Video for March 20th, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
I’m just outside Christchurch in New Zealand this week. Below me you can just about make out the many surfers in the water. Surfing is a bit of a religion in parts of New Zealand. There were surfers in the water until it was almost dark last night and already in the water just as it was getting light at half past six this morning. I’ve never been surfing myself, but I can see it would be fun. I have too high a centre of gravity; I suspect I’d just find it frustrating, and it would make me cross with myself as I kept falling off. For those who love it, it can become a consuming desire. I suspect we all have our own obsessions which whilst not bad in themselves can become so if they lose proportion.
Buddhism identifies desire as the root of suffering, in the sense that frustrated desires lie behind it. The goal of life becomes eliminating desire to achieve enlightenment and peace. The Christian diagnosis is radically different. The problem is not the presence of desire – that is to be a human being; the problem is that it becomes misplaced in fallen human beings like you and me. As St. Augustine of Hippo said, “Lord, give me chastity, just not yet!” One of the goals of Lenten abstinence is to foster a re-ordering of affections in ways that draw us away from destructive and misplaced desires focussed on our own ego needs and towards the God who promises to be the source of our deepest satisfaction. Jesus had to endure the same temptations himself. The first of these in the wilderness was to turn the stones into bread. “You don’t have to live with an ungratified physical desire”, says the devil. Secure your life by acquisition and everything that makes life comfortable. Jesus’ response was clear and unequivocal, “a person does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God”. Essentially, our desires are not the best guide to what will ultimately make us happy. In the Genesis garden story Eve “saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it”. Lest we repeat the old lie that it was Eve who was the temptress, the key phrase is, ‘who was with her’, he was there all the time. This is an indictment of humanity. They were both misled, but in slightly different ways. Giving in to that desire didn’t end particularly well.
There is wisdom in the proverb ‘moderation in all things’, but this is slightly different. Christian wisdom says that growth in holiness is accompanied by allowing our desires to be put in a different order. Jesus said, “seek first the Kingdom and its righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you”. So, how might this work out in the practical day to day? Well, Jesus clearly promised at the end of the Great Commission that I am with you always, to the very end of the age. Approaching the day with the sense that Jesus is with us might cause us to ask the question, “can I do this with Jesus by my side?” Would the thing I am desiring and sacrificing for increase the amount of love, kindness and peace in the world, or would it simply make my life more comfortable, perhaps requiring a sacrifice to be made by someone else? Would the fulfilment of this desire make Jesus better known? The answer to these questions may of course be neutral, in which case go ahead! There is a difference between self-restraint and asceticism. I don’t believe spiritual growth is necessarily about heroic sacrifices so beloved of our Celtic and monastic forbears in faith, or massive desire suppression. Its more likely to be the advice from Paul in Romans 12 to offer our bodies as living sacrifices. That requires a degree of self-reflection. These are questions to ask ourselves throughout the day with the prayer that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth. I hope by God’s grace my hierarchy of desire is different now to when I became Christian forty-seven years ago. I hope and pray in the latter part of my life they will continue to change to more faithfully reflect the Lord’s agenda. I pray that this Lent we will all be making moves in a similar direction.
+Richard