen time this week. As I try to again one day at a time be more intentional with the time I have been given on this earth.
