fulfillment

My first day off after a 3 month contract had me unplugged from the Matrix and flying. I woke up with these new thoughts about desires and how good they are...when they are true.

The problem is that Christianity, at least the Christianity I have been presented with, has everything backwards.

Don Miller gave a serman a couple of weeks ago that has totally rocked me and some of my friends. He was talking about the Magic Bullet—you know that thing that makes salsa and slushies and everything else you can think of to fit 30 minutes of the infomercial that it is. And it highlights the whole informercial/catalog/ advertising/consumer-oriented culture we live in. There's this song that is sung over and over to us, kind of like an anthem. The message of the song is basically this: I didn't know how discontent I was until you came along and showed me the Magic Bullet. Then I simply had to have it. I could not rest until I had it. I was empty. I needed the Magic Bullet. There was in fact a hole in my heart the shape of the Magic Bullet. So I got the Magic Bullet and then I was whole and fulfilled. Except that I wasn't whole or fulfilled. The Magic Bullet didn't come through for me. I was betrayed by the Magic Bullet. He was not in fact my friend.

It's really sick when you think about it. And it's a predatory message because we all have desires, we all feel this longing in our hearts for something more. Maybe it's the Magic Bullet. That's certainly the message. Actually my Magic Bullet is the Dell catalog. I was really happy with my laptop until I saw all the new ones. (Dual core. A moment of silence, please.) I'm sure everyone has got something like this. You're doing great until the thing comes across your line of sight, and then you realize how incomplete your life really is.

And this brings up the problem with Christianity. Have you heard this song? You are defective. In fact, there is a hole in your heart that is maybe round shaped. And you have been trying to fill this round shaped hole with the square-shaped product of rock-n-roll or the triangle-shaped product of drugs or the octagon-shaped product of career, or the hexagon-shaped product of porn, etc. But Jesus is the round-shaped product that perfectly fits the hole in your heart. Ask Him to come into your heart, and you will be complete. You will have a fulfilled life. Jesus is your Magic Bullet. Just obtain the Jesus product and your desires will be quenched, and you will be complete.

Not true.

The Bible doesn't talk about Jesus that way. Jesus never presented Himself that way. And frankly it doesn't work. I asked Jesus into my heart and I still wasn't whole or complete. I still had these deep feelings of inadequacy. I still have these things I want, these things I crave, these things I hope for. So I was left feeling betrayed again. I chose to fake it. But others were more honest. They said, "I tried that Christianity thang, but it didn't work."

So is Jesus defective?

I think Jesus is not defective but He's really lousy as a Magic Bullet.

I don't think God ever intended Jesus to be my Magic Bullet.

I don't think God ever intended to come in to my heart and fulfill my life.

I think rather that God intends for me to come into His heart to fulfill His life.

So this got me to thinking about desires again, my favorite topic ever. Desires, longings, these vacuums of the soul, these things that draw me out and move me towards something. And I'm back to thinking about God and the overarching story he's telling, the Story of Desire.

I think everyone suspects that there are good desires and bad desires, even though in the Bible there is just desire. There are not different words in the Bible for good desires or bad desires, nor are the words good or bad inserted in front of the word desire. We're just left to figure this out. The problem with desire if you're a Magic Bullet Christian is that you really need to get rid of all desire. They all need to be bad. I mean, if you were empty, and you got your Magic Bullet Jesus, then you should be done with desire. So all desire must be bad.

And this is where many of us have struggled for years. We felt betrayed. If Jesus was my Magic Bullet then... Why are my eyes still magnetized to a beautiful woman? Why is the money I have and the stuff I have still not enough? Why do I still enjoy good times? Why does it still hurt when my friends reject me? Why do I long for true fellowship and meaningful community? Why do I still feel the need for speed when someone gets a new motorcycle or a sports car? What's the deal with sunsets? Why do I want to be appreciated? respected? noticed? listened to? Why do I get angry at injustice, at oppression, at various types of abuse? Where does this nostalgia come from? Why do I regret anything? And why is Visa doing so well?

Or maybe we didn't feel betrayed. Maybe we were terrified. Because if Jesus is all I need and yet I still have these desires...then maybe He never really "came into my heart". Some of us have actually bounced back an forth between betrayal and terror.

But Jesus never claimed to be anybody's Magic Bullet. But Jesus absolutely affirmed desire. I have written about this extensively (and too academically) in my essay, The Long Clew. Jesus was desire. So are we. In fact, the first important thing He ever said, according to His best friend John was, "What do you want?"

The truth is that desire is not bad. Magic Bullets are.

But even before this Magic Bullet Jesus picture came into focus for me, I rejected the notion that desires were bad. I do think there is a difference in good desire and bad desire. But it's probably so far from the way most of the church would define it that it's not even worth talking about lust in its various forms. So I want to look at it in a different way. A way I think Jesus looks at it.

I first have to view my life as a story. More than that, I have to look at my life as part of a story that was begun before I was born, and will continue after I die. In fact, the story of my life only has meaning as it intersects with the Story God is telling.

Bad desires are desires that would draw story elements to me. They would fill me with objects of desire. They would draw all of life and collect it to me. Actually I call them bad desires, but they really are no desires at all. Desires are good desires. They draw me in whole or in part into the story, into my place in the story, as an element in the story. Rather than allowing God to come and fill me, desires fill God up with me as the object of his desire. They would consume me, spend me on a good and noble theme for the display of His splendour. They would draw me out of the dark and into life, they would collect me to life and light. Colossians 1:15-23 in the Message version is extremely enlightening:

Christ Holds It All Together

We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God's original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.

He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the Cross.

You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God's side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don't walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted.

The good of desire is that it draws me out for a walk in the garden. The thing that makes for bad desire is collecting the garden for my jar. True desire is being plucked by the flower instead of plucking it. It's becoming part of God's kingdom instead of making Him part of mine.

Unless I lose this idea that the story is all about me, and that the purpose of Jesus is to add just what I need to be complete, and that the best God can do is to set me up and help me keep my feet, and as long as I avoid the God who would sweep me off my feet, then I will be forever trapped in a self-absorbed, consumer-oriented version of Christianity that will let me down time and again. Jesus will not fulfill me. He never intended to. Asking Jesus to find His place in my heart is never going to work. Lately I've started thinking about when people say, "I asked Jesus into my heart." I want to ask, "Did He fit?" God is much greater than our hearts.

It's taken me a while to put some of this together, and I'm sure it's still too much too fast to read. I've been drinking from a fire hydrant, so I know my words are gushing, too. But here is how I closed my thoughts last Thursday.

...Another thing hit me as I was playing Moonlight on the piano this morning. When I was learning this song several years ago (a difficult feat for one who doesn’t read music), I got to this part after this long run up and down the keyboard. If you know the song, you’ll recognize it as kind of protracted and one-dimensional. But after it is perhaps the most stunningly beautiful sequence in the history of the piano. Many pianists seem to disdain the long keyboard run, and will often rush it or add some style. I don’t. I don’t because I remember plowing through learning the song, one note at a time, trying to work out which fingers on which notes, hoping I was reading the notes right at all. And I remember the first time I actually played this part. I had figured out the notes, so I backed up a few bars to get a running start. It took me several tries. The first time I actually got it right, I stopped and wept. When I was younger, I would play something on the piano or hear something on the radio and think, I could write something that good, or I could change that a bit and do something more creative. But sitting at the keyboard crying, thinking about Beethoven’s gift, these words washed through my heart, “I can’t believe I get to play this.” What a privilege it is to be swept into something so wonderful as this Song God is playing. What an honor to be invited to play through this gift called desire. And what a treat to have my eyes opened again today to what is really going on.