So glad to be back in Theology; day one and I've already got much to chew, roll around on my tongue, and see how it tastes.  


Among other things discussed in class today, we mulled around the idea of desire.  That simple word holds a hell of a lot.  There seems to be an inevitable dual nature about desire, on the one hand it connotes hope, movement, and expectation; our desires push us into life and relationship.  On the other hand, desire is risky, vulnerable, and often results in disappointment or shame when our desires go unmet.  When speaking of desire in the Christian context, desire often becomes attached to worldliness, the flesh - things not of God.  I remember internalizing messages to do away with my own desires, messages laced with threats of evil spirits and hell.  To desire anything or anyone other than God was of the world instead of simply in the world.  I remember this passage from Paul's letter to the Romans being thrown around a lot:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.  And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.  As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. (Rom. 7:15 - 17).

I mean, if Paul can't deal with his desires, then the rest of us must really be screwed, right?  "It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me." He is describing an experience of actually losing himself in the mess of his own desires - the actions are not him.  Overwhelming.  Terrifying.  Consuming.  


So where do we draw the line between good desire and bad desire?  How do we know which ones supposedly draw us closer to God and which ones pull us away?  How do we know which ones push us into relationship and which ones drag us into isolation?


We were given two exquisite passages in class today, both from C.S. Lewis.  Our professor noted her belief that she doesn't think people actually read Lewis because if they did, they would be talking about how crazy and radical he was - he really pushed the envelop of theology for his time, and his teachings are still so relevant today.  From the few books of his that I have read, I totally agree.  So here are two separate passages from Lewis on desire:

It would be much truer to say that fairy land arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. This is a special kind of longing. ("Three Ways of Writing for Children," 38)

Gorgeous.   

The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. ("The Weight of Glory")

Amen.  Amen.  Amen.  


So now what?   I hope this moves you.  I'm not sure where it sends me, but I've got one foot in front of the other.  Whatever that means.  It "unteaches" some of what I learned in church growing up and in college, a sort of unbinding or at least a loosening; it gives me hope and draws me a bit out of isolation.  Desire can be lonely - and has been in my life because of what it connotes in the Christian world.  So what does it mean to know there is more and to want it?  I'm not sure I can imagine that for myself.