The Danger of Denial

I have a weird form of impulse buying.

Lets take, as an example, my saga of buying a PS3. Ever since it came out, I mulled over the prospect of buying one. It has some great games, great features, is region free (a big thing for me as I import stuff from Japan) and has killer computing power. The thing was, for a long time, there were other things that I needed to spend $300 on, like, say food and tuition and rent. I would reason my way out of the desire, pressing it down into the lower reaches of my conciousness and go about taking care of the necessities of life. I would see trailers for games and hear conversations by friends that would raise the specter of desire and I would brutally shove it down again.

Fast forward to some 3 years later. I am meandering through Fry's Electronics (always a dangerous thing when you have unsatified technical fantasies) and I notice that they are selling refurbished PS3's in the wake of the newer slimmer model that had just released. It was just too good of a deal to ignore. A game that I really wanted to play had just released from my favorite studio and now this sale hits me at a weak moment, a time where I had already decided to spend some money (I was pot committed if you will). So I walk over and grab a box. Then I look up the row and see the brand new model sitting there at full price. I look at the box and wonder at the stories that this pre-owned console may have, what conditions it had been in before, how some uncaring tech may have poorly re-soldered some components and a catastrophic failure that could happen and the extra money I would end up paying. The potential was too great for my mind. I put the box down and grabbed the new model and walked out with a much much lighter wallet. This is a pattern. Anything over a couple hundred dollars goes through this process for me.

Now I don't regret this purchase. Not really. But what is illustrated here? A repressed desire will grow until one day some catalyst will transform it into an uncontrollable urge with consequences larger than it ever would have been had the desire been fulfilled initially.

I am desperately thirsty. I want a lot of things, a lot of which can be attained easily through sin. Self-righteous culture tells me to deny these impulses, that desires are unholy and should be suppressed. Post-modern culture tells me to satify every desire and constantly bombards me with messages about how to do so and shows me a myriad of people who are doing so and enjoying it. As Christians we are caught between denial and indulgence, between holiness and debauchery with many strategies to win mental battles but with few motivations to win heart battles.

"I will feast the soul of the priests with abundnce, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, declares the Lord." Jeremiah 31:14

Two things. He says he will feast the soul. This is not a promise of material blessing, something to satisfy our minds and senses. This is a promise that he satisfies the root, the innermost part of our being. He goes beyond what we think will fulfill our desires and fills the very essence of the desire itself, a longing and emptiness in our souls. He then says that they will be satisfied with his goodness, not his gifts. He makes certain that our satisfaction is rooted in something that will never change and will never depart and that is himself.

Remember, this is written to his people who are in exile. They are in a pagan culture where they are being told every day that their way is not the best way, their God is a farce and that they can have everything they have ever wanted if they will simply live like everyone else. They are in Babylon, which is used in Revelation as a metaphor for the most sin drenched depth that mankind can reach.

God knows that simply giving them a list of "do nots" will do nothing to combat the enticement of the culture around them. Instead he tells them, "Don't trust them, trust me. I will do far more for you than they can. I will satisfy you so much more deeply than they can ever know. Don't deny your desires, they will keep coming back. Come to me and have them filled."

"Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me" is not a call to not satisfy the desires of our heart. It is a call to give up our own control and our own ideas of how to satisfy them. It is God saying, "Look, you can do what everybody else is doing to work at satisfying yourself or you can do it my way. My way looks like the cruelest, most agonizing thing you can ever choose because to all the world, it will look like you are giving up something great. They will ridicule you and call you foolish. But the weight of my cross on your back is the weight of my love for you, a reminder of my goodness to you, a taste of what I have done for you. You have me and I am good."

So don't bury your desires, trying to pretend they don't exist, trying to hide them from God in some silly notion that we can fool God into thinking we are holier than we are. Open them before him. Tell him what your mind is telling you that you need. Then ask him to fill you. Ask him to remind you of his promise. Ask him to give you a vision and a faith to make the future vision a present reality. Ask him and ask him often. Every day, every moment if you have to. Whatever it takes to attain the attitude that Paul had "Whatever gain I had, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened...If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father (who is good!) who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"