What happened to Ravi?

Miller & Martin, the Atlanta-based law firm hired by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) to investigate allegations of sexual impropriety against their founder, released its report on Thursday.

It is devastating, to say the least.

Zacharias died in May 2020 from sarcoma. At his funeral, Mike Pence referred to him as “the C.S. Lewis of our day” and “the greatest Christian apologist of this century”, echoing a sentiment shared by millions of evangelicals worldwide.

As the RZIM website puts it, “For over 30 years and across 43 countries, RZIM has met millions of questioners with thoughtful answers concerning faith and God.” At the helm of this influential organization was the phenomenon of Ravi Zacharias – the Indian-born Canadian-American with the gentle spirit and razor-sharp intellect.

For years, the quickest draw in a duel with an atheist has been to grab your phone and swiftly swipe to a YouTube snippet of one of Ravi’s talks or viral answers to a doubting student during a Q&A in a packed auditorium at some or other famous university.

Now, we are all forced to deal with sentences such as “Tragically, witnesses described encounters including sexting, unwanted touching, spiritual abuse, and rape.” This particular statement comes from RZIM’s “Open Letter” that accompanied the release of Miller & Martin’s report, so no rumours or conjecture here.

I cannot help but wonder what the student in that video is thinking.

So what happened? Why? What are we to make of it? How should we respond?

I think the most important thing we should do is not look for new answers, because there aren’t any. Humanity is still the beast it has always been, an issue that has been dealt with in depth in the pages of Scripture. The clearest presentation of the dilemma of being human is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans, and we are all under discussion there. Ravi, you, me; all of us.

Our lives are a composite of two worlds, we read in Romans: The world of the flesh and the world of the Spirit. If we are dead in our sins – unregenerate, as we say – the world of the Spirit is reduced to the voice of the conscience; a law in our hearts that manifests as thoughts accusing or excusing us. Because of the power of conscience, Paul tells us, gentiles are just as accountable as the Jews who have a written law to guide them in matters of wrong and right.

However, neither the voice of conscience nor the Torah can provide the life-energy that is required to live up to their prohibitions and commands. For this to happen, one needs to enter the world of the Spirit and become a citizen there. This can only happen through a very real crucifixion and death to the world of the flesh and a subsequent resurrection in the world of the Spirit.

We have all kinds of fancy words to describe this passage, such as regeneration, new birth, conversion, getting saved, and so on. But it all boils down the same thing: I have died to my flesh and I am alive to the Spirit, who has now become my guide in the place of the fuzziness of my conscience and the impersonal dictates of a written code of regulations.

But here’s the thing, and Romans is pretty clear about it: Even though I have participated in this glorious transition from death to life and flesh to Spirit, it is still quite possible to exit the world of the Spirit and conduct my life in the old way of the flesh. In fact, at a certain level it is inevitable. And that is okay, because the immediacy and finality of the transition takes time to filter through to my cognition and from thereon to my actions. Life unveils itself in a fashion that can only be described as hesitantly; like a woman who guards herself ferociously until convinced that the one who pledges a commitment to her can be trusted with her gifts. It’s all one glorious process of growth and ever-increasing intimacy, until we shed our previous allegiances; not because we have to but because we want to.

In Romans, love fulfils the law and meets its obligation because the problem of illicit desire, underlying all the works of the flesh, has been overcome by non-elicit desire.

An analogy might be suitable here: It is the love that I have for my wife that has delivered me from my attractions to other females. She is the fulfilment of the law my mother gave me when she warned me against a certain type of girl. The commandment could not sustain me, I must confess, and even my nagging conscience proved little help when I was swept away by adolescent lust. But all of it disappeared when the power of love for the girl of my dreams invaded my soul. Those girls now seem bland and boring in comparison to the love of my life. I no longer have a need for mother’s prescriptions.

In Romans, as in the rest of Scripture, immunization against desire and the actions that spring forth from it is found in the realm of love. The Bible is a story of greater love subduing lesser love. It is as simple as that. The two greatest commandments are great exactly because they contain the power to deliver human beings from all their vices and addictions . “If you love me you will obey my commands,” Jesus said, and he was not kidding.

It is here where the world of the Spirit and the world of the flesh part ways. The world of the Spirit is governed by the force of love – love for God and love for neighbour. The satisfaction of intimacy with God banishes the need to be satisfied in other ways. Contentment is the distinguishing characteristic of the true believer. Just and right living is no longer legislated from the outside in, but has become an unstoppable force of passion from the inside out.

If this is true, then it means spiritual growth is nothing but an ever-increasing awareness of the beauty and sufficiency of God; not as some or other doctrine of transcendence but as a very real moment-by-moment life experience. I am constantly being weaned off my infantile dependencies. My maturity exists in my ongoing discovery that the shepherd’s green fields and still waters surpass all other sources of nutrition. My childhood cries are substituted by a single confession: “I shall not want.”

But it also means something else. Those who have wandered back to the world of the flesh and its works have done so because of one reason only: They have broken the first and greatest commandment. They loved something outside of God more than God himself. And the reason for this is that they have found a satisfaction and release in that thing – a satisfaction and release that they never discovered in God.

 “I need it,” the women quoted Ravi as saying. The great apologist understood and could defend the gospel better than anyone on the planet, but he had a need that was never satisfied in his walk with God. Whilst he excelled in the letter of Scripture, he failed in its spirit.

Ultimately, the great challenge is not to understand well, but to love well. I am convinced that our blindness and stubbornness in this regard constitutes the single biggest sin of the church of God in this present age.

This, I believe, is the word that God is speaking to us through the public disgrace of Ravi Zacharias.

On Dreams, Desires, Justice and Fellowship

At the root of all injustice lies a dream.

The dream presents a standard, and makes judgment possible. The dreamer judges himself by the standard of the dream, and then judges others by the same standard.

The dream is never inspired by what is, but what can be. The dream lies in the realm of the miraculous, which provides the power of its magic and enchantment. In the dream voices are allowed from another realm, which is why its inspiration seems divine.

The dream creates a new reality: The tension between what is and what can be. This tension is unbearable for the human soul, and it can only be conquered by one thing: Desire. Desire is the sweet voice that ensures the tension can be resolved. The distance between the dreamer and the fulfillment of the dream is eradicated by desire, for desire is the faith that promises to make the unreachable reachable.

When this judgment occurs, the dreamer leaves the path that he is on and ascends on the stairway of imagination offered by desire. The journey disengages the dreamer from his reality and allows him to escape into the nebulous world of the gods. Driven and energised by his desire, the dreamer takes the light at the end of the stairway as the standard for judging himself and others. He does not see that he has become inferior in his own estimation, and that the illusion of his future greatness is but a tranqualizer by which to suppress the horror of his nothingness in this world. He does not see that the world of goodness has been transformed into a prison of injustice by the power of his desire. Equality has been transferred to the top of the stairway, and justice becomes a crusade instead of a gift of the present.

There is only one antidote for the dark magic of desire’s fever and its hallucinations of injustice. It is to discard the dream and see God. God is not a dream, and he is not to be found in dreams. It is this one thing that separates him from the world of the false gods as expressed in images that aim to concretize the dreams of those on the stairway of desire.

God is in the present. His invisible attributes and divine power can be seen in the things he has made. God has made himself so visible that it is impossible to not see him. His life in all its goodness is around us all of the time. There is only one way to be blinded to God, and that is to turn him into a destiny, a dream, an accomplishment of the self’s ingeniousness. Idols are always imagined.

The serpent understood this, and that is how he beguiled Eve. Divinity was presented as a destiny. The present became the future. The contentment of all that she had was replaced by the desire of the one thing that was out of reach. The justice of creation’s fullness was replaced by the injustice of a single prohibition. Gratitude became offense. Fellowship became a dream. Unity became rivalry.

This is the curse of every human who does not see God. It is also the curse of those who claim to know God but have allowed the dream in their midst. This is true even of the church of Christ. When fellowship becomes a dream, it is destroyed. The enchantment of the dream is a bewitchment and a destruction of the real. The only church that will ever taste the fellowship and unity that exists in God alone is the one constituted by those who have died to the dream.

This death must first take place in the life of the individual before it can manifest in the life of the fellowship. Indeed, this is what it means to lose one’s life – to stop feeding on the image of an accomplished future self; to anticipate no future greatness in this world; to demand and expect no peace and comfort as this present age defines it. It is this collective death to aspiration that will bring the gathering of believers face to face with the glory that has already been bestowed on them as the church of God.

Unity that is constituted by a common dream and common vision, and expressed in a name that captures the essence of the commonality, falls apart when the anticipated penetration of the divine destiny fails to materialize. Its adherents will then be scattered like sheep without a shepherd. Such a church will be revealed as a daughter of Babel, not the Bride of Christ.

The true bride rejoices in the presence of the groom. She loves him in the here and now, and she does so with all of her being. She is immune to the voices of other lovers and the lust of desire for their images. She is content with his provisions. She rejoices in his love. She sees him as just, and shares in his justice. She becomes just as he is just. She loves as she is loved.  And so she remains with him forever.

Oh God, when every dream fails; when all anticipation is revealed to be but the dust of death; it is then when we return to you. Forgive us our idolatries and the imaginations they have inspired. You are the treasure in the field. You are the pearl of great price. Who do we have in heaven but you? And on earth we desire nothing but you. You are our shepherd. We shall not want.  

 

 

The Church of No Anticipation (Part 2)

The price for the exhilaration of anticipation is a high one. When we indulge our desires by creating a Jesus that promises to fulfill some or other expectation, we do so at the expense of our commitment to the real Jesus. We pay for banana fever with lettuce leaves.

The reason for the trade-off is simple: The rush that we experience has nothing to do with the divine nature of God, or the power of the Spirit, and everything with the strong emotions that accompany expectations. As such it is not a valid portrayal of the life-giving capacity of the object or ideal that we are focused on, but an entirely subjective emotion forged by our belief that it will impart life.

The Anatomy of False Faith

This explains why the enchantment of anticipation offers such a viable alternative to real faith. Anticipation is, in fact, a form of faith, and here lies the subtlety. It sounds like faith, it looks like faith and it feels like faith. To make matters worse, it is globally proclaimed as faith.

But of course it is not faith, at least not as the Bible defines it. This should be obvious from the very emotions that we are discussing. True faith does not produce sensual feelings, for its object cannot be detected by the senses. As such it is wholly indifferent to that which appeals to the senses. It is moved by reliance on God alone, regardless of any experience (or lack of it). In fact, the Greek word for faith, pistis, can be better translated as “trust,” i.e. a strong reliance on the person and character of God, rather than mere “belief” which carries the connotation of simply believing in the existence of God.

Faith means I believe without having to see, smell or taste. It means I trust before I partake. The character of God is primary, the experience secondary. It is only the believing who get to be nourished in the end. The rest are disqualified.

And so, for faith to remain faith, its experience must of necessity be wholly different to the experience afforded by images that stir up the sensuality of desire and anticipation. Faith is the only antidote for the human irresistibility to desire, for it is in fact unfallen desire – desire pure and uncontaminated. Faith is desire under the governance of trust. It endears the believer to the Giver, not to his gifts. Faith is desire as love, not as lust.

False faith is something entirely different. It tells us that the lettuce will turn into bananas if we believe hard enough. It is an extension of our own delusions, not the antidote. It feeds on and furthers the greed that got us into our predicament in the first place, rather than challenges it. It reduces God to the status of a cosmic genie whose powers can be harnessed if we follow the correct formula.

To use Bonhoeffer’s term, false faith is a “wish dream.”

With the above in mind, it becomes clear why the banana trick is counterproductive. When we use the charm of sensual excitement as a means to motivate people for God, we are in fact messing with their perceptions. Faith is then no longer seeing the unseen, in the sense of that which is invisible to the naked eye, but seeing the unobtained, namely that which is visible in other people’s lives but invisible in mine.

This explains the trade-off. When we sensitise people to that which is visible and tangible, we desensitise them to that which is spiritual. When we teach them to live by banana excitement, we rob them of their capacity to live by lettuce. Sensual desire and faith are like God and Mammon. You cannot have both. They are mutually exclusive.

Mediation, all over again…

When we try and engineer the excitement of religious commitment, we are in fact suggesting that there is some experience that eludes our hearers. The only way we can make people lust after life is to question the validity of the life presently available to them.

The irony is that once we stir up desire and anticipation, we effectively create a gap between life and its partakers, for how can we desire and anticipate something unless it is first established that we do not have it? By promising that God is going to show up, we suggest that he is not present at the moment, and so we undermine the very essence of what the New Covenant is all about.

Our obsession with experience is nothing but a new type of mediation, and we are every bit as enslaved to it as our forebears were with priests murmuring in Latin. The packaging has changed, but it is the same old content. It is still guruism, albeit in a postmodern form. And here lies the difference: The new gurus are the guys who can best stir up expectation.

A simple visit to the Bestsellers section of your local Christian bookstore should reveal this quite clearly. Note how many of those books follow the famous formula of the television commercial:

1. This is where you are.
2. This is where you want to be.
3. This is how you can get there.

The relief and bliss that one experience when reading these types of books have little to do with God, his power or his peace, and much with the absence of unwanted emotions – emotions that are temporarily suppressed by the intrusion of expectation.

Like a big drug company, our business has become the tranquilisation of the masses. The problem is that we have created a generation of addicts – people who no longer know how to use their primary resources to cope with the disillusionments that are so much part of this world. Our faith is no longer resource based, it has become vision based. And here I am not talking about the resurrection and the new earth.

The way in which this has come about is all too clear. The quickest and most efficient way to deal with a grumpy monkey is to repeat the banana trick – to use a new round of anticipation as therapy for the disillusioned and disenchanted, or, if we are really clever, for the potentially disillusioned, that is, to repeat the trick before reality hits home. We tell them that 2018 is the year of breakthrough before they have had a chance to wonder why the breakthrough eluded them in 2017.

The point is that the wish dream has penetrated our churches at an alarming rate, and that the masses have become enslaved to a type of enchantment that is entirely reliant on expectation. This year is the year of breakthrough. The revival is around the corner. God is doing a new thing. We are about to enter the realm of the miraculous.

On and on it goes. Where it will stop, nobody knows…

The Cost of it All

Again, all of this comes with a price. As Proverbs grimly reminds us, hope deferred makes the heart grow sick. There are limits to our capacity for anticipatory excitement. Sooner or later we realize that we are on a fast train heading nowhere, and that swopping stations makes no difference. Inevitably, the day will arrive when we will have not only lost our taste for lettuce, but also our capacity to dream about bananas.

It has been my experience, both as a professional pastor for many years and in my present post-institutional Christian life, that hearts sickened by deferred hope is the new epidemic that is sweeping the ecclesiastical landscape like the Bubonic plague. Its victims are countless, and their final words before breathing their last always follow this line in some or other way: Why didn’t it work out like I was promised?

We are, it seems, picking up the tab for the hysteria that we have been inducing with our vain promises over the past few decades.

Some of us have been wondering about the new type of Christianity for a long time, and have finally reached a point where we make every effort to stay out of its way. It has, in fact, become entirely impossible for us to derive any comfort whatsoever from any form of Christian prediction, except that God knows what we need and that he will provide it as and when he wishes to (terms and conditions apply), that the believing dead will be raised incorruptibly and that this beautiful earth will be restored in all of its splendor.

So did Jesus ever say anything about all of this stuff? In Part 3 we will address this question.

(PS: For a number of reasons I have put that one on hold, but I’ll post when the time is right.)

The Church of No Anticipation (Part 1)

In the late 1920’s, a researcher with a name reminiscent of a character from a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale – Otto Tinklepaugh – conducted a series of experiments at the University of California at Berkeley. Tinklepaugh’s subjects were macaque monkeys. He wanted to see what they would “learn” in a variety of settings.

In one experiment, a monkey was put on a chair. A piece of lettuce was placed under one of two empty cups on the floor while the monkey was watching. The monkey was removed from the room. After a few minutes, it was returned and released.

Here is an excerpt from Tinklepaugh’s notes:

Subject rushes to proper cup and picks it up. Seizes lettuce. Rushes away with lettuce in his mouth, paying no attention to other cup or to setting. Time, 3-4 seconds.

Tinklepaugh repeated the experiment using bananas, with the same result. There was a difference, though: The monkeys showed greater enthusiasm when uncovering the banana.

It should come as no surprise that monkeys love lettuce, but that they love bananas even more. Most people know this. What is surprising is the monkeys’ response to a slight alteration of the banana version of the experiment. Once the monkey was removed from the room, Tinklepaugh did something sinister: He exchanged the banana with a piece of lettuce.

Here is his record of what happened next:

Subject rushes to proper cup and picks it up. Extends hand towards lettuce. Stops. Looks around on floor. Looks in, under, around cup. Glances at other cup. Looks back at screen. Looks under and around self. Looks and shrieks at any observer present. Walks away, leaving lettuce untouched on floor. Time, 10-33 seconds.

A Life Lesson

Tinklepaugh’s experiment reveals something disturbing about the dark enchantment of anticipation, which is insightful for those of us who are interested in the present state of Christianity.

Note the setting of this experiment: A creature of God is exposed to the life that comes from God alone, and then given access to it – a life that is intended to fill, satisfy, nourish and sustain the creature.

But note something else: The single factor that has the potential of seriously undermining a perfectly natural and organic process, is the prospect of a type of life that is more appealing than the provided life. Furthermore, when the anticipated “higher” life fails to appear, the effect of the resulting disappointment is so intense that it overrides the creature’s normal appetite for life sources that appear less exhilarating, no matter how accessible or nutritious they may be.

Thus, there is a correlation between the excitement stirred up by anticipation (I’m gonna get me a banana!) and the eventual absence of life (Lettuce sucks!). The irony is obvious: Those who are most passionate about receiving life are oftentimes those who go away most hungry.

Note that that the only thing that trumps that which is most valuable and desired, is an improved version of the same thing – not another thing altogether. This explains why Satan does not appear to his minions as a red horned goat-man with a sulphurous body odour, but as an “angel” (or “messenger”) of light.

If it is life that we seek, then the greatest temptation is not to discard life, but to become greedy for it – to want more of it than that which is proper, available and timeous. Satan knows this, which is why he uses it so effectively to deceive people who are looking for God.

None of this should come as a surprise. The first three chapters of Genesis reads like a version of Tinklepaugh’s experiment, except that the subjects are human: Life provided, life eclipsed by higher life, life lost.

The very thing that God intended for his creation, conformity to his image and likeness, was flashed by Satan: “…you will be like God.” The appeal offered a shortcut to the destination that they were heading to, yet without the disciplinary restraint of the growth process and its comparatively humdrum nutritional requirements. The result, according to the Genesis author, was “desire”[1] – a sense of anticipation gone out of control, a feverish enchantment stirred up by the prospect of arrival without sacrifice.

The New Testament authors understood this dark magic well, and identified it as the core problem of humanity. According to them, both the “old self” and the “world” are corrupt because of one reason only: Deceitful desire.[2]

Furthermore, they understood the gospel and cross of Christ as uniquely designed to counter this force. Paul tells us that those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,[3] and that they are uniquely free to live a life void of the momentum generated by desire and anticipation.

They live by faith, which means they are immune to the lusts of the eyes. They trust in the provision of their master, and bananas no longer mesmerise them. They understand that life comes from above, and stones turning into bread seem boring in comparison.

Our Present State

If we understand this, we would rightfully become suspicious of life-offerings that are out of reach, but that promise to become accessible based on some or other precondition. We would be skeptical of any form of energy, excitement or momentum that is generated as a result of anticipation. We would understand that idolatry has very little to do with the objects of our desires, and everything with the rule of desire in our hearts. We would understand that the single greatest potential idol in all of the world is Jesus Christ, and that he becomes so when commitment to him (along with its benefits) is presented as some or other ideal to be fulfilled, rather than as an immediately accessible reality through faith, regardless of whether it is accompanied by bells and whistles.

In short, we will stop believing in the type of Christianity that requires words like “dream,” “vision,” “destiny” and “best life” to sell itself, for we shall see it for what it is: A cheap trick designed to make Christ desirable to people who have never been liberated from the governance of desire in the first place.

The problem is that the desirable Jesus is never there when we get to him, and he has not been for there two thousand years. The even bigger problem is that we have responded to his absence not by questioning whether his anticipated form was real to begin with, but by creating a church machine designed to deal with grumpy monkeys.

Our counseling rooms are emergency wards for the disappointed. Our prayers are pleas for the evasive breakthrough to manifest. Our revival services are designed to churn out newer and better versions of the banana Jesus, forever hoping to maintain the levels of excitement that were stirred up by our initial idolatrous depictions of him. Our worship services are choreographed to incite anticipation. Our evangelism strategies are aimed at the needs of the seekers. Our books are saturated with jargon that promises deliverance, healing, prosperity, a better tomorrow and everything conceivable that we do not have but want.

And, of course, all of it is cloaked in religious rhetoric. We truly believe we have turned from the world to Christ.

We have created a monster, and we are working feverishly for him, thinking that we are working for God.

(End of Part 1. Part 2 will deal with the solution to our predicament.)

[1] Genesis 3:6

[2] See Ephesians 4:22 and 2 Peter 1:4

[3] Galatians 5:24

What do Ernest Becker, René Girard, Anders Nygren, Daniel Gilbert and the Book of Romans have in common?

Many moons ago I heard about a book that won the Pulitzer price for General Non-Fiction in 1974: The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. The title intrigued me, and so I ordered it from the USA. (I could not find a single copy in the whole of South Africa…)

The book blew my mind. To this day I regard it as the best “non-theological” commentary on the human condition that I have ever come across. I followed it up with Becker’s Escape from Evil, and the experience pretty much repeated itself. And I am still working through his The Birth and Death of Meaning. Slowly…

I don’t think these books are everyone’s cup of tea, but they exposed me to a line of thinking that helped me greatly to understand the predicament of being human, as well as my Christian faith.

The only other scholar in the field of the human sciences whose writings had a similar effect on me was Rene Girard. His work on mimetic desire, conflict and scapegoating is fast becoming legendary. It is also becoming extremely popular, which is perhaps unfortunate. Girard has been, and is being enlisted as an apologist for a number of causes and doctrinal novelties that I doubt he would have personally endorsed. Sadly, this is often the case with profound thinkers who are no longer with us.

Added to this, Girard is a human being and his insights are certainly not complete or perfect. One does not have to agree with every tenet of his theory to gain much from it (the proverbial fish and bones). To elevate him to the status of guru is unwise. Many of his views do not sit well with conservative evangelicals, but that does not have to create an either/or conflict. His main contribution is in the field of anthropology, and his readers should consider for themselves what the implications are for their theology. For instance, the notion that you HAVE to reject the penal substitution theory of atonement in order to gain much from Girard is, in fact, not true. His work is multifaceted, and can be thought of as a series of self-contained units, each flowing into the other. There is no need to follow him slavishly, or to adopt each of his conclusions.

I have often thought of these two men as Cyrus-like servants of God, in the sense that they fulfilled a spiritual purpose without knowing that they were doing so, or at least the extent to which they were doing it. I suspect that Girard discovered it along the way, but that he was too modest to actually make something of it.

To elaborate on these purposes would fill a book, so I will refrain. Suffice it to say that Becker’s assessment of the human condition is pretty dark and damning, and that he suggests, as an objective scholar and social scientist, that “primitive Christianity” may be the only answer to the succession of failed immortality ideologies and “hero-systems” that have marked the human race since the dawn of time. Biblical Christianity, of course, takes the problem of death really seriously. Modern Christianity, according to Becker, is simply another “hero-system” or effort to deny death, and thus he relegates it to the same status as all other immortality ideologies. (All Restorationists may now applaud.)

The irony of these scholars’ work is that it has been mostly overlooked by mainstream theologians and believers (Girard’s work is finally being noticed, as mentioned, but this only happened relatively recently), seemingly because it did not come in the stereotypical theological wrapping. But this is in fact what makes it so powerful. As young researchers neither of them were crusaders for a cause or motivated by some or other belief system that created a research bias and predisposed them to looking for clues that would fit into an existing schema. They truly “stumbled” upon the powerful truths that they ended up articulating for the rest of us, and only later related it to the sphere of religion.

My all-time favourite interview is of Girard telling how he discovered that the Decalogue’s Tenth Commandment reveals mimetic desire to underlie all divine moral codes, and that it did so millennia before he came up with his theory. He notes that he finds it absolutely befuddling that this obvious fact has been overlooked by theologians. (First five minutes of interview – you can skip the rest).

To me Becker and Girard’s work represents two sides of the same coin: Mimetic desire is in fact the subjective response to the reality of death, and thus our greatest and most sophisticated effort at denying death. (Eve found the power to dismiss God’s warning of impending death through the enchantment of desire).

What we covet is in fact the life of the neighbour, and the closest we can come to this is to appropriate his/her possessions. In the process the neighbour is “sacrificed” to effect the life-exchange and overcome death. Our fascination with vampirism is but one testimony to this subconscious drive within.

This, of course, is where the gospel comes in. My greatest companion volume to Becker and Girard is Anders Nygren’s Agape and Eros (another largely forgotten work) – a book that shaped Karl Barth’s theology significantly.

Barth beautifully summarises Nygren in these words:

Love, as Eros, is, in general terms, the primordially powerful desire, urge, impulse, and endeavor by which a created being seeks his own self-assertion, satisfaction, realization, and fulfillment in his relation to something else. He strives to draw near to this other person or thing, to win it for himself, to take it to himself, and to make it his own as clearly and definitively as possible. In Agape, however, the one who loves never understands the origin of his search as a demand inherent within himself, but always as an entirely new freedom for the other one… And because he is free for him, he does not seek him as though he needed him for himself as a means to his self-assertion and self-fulfillment…. He loves him gratis. That is to say, he desires nothing from him, and he does not wish to be rewarded by him.

The book that completed the puzzle for me was Daniel Gilbert‘s Stumbling on Happiness. His groundbreaking work in regard to affective forecasting reveals that we desire things because we anticipate that they will make us happy. In this way we become slaves to our projections of a happy future self who inevitable ends up being grumpy about everything we have accumulated and achieved for him/her when we finally meet him/her.

Gilbert is not a believer, but his insights into the things that make humans tick are worth noting – and a lot of fun to consider alongside a Bible open to Ecclesiastes.

I was blown away when I discovered the book of Romans to be an eternal and majestic exposition of all of the above, especially Paul’s interpretation of the Mosaic law as a vehicle to reveal that God handed humanity over to desire as a result of rejecting him, and that none of us, no matter how religious, can suppress the power and dictates of desire, and so we “all have sinned”.

It is indeed impossible to understand the much disputed Romans 7, or even Romans 2, without these insights. In Romans 7 Paul represents the religious persona trying to do good but being tripped up by desire, revealing him/herself as a lawbreaker and in need of a saviour. In Romans 2 he hints at this by telling very “righteous” people that they were doing exactly the same as the “sinners” whom they were judging.

To conquer covetousness, and in the process fulfill the intention of the law as revealed in the tenth commandment, something called “love” is needed, that is, the ability to joyfully take what is mine and hand it over to my neighbour, as opposed to taking what belongs to my neighbour and appropriating it for me.

Agape is therefore diametrically opposite to covetousness, and here Nygren is helpful.

This suggests a reversal between the subject and object in the sacrificial drama, and this, again, is where Girard becomes helpful. The identity of the scapegoat is changed, and the “living sacrifice” is revealed as the only one with the ability to live this life of love and service and so fulfill the law by proving him/herself to be covet-free.

However, to do so, the underlying death-conquering motive that manifests in denial, mimetic desire and “heroism” must be dealt with, and this can only happen where there is an actual participation in the life that is really life. Hence, an identification with the life of God (as opposed to the apparent life of the neighbour) is necessary as the first step to be delivered from acquisitive, mimetic, erotic desire.

Romans 4’s Abraham reveals this action as something called “faith:” “My body is as good as dead, but God can give life where there is none!” The acknowledgment of “my body of death” is imperative as a basis for faith, and so Paul’s despair in Romans 7 as a result of his inability to conquer mimetic desire is intended to produce this very cry “who shall deliver me from this body of death” as a precursor of the faith that followed and that would lead to an impartation of Spirit-life in Romans 8, and thus to the new identity of a “living sacrifice” in Romans 12 (one who has died yet is alive, like Isaac & Christ) who is finally able to live the life of love and service expounded upon in chapters 12 right through to the end of the book.

Interestingly, the introductory passage to the “practical” section of the book, in the first verses of chapter 12, reveals that the “renewing of the mind” has to do with not thinking higher of oneself than you ought to, but to think with sober judgment, namely as a particular, single member in this new, resurrected body of Christ.

Thus chapters 1 to 11’s covetous narcissistic self that seeks to be served is exchanged in 12 to 16 with an “alive” sacrificial self that seeks to serve, and who never thinks of itself outside the boundaries of its particular calling in the community of the saints. Thus the rivalry that is prohibited by the tenth commandment, underlying and constituting the covetous self, is done away with completely. Envy and inferiority, as well as pride and arrogance, are also done away with.

In the place thereof, an identity with a very particular calling and equipping, whose life is shared with others, is encountered, embraced and accepted. The only rivalry that is left is revealed by Paul (tongue-in-cheek, I’m sure) to be the following: Outdo one another in showing honour! (12:10)

I have been long convinced that most of our psychological ailments spring from the cognitive dissonance triggered by the failure of our death-denying, hero-aspiring tendencies.

In other words, our failure to keep up with the Joneses drives us mad. And so it should, for God is telling us to go back to the right tree. I have found in Romans a paradigm to challenge our most basic and dearly held presuppositions, rather than just another “therapy” aimed at helping us to live up to our delusions. In fact, in my experience virtually all efforts at therapy represent efforts to assist us to better deny death and to better actualise or authenticate ourselves.

The converse is also true. I have been completely astounded at the impact of going the opposite route, namely using the above truths as a basis for counseling (anti-counseling?) brothers and sisters in the Lord. Truly, only those who are willing to lose their lives can find it, and any therapy that is not based on this truth is tantamount to doing interior decorating on death row.

Ironically, the Buddhist insight into desire as the cause of suffering and its related ideals of selflessness and Nirvana are now being “discovered” by many Christians, causing them to reject Christianity in favour of a philosophy of selflessness and slow, restful religion. Yet Buddhism or any of its derivatives cannot compare with the majestic way in which Paul expounds these very same things – the “primitive Christianity” referred to by Becker.

The Bible has a much more sophisticated and practical approach to desire and selflessness than what you can find in any branch of Buddhism, or anywhere else in the entire universe for that matter, but you have to read carefully to find it.

(This post was originally a comment on the blog of David McAnulty)

The Blessings of Giving

The Lord Jesus himself said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts 20:35

One of the strangest peculiarities of the human race is the hoarding habit. When it gets out of hand, psychologists call it “disposophobia”. The rest of us speak of the “packrat mentality”.

Different people hoard different things. Minimalists may frown at being called packrats, yet their bank accounts or foreign investments would usually confirm that that is exactly what they are. The rich are in fact the greatest hoarders, but we forgive them as it is more interesting to watch someone hoard Louis Vuitton handbags than what it is to stumble over your husband’s junk in the attic.

The sin of covetousness, which underlies the hoarding habit, is humanity’s most aggressive effort to compensate for the distinct sense of loss we experience without God in this world. It makes perfect sense, and explains why any effort at filling the hole in our soul is always met with further disillusionment.

As Rockefeller famously answered when asked how much money is enough: “Just a little bit more.” Centuries earlier Solomon said: “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income” (Ecclesiastes 5:10).

Jesus challenges the fallen and conventional wisdom of this world by pointing out that the ultimate answer for our ailments is not to keep on receiving, but to start giving. This teaching runs like a golden thread throughout the New Testament.

The words of Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in the fourth century, is worth quoting here: “When someone steals a man’s clothes we call him a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the man who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the man who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.”

Think about this for a moment. If the absence of God leads to covetousness, and covetousness to acquisition (let’s not use the word “hoarding” here, just in case you do not relate), then the presence of God should lead to contentment, and contentment to divine forfeiture (a.k.a. giving).

It is a huge subject, and one I have been contemplating since the early seventies. I had not yet turned ten when my mom took me to the drive-in to see Zeffirelli’s Brother Sun Sister Moon, and my life has never been quite the same. It remains my all-time favourite movie, and also the one that has inspired me the most.

Early this morning I received a notification of a post from one of my favorite bloggers, David McAnulty. It addresses the issue of the poor from a contemporary perspective, and I found it extremely meaningful. David says it so well that I prefer him to speak for himself. You can find it here.

Blessings to all.

(A few paragraphs of this post has appeared in Bloemnews.)

A Bubble of Covetousness

“You shall not covet your neighbour’s house…” Exodus 20:17

The past week’s international news headlines were dominated (yet again) by the current global financial crisis.

This time it is the Spanish economy that is wobbling. Whilst many are hoping that a massive bank bailout will resolve the problem, an increasing number of economists are warning that it won’t. They are predicting a “broader Eurozone catastrophe.”

That sounds rather grim, and so many people are asking the obvious question: “How did we get into this mess?” Google an answer and you will be overwhelmed by an array of articles filled with highfalutin economic terms that are pretty incomprehensible to Joe Soap and his family.

But there is something that you may notice while you’re at it: The recurrence of the term “housing bubble”.

It would appear that an inordinate amount of people bought an inordinate amount of houses with money that they never had but manage to borrow from banks who had inordinately liberal underwriting standards, causing real estate value to skyrocket in an inordinate way.

You don’t need to be an astronaut to understand why the whole thing was destined to pop.

This brings us to another question: Why on earth would anybody with a sound mind want to get involved in this? (Keep in mind that you will have to explain to your grandchildren why you helped destroy the world economy.)

The answer is simple: We never thought that God was serious when he told us not to lust after our neighbour’s house. And so we wanted bigger and better than the Joneses, and used every opportunity to get it.

Of course that made Mr & Mrs Jones feel terrible, and so they had to catch up.

We got into this mess because of greed. That’s the correct answer.

Will we get out of it? God alone knows. So let us focus on what we do know: That the Biblical definition of “gain“ is contentment, not accumulation.

The Root of Desire III

This is the third (and most important) post dealing with the issue of “desire”. If you happen to read this and you have not read the previous two, it might be a good idea to do so first. However, what I am about to share can stand on its own. It is, I believe, such a foundational truth that it ultimately relegates everything else relating to “desire” to the status of mere commentary. And so you can continue right on if you are not in the mood to read the previous posts.

Desire: An Appetite

What is desire? Desire is a yearning towards something. It is a hunger for something, and so it can be described as an appetite. Of course human beings have many desires for many different things, but in the final analysis they are all bits of one great desire. All appetites are mere shadows of one single appetite, namely the human appetite for spirituality.

Let me explain. Just as we are born hungry, and just as we need a source through which life will be administered to us in order to replace “craving” with “satisfaction”, so we are born spiritually hungry. In other words, just as “life” exists on two planes, namely the natural and the spiritual, so our yearning for it exists on two planes. We are naturally hungry, and we are spiritually hungry. Consequently, we can experience “fullness” both in the natural and spiritual realm.

Note that “hunger” and “satisfaction” serve as the primary indicators by which humans determine whether life has been administered to them or not. Of course this does not mean that these indicators are infallible. If you have seen Super Size Me you will know what I am talking about. But mostly we get it right. Mostly the pangs on our stomach direct us in a marvelous way to some or other source of nutrition that not only provides gratification, but that also keeps us alive.

Until we are hungry again, of course. And then the process repeats itself.

The point cannot be overstated: Hunger is what we experience, but it is in fact life that we crave. My two year old seems constantly hungry, but he is oblivious of the fact that when he eats he is satisfying a much deeper need: The need to survive as a human. And so God has designed a marvelous cycle of desire and fulfillment to keep us alive.

At this point we are ready for a few conclusions:

• Human desire is always an attempt to move from death to life, although this mostly happens outside of awareness. Note that Eve’s desire for the forbidden tree neutralized the fear brought about by God’s ominous warning of certain death. We’ll see why in a moment.
• For desire to cease, it looks outside itself for an object that can administer the life necessary to provide gratification. Eve “saw” the forbidden tree and concluded that the prospect of being “like God” would administer more life than eating of the other tree. Clearly, for being like God would imply more than merely receiving life. It implied becoming a source of life.
• Desire is not a pleasant experience. As the awareness of lack, its main aim is to destroy itself. And so the exhilaration of desire does not have to do with the desire itself, but with the prospect of gratification, that is, with desire’s absence. Desire’s main aim is to stop desiring. This is why Eve’s desire led her to pick and eat the forbidden fruit.
• The aim of desire is to bind the one who desires with the object of desire in a union of life. The result of this union is contentment, satisfaction and a total immunity to all lesser objects of desire. Eve expected the tree to do more than provide a snack. She expected it to transform her identity.
• When the object of desire fails to live up to its promises, for instance by offering mere temporary gratification, desire will return and the cycle will begin again. This could lead to an effort to extract more out of the object of desire or to interact with it in a fresh way. It could also lead to a total abandonment of it in the hope of finding a more suitable object of desire (See the reference to the Samaritan woman of John 4 later on in this post).

Made by God, Made for God

With the above in mind, let us consider two quotes:

You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Augustine

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. Blaise Pascal

God created us with a passion in our hearts: A passion for him. The aim of this desire is to unite us to God in an eternal, loving union. Just as children crave mother’s milk for the sake of their survival, we crave spiritual satisfaction for our spiritual survival. And just as the human body will not allow itself to be fooled in regard to the demands of its appetite, God does not allow us to experience this satisfaction apart from him.

Now think about this:

WHEN GOD DISAPPEARS OUT OF OUR PICTURE, OUR DESIRE FOR HIM DOES NOT DISAPPEAR.

No. It remains. It is an eternal and indistinguishable spiritual survival instinct, and it cannot be eradicated. And so, without God, the very passion that was intended to unite us to God becomes the passion that drives us to all kinds of objects and things in which we hope to find a suitable substitute for the absence of God. The reason people ‘s desires lead them to all kinds of sins is that they are seeking spiritual fulfillment. As Chesterton once said: “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.” It is because of dispossession that we seek to possess, in other words.

If you are still with me, please stay here. I am about to say something that you may never have heard, and that may very well change the way you view Christianity, the world and yourself:

DESIRE CANNOT BE RESISTED.

Let me say that again: Desire cannot be resisted. The reason for this is that it is a spiritual force, given by God to you for the purpose of enabling you to fulfill the greatest commandment: To love him with all your heart, mind, strength and soul.

This instinct is engraved on your DNA and nothing can ever change it. The great commandment has never been an option. It is part of your constitution. And you will spend your life trying to obey it, no matter how confused you may be as to how to do it. The difference between human beings is not that some are religious and others are not. No. All people are deeply religious. The difference between them has to do with the particular avenue they choose as an outlet for their religious instincts. Even a self-professed atheist is doomed to finding some sort of mission, object or person in his or her life to make it more bearable. As always, desire is the navigating tool to do so.

Now for the punch line: If desire cannot be resisted, then it is futile to try and do so, even if it is “sinful” desire. To try and conquer desire is to fight against God, for desire is given by God as the appetite of the human soul. Even a child will tell you that it is pointless to overcome hunger by trying to resist it. It simply won’t work. Hunger and thirst only disappear when there is a filling of sorts, and it has to be a filling that corresponds with the demands of the body. This is why people adrift on the ocean eventually die of thirst. Seawater does not do it for them. In fact, the more they drink, the more they thirst. And to religiously command such a person to “stop thirsting” is idiocy.

The Purpose of the Law

This, of course, is the purpose of the Mosaic Law: To illustrate the impossibility of conquering human desire. As I pointed out in The Root of Desire II (this may be a good time to read it, if you haven’t done so before), Paul’s epic battle to keep the law of God (and his ultimate failure) had absolutely nothing to do with sins like adultery, theft, lying and so on.

No, Romans 7 makes it clear that all of Paul’s failure in keeping the law sprung from one, single commandment: The tenth, that is, the prohibition against desire. The “very commandment that was intended to bring life” (Note: …to bring life) instead produced in Paul “every kind of covetous desire” (See verses 8-10). And so Paul concludes: “I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” Put differently, Paul would not have understood desire as a powerful spiritual force that cannot be overcome by willpower, even the strongest religious willpower in the world, were it not for the tenth commandment.

Desire cannot be resisted, not even by the world’s most moral man. This is why God chose Saul the Pharisee as the channel through which to reveal the benefits of the New Covenant. Through Saul’s dismal failure to keep the law that he respected so much, the real purpose of the law is revealed: To make us aware of sin. Not of sins, but of sin.

The law shows us that we are slaves of desire and that we cannot do anything about it. Yet it is not the desire itself that is sin, but the way in which we choose to satisfy it. To get this wrong is to commit idolatry, that is, to attribute God-like characteristics to lifeless things. As strange as it may sound, the principle underlying all sin is love. But it is forbidden love. As Norman Grubb pointed out, sin is an illicit love match.

For our man adrift on the ocean, neither seawater nor willpower can bring life. For the man in Romans 7, and that includes all of us, neither sin nor religion can satisfy us. We need “real food” and “real bread”, to use Jesus’ terminology. Our desires must not be annihilated. They must be redirected. That statement is so important that it bears repeating:

OUR DESIRES MUST NOT BE ANNIHILATED. THEY MUST BE REDIRECTED.

Desire is the force that is intended to drive us away from the inherent emptiness in ourselves, and the horrible experience of that emptiness, to some or other source of fulfillment. This force is even stronger than our natural survival instinct, which is why some people will commit suicide in the hope of finding more satisfaction in death than they do in life. As I pointed out in the previous posts, every action of a human being is preceded by a desire. When we act, we obey desire. Desire rules us. We do not rule desire.

The man who sold all in Matthew 13 did not do so because he found religion. He did so because he found a treasure that was worth more than everything he owned. Through it all he remained true to his desires – desires that were transformed by a discovery of great treasure.

Similarly, the mistake of the rich young ruler was not his unwillingness to let go of his possessions. It was his inability to see the supreme worth of Jesus Christ. He was blind to the pearl of great price, as all of us are, and so his desires compelled him to hold on the only collection he knew. This is why Jesus pointed out, in true Romans 7 fashion, that salvation is “impossible” for human beings. The impossibility, of course, has to do with ruling over our desires. Clearly, for “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).

The Solution to Romans 7

The solution to the problem of Romans 7 is found in Romans 8. Here we find the “filling” that solves the universal problem of humanity’s spiritual emptiness. Romans 8 is about the Spirit of God, and the implications of being filled by the Spirit.

In this chapter Paul says that “through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death” (verse 2). Note the movement from death to life, and then note how this actually plays out in practice: “ Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (verse 5). Note the references to desire. And note that human desire does not cease in this equation. Rather, it is redirected from the guidance of the sinful nature to the guidance of the Spirit. And so the man in Romans 8 finds it possible to keep the law, for his desires has been conformed to the will of God!

Paul’s effort to resist desire in Romans 7 was futile. This was no mistake, but a necessary lesson to indicate that salvation is an impossibility for humans, but a possibility with God whose Spirit of life can arrest our desires and direct them in a wholly different direction.

Christ the Bread and Water of Life

The above clearly illustrates how bankrupt religion is as a means to curb desire. Only Jesus Christ can offer the satisfaction sought by the human soul. No amount of rules, ritual, willpower or anything else in the whole, wide world can do this. Only Christ can, and this is what we mean when we say “Jesus Christ is all”. Of course, this is what the Bible means when it says that Jesus Christ has the supremacy in everything and that “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him”.

Think about it: Jesus had at his disposal countless metaphors by which to illustrate to us who he was and what his mission involved. But he chose the image of a meal from heaven to do so. We are to eat and drink him, he instructed us, and the result will be that we will never hunger or thirst again. Every time that Christians sit down to the Lord’s Supper, this is what they confess. Christ is our life. Christ is our delight. Christ is sufficient. We desire nothing but Christ.

Loving the Father and loving the Son is not an act of the will. It is a spontaneous and irresistible compulsion following the discovery of who God really is. This treasure is locked up in Jesus Christ, as is evident from the following verses:

• It has pleased God to let his fullness dwell in Christ (Col. 1:19)
• Jesus Christ is the “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15; 1 Cor. 4:4)
• Jesus Christ is the “exact representation” of the being of God (Heb. 1:3)
• Jesus Christ is the “Word” of God, that is, God’s primary communication to us (John 1:1, 14)
• When Philip asked Jesus to “show” the Father to the disciples, Jesus replied: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?”

Jesus Christ is the character and nature of God embodied in the flesh, and so the only avenue to the fullness, wholeness and contentment of God is in and through Jesus Christ. We are to take him into us as our ancestors were intended to eat of the tree of life. His life is the life of God, the only life that satisfies.

And so the great commandment, to love God with all of our faculties and with all of each faculty, and the Mosaic Law’s great prohibition against covetousness, is in reality one and the same commandment. Matthew 22:37 and Exodus 20:17 are the two sides of the same coin, the one stated positively, the other negatively. The one summarises the great “do” of the law (covering all the so-called “sins of omission”) and the other the great don’t of the law (covering the “sins of commission”). All of them are wrapped up in a single principle: The all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ. And so Jesus Christ is both the central message of the Ten Commandments as well as the New Testament.

With the above in mind, reconsider the following verses, most of which you may know:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
 my soul thirsts for you;
 my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water … My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
 and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, 
and meditate on you in the watches of the night… Psalm 63

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. 
He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. Psalm 23:1-2

As a deer pants for flowing streams, 
so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God,
 for the living God. Psalm 42:1-2

Whom have I in heaven but you?
 And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. Psalm 73:25

I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Psalm 143:6

You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing. Psalm 145:16

Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. Isaiah 26:8-9

Come, everyone who thirsts,
 come to the waters; 
and he who has no money, 
come, buy and eat!
 Come, buy wine and milk
 without money and without price.
 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
 and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
 and delight yourselves in rich food.
 Incline your ear, and come to me;
 hear, that your soul may live. Isaiah 55

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Matthew 5:6

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. John 4:13-14

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. John 6:35

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. John 6:51

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. John 7:37

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ. Philippians 3:8

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. Revelation 21:6

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life. Revelation 22:17

Jesus Christ is our satisfaction. We were created and designed for a relationship with him. That is why we exist. Nothing can quench this desire. We are the bride of the Groom, and our desire is for our husband.

Like the Samaritan woman at the well, we will remain thirsty throughout all our affairs with different lovers. Our problem is not our thirst. It is the wells we drink from. This is the message of John 4, and it is the central message of the Bible. As God said through the prophet Jeremiah: “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

Only two sins, God says. We do not allow him to be our satisfaction, and we seek our satisfaction in that which cannot satisfy.

It was Augustine who said that the gospel is not about duty, but about delight. He was right. Our mission on planet earth is to delight ourselves in God. Nothing brings God more glory, for nothing reflects his fullness better in this age. His perfection is best expressed in our contentment. His life is best expressed in our satisfaction.

As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. John 6:57

The Root of Desire (II)

The Law: God’s Instrument to Reveal the Universal Problem of Desire

As most of us know, the real purpose behind the law is to show us that we are sinners: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

In the final analysis, the law was not given to be kept but broken, showing us that we are in need of a savior. “Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin”, Paul says (Romans 7:7). In this sense the law was the “schoolmaster” that led us to Christ (Galatians 2:24). Of course this does not reveal any deficiency on the law’s part. The deficiency is with us, as we shall promptly see.

The problem is that this phenomenal truth of Scripture is usually proclaimed up to the point that I have just made, and then left for all kinds of conclusions to be drawn. And so it is assumed that the “knowledge of sin” brought about by the law is a “knowledge of sins”, that is, a revelation of all the wrong deeds that we are prohibited to do: As we struggle to live up to all these moral commandments we eventually become despondent, and so we are led to Christ who will then save us and empower us to live up to God’s holy commands.

This is not the teaching of the Bible, and our understanding of Christianity is sadly lacking if that is the way we understand the law, sin and redemption.

The Man in Romans 7

Two paragraphs earlier I quoted the apostle Paul as saying “Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” This statement comes from Romans 7, a chapter that is devoted in its entirety to illustrating that those who are “in the flesh” cannot live up to the law’s righteous requirements.

Paul’s famous statement “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” comes from this chapter. Paul does not speak here about his Christian experience, as is oftentimes assumed, but about the experience of a man in the flesh who tries to keep the law but cannot. The result is that he cries out at the end of the chapter “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

It is this cry of despair that ultimately causes Paul to look away from himself and to Jesus Christ for deliverance. And so Romans 8 introduces us to the “life in the Spirit”, a life that transcends the limitations of the law brought about by the weakness of the flesh.

Whilst the key to Romans 7 is “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (verse 18) and “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (8:8), the key to Romans 8 is “but you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit” (8:9) and “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”

Wow. What a teaching. These two classic chapters are foundational to any discussion of the deeper Christian life. And so they should be. Yet our understanding of them is sadly lacking if we stop here.

The Meaning of Romans 7:7

Go back to Romans 7:7: “Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” Now read the rest of the verse and further: “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.”

Wait a minute… Romans 7 is not about the whole of the law. It is only about one, single commandment: “You shall not covet.” Paul never struggled with adultery, or murder, or lying, or theft. In fact, he wrote to the Philippians that Saul the Pharisee was “faultless” as far as legalistic righteousness was concerned.

So what happened in Romans 7? The answer is simple: Here Paul tells us about the one commandment that he could not keep: The tenth. Covetousness is not a word we use often, and is better translated today as “eagerly desirous”. Romans 7 is the biographical account of a Pharisee who kept the whole of the law, but could not curb “all kinds of covetousness”. And so, he says, he would not have “known sin” if it were not for this commandment.

Whilst the first nine commandments prohibit certain actions, the final commandmend prohibits an intention. As we saw in the previous post, desire is the root and sinful deeds the fruit. The first nine commandments addresses the fruit, the tenth addresses the root. We always break the tenth before we break one of the first nine. You first covet your neighbour’s wife (Tenth command) before committing adultery with her (Seventh command). Likewise, you first covet your neighbour’s possessions (Tenth command) before you steal from your neighbour (Eighth command). In fact, every time you break one of the first nine commandments, you end up breaking two commandments: The one in question, as well as the tenth!

Whilst it is possible to refrain from external sins, it is impossible to refrain from the motive underlying it.

As I have written elsewhere:

The real origin of sin, in other words, can be traced back to the problem of covetousness. In fact, as Jesus pointed out in the Sermon on the Mount, where covetousness is present sin has already been committed (Matt. 5:27-28), and the carrying out of covetous intentions is mere coincidence and formality. In this sense we can say that the command not to covet is really a summary of the Ten Commandments, for where coveting is no longer present sin would no longer follow.

The problem of sin, therefore, is an inward one, and it is the purpose of the tenth commandment to illustrate this. To put it another way: The problem of sin is a spiritual problem, and this can only be pointed out by a spiritual commandment. When the tenth commandment confronted Paul, he acknowledged it as ‘spiritual’, but in failing to keep it he had to acknowledge himself as ‘unspiritual, a slave to sin’ (v. 14). While the first nine commandments revealed to Paul his ability to meet the external demands of the law, the tenth commandment revealed to him his inability to live up to the law’s spiritual requirements. In this sense sin was ‘recognised as sin’ in his life (v. 13).

Paul’s despair, culminating in his ‘wretched man that I am’, came about solely as a result of the one commandment that he found impossible to keep. It is this experience, more than anything else, that revealed to him his need of salvation, and that prepared him for the conviction that something needed to be done about his ‘un-spirituality’.

Romans 7 is the Bible’s greatest exposition of the problem of desire, and its conclusion is clear: The most righteous Pharisee in all of history, who could boast more “in his flesh” than any other (Philippians 3:4), could not overcome desire. And so the great Saul was revealed to be a lawbreaker, for “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.” Of course this does not only apply to Saul the Pharisee, but also to you and I.

It would appear that the law is much more “spiritual” than what we have been led to believe. Its aim is not legal conformance to external requirements, but the revelation that we are in need of a Savior who can transform our desirous Adamic nature.

More about that in the next posts.

The Root of Desire (I)

You may have noticed that there is a common theme running through the last few posts on this blog: Desire. That is no coincidence. I have been digging in my archives to find some old Bloemnews columns related to the topic, and there are quite a few. I will post the rest as time allows.

But before I do so, let me explain my interest in this little word.

It is my firm conviction that all of Christianity revolves around it, and that it depicts the single motivator behind all of human conduct, both moral and immoral. As such, it depicts the greatest force known to humanity, a force so strong that it cannot be resisted by human will. And so, if understood correctly, this little word will even solve some of the mystery surrounding determinism and free will. But that’s a story for another day. In the posts to follow I simply wish to introduce you to the central role of “desire” in the Bible.

Desire: The Problem Underlying Our Sins

If you read the New Testament you will notice that the word desire is everywhere. Sometimes it appears to be mentioned along with other sins, such as in Colossians 3:5-8, where we read the following:

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.

However, a careful reading of the New Testament reveals that desire is not simply a sin amongst other sins, but the driving force behind all sins. To sin is to give in to desire. Whilst Tom may be addicted to Internet porn, and Dick to alcohol, and Harry to money, the common denominator in their lives is their slavery to desire. They may choose to serve their master in different ways, but it is the same master.

The classic New Testament chapter on sin, Romans 1, provides us with a long list of typical “sins”: Envy, Murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, gossip, slander and so on (see verses 29-31). But note the origin behind all of these: “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts… “ (verse24) and “God gave them up to dishonorable passions … “ (verse 26). The “sins” were simply manifestations of the power of “sin”, namely desire, also called “passion” or “lust”. The “giving up” has to do with the way in which desire becomes more and more determined when adhered to. Desire has a profound effect on the human will. The will is determined to desire and cannot resist this determination, but it is free when considering its object of desire. However, once it has chosen it loses that freedom rapidly. But more about that later, as mentioned above.

Along the same lines as the teaching of Romans 1, Paul tells the Ephesians that the “old self” is corrupt through “deceitful desires” (Ephesians 4:22). The only solution to the problem of our Adamic natures, as we know, is crucifixion. And so we read in the letter to the Galatians that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). Similarly, Peter says that to become partakers of the divine nature is to escape from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

This is but a small sample of a teaching that runs throughout the entire Bible and that is oftentimes sadly missed by those who preach against sin. It is not our “sins” that constitute the problem, it is our “sin”. Desire is the root of the tree. “Bad deeds” are the fruit. To preach against bad deeds is like trimming your weeds. You may create the impression that your garden is weed free, but such an impression won’t last long.

The fact that sin is preceded by desire is clear from the Scriptures. Eve “saw that the tree was good for fruit, pleasing to the eyes and desirable for gaining wisdom”, before she ate from it. In James 1 we read that every man is tempted when he is dragged away by his own evil desire, and that desire, when conceived, gives birth to sin. We do things for one reason only: Because we want to do them. Our wants is just another word for our desires. Our deeds manifest what is in our hearts. It is as simple as that.

If this is true, then it means that for salvation to be salvation (in the true sense of the word) the problem of desire must be addressed. Believe it or not, this is exactly what Jesus set out to do when he came to dwell amongst us. How exactly we will see in the posts to follow.