What do we desire when we desire God? The ancient philosopher Plato said God was the union of the good, the beautiful and the true – and that the only way to ascend to the realm of the holy was through desire. Plato said that when we desire God, then – and only then – passion comes to our aid, giving us wings so we may fly heavenward. Hence, rather than fearing passion, we need to nurture it, and ride it all the way to its end, which is God, the good, beautiful, and true.
What if it turns out that the desire for God and the desire for love are really one and the same desire? Note that I said the desire for “God,” not the desire for the possible benefits of a relationship with God, such as comfort and peace, healing and salvation. These are the kinds of benefits people tend to talk about regarding their respective desire for God.
I have had many discussions with persons over the years who said they had no desire for there to be a God. Or more to the point, they said, “I don’t need God.” I have never known quite how to answer that. After all, we may well be constructed, or at least placed into a cosmos where we can seemingly get by sufficiently well without a God pulling strings from the wings.
Perhaps the best response I have come up with is to answer their question with another question: “But do you want there to be a God?” Sometimes this has stopped persons in their verbal tracks, as they attempt to take in the question. What does “want” have to do with God, life, purpose, personal satisfaction and fulfillment? I would venture to assert that want is every bit as significant as need. I have a question for you: which is in the end the more significant to your daily life and strivings, wants or needs? I already know the answer: wants, hands down. “Want” involves your will, your very freedom to choose what you desire and are willing and wanting to seek. “Need” on the other hand, seems to refer to your “deficits”, to what is perhaps necessary to complete your being as a person. That is, “need” takes the free will out of desire.
When it comes to love, I wonder whether love is a need or a want. I have asked persons, “Do you need or want love?” The usual answer involves a combination of the two, though a few have maintained that they can get along fine on their own, like being their own islands, with no loved ones to be concerned with, to pull them down as well as pick them up. For the most part, however, persons have decided that love is more of a want than a need; that is, love is a matter of the heart’s desire, less urgent than say, the stomach’s yearning or the lungs gasping. This does not make love any less important than our physical needs; it just takes it out of the realm of necessity and puts in squarely in the area of freedom and choice.
I am convinced that to desire love is to desire God. And that just as truly, to desire God is to desire love. Further, to desire God for God’s own sake is roughly akin to loving God for God’s own sake. And isn’t this how we want to be loved, as well as to love another? Not due to this or that benefit, this or that personal characteristic, but because that person is lovable in his or her own right; or more to the point, because we actually do love that person, well, simply because we love that person. We can give you reasons, but the love itself is greater than any reason given as to why it should exist. This is the secret of love: it exists for its own sake. Love, like God, is our ultimate end, rather than merely our means. And the good news is, love seeks us even more than we seek love.
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