During its first season, the parody show Mad TV had a mock game show entitled Vague. Typically on game shows, the host will occasionally ask a guest to be a bit more specific on his or her answer to a question. On Vague, the goal was to be as vague as possible. I say all of this because, with this post on desire and spiritual formation, had I been a contestant, I would have won hands down. Fot that, I apologize. I do appreciate the comments that were made.

Let me be a bit more specific and share a few more thoughts, and see if this elicits any discussion. The French philosopher Simone Weil once said that there are two things that can pierce the human heart: beauty and affliction. Both pierce the heart at the same point, at the point of desire. Beauty awakens our desire for something more, that there is something out there, beyond ourselves that has us dreaming. “What if life could be like this!” we ask. Affliction provokes desire as well, but in the opposite direction, to a longing for something else, anything but this. “This,” we say, “is not the way life is supposed to be.” Beauty and affliction, John Eldredge says, are “moments we wish would last forever and moments we wish had never begun.”

Moments of beauty and affliction can wrest us from the daily tedium of life and invite us to our longings and our dreams, to those things that we truly, deeply desire. But desire comes with a price in this world, for finding true satisfaction for our desire and longing can seem so elusive. Our attempts to satisfy our desires can get us into all kinds of troubles, ranging from addiction to disappointment. Underlying all of it is a tone of despair. As James Houston has said, “Despair is the fate of the desiring soul.”

Despite the dangers and pitfalls, we will need our desire for the journey that lies before us. The journey that Jesus himself invites us to begin, the life to which He invites us to live, begins with desire. Those who would journey with Jesus must engage with their longings. Look at the pages of Gospels. Throughout His time on this earth, Jesus appealed to others through their desires. “What do you want me to do for you?” “What is it that you want?” “Do you want to get well?” “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” Even Jesus’ call to for self-denial and taking up one’s cross is done in the context of ultimate rewards of life and joy. You simply can’t get away from desire. As Dawson Trotman has said, “Discipline imposed from the outside eventually defeats when it is not matched by desire from within.”

Jeff Brower, in his response to my original post, has a good point. (Actually, he has several good points. Got to be a Calvin Sem grad!) Though desire is essential, not any desire will do. Our desires must be redirected and redeemed. “Orthopathy” is the forgotten link between orthodoxy and orthopraxis. All too often, preaching and teaching in the church sets the standard of obedience and correct thinking, and then expects such obedience to mysteriously materialize in the lives of believers. The result is an anemic, deformed spiritual formation.
 

If one defined "desire" as "longing" or "sehnsucht", my experience is that it is a personal spiritual experience that comes and goes. It is there to remind me that I am not in my home while here on earth, instead I long for my true home.

Nevertheless, I want to continue to be formed into Christ's image, whether I am experiencing any longing or not. That "want during more dry times" is also a kind of desire, but maybe more a desire of the will. In this case, I enact the behaviors that I know will prepare me to be continuously formed in His image- I pray, I learn Him through His Word...