Is the particular condition (common to all humans) that we call desire, a good thing or a bad thing? We might go with a, “Well, it depends. . .”
We haven’t needed to experience much time on the planet to be able to confess – most of us with plenty of regret – that we have made some stinky messes along the way. By casually or carelessly giving in to desire (feelings). As John Piper puts it, “We should not be surprised or thrown off balance when we meet in ourselves, some really excessive and distorted bodily desires.”*
Piper went on to reference several disordered behaviors. . . gluttony, fornication, homosexual practices. To that list we can readily add gossip, lying, contemptuous speech (think political rhetoric either side of the aisle). The parade of missteps is longer than we would like to think. Help!
The good news is that help does come, to those earnestly looking for it. Seek and you will find, promises the Carpenter-turned-Rabi.
Part of the good news is that not all desires are bad. Indeed, most all the enslaving appetites that pollute and wreck human lives are actually “hijacked”, then distorted, versions of the real thing. Our best selves as humans bearing the marvelous image of God is what we are actually to grow into.
I really like food.
Foods and beverages come to us in all their wondrous forms and flavors. I indulge them largely out of a stirred-up appetite. Nasal sensors catch an aroma. Taste buds come alive to the mere thought of a delicacy. The stomach might be heard to growl. Maybe your own salivary glands are bearing witness to the phenomenon now! Into this scene at an inconvenient juncture, someone then inserts a useful, though uncomfortable question,
“Do we eat to live, or do we live to eat?”
Certainly, the lovely assortment of our most fundamental desires has made its way to our interior selves due to a very good design at the hand of a very good God. The measure that we are attentive and “lean into” our maker’s wisdom – drawing on his goodness, power and favor – may determine for us the difference between having a good, or a not-so-good (even tragic) pilgrimage here.
©2025 Jerry Lout *John Piper, Desiring God
Good, practical worthy blog. Read it and see for yourself and maybe, even see yourself.
Many thanks for taking in the posts; affirmation means a lot!