Within this past school semester, we read one of C.S. Lewis's most popular books, Mere Christianity. This was my second time reading the book. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. One of the aspects to the book that has always caught my attention and intrigued me has been Lewis's reasoning behind the fact of human desires. This post will consist of my concluding thoughts on the topic of desires and the satisfaction that exists to these desires. (Also, fun fact: this was actually a speech I gave in school several weeks ago that I decided to turn into a blog post;)) So, here we go.
Throughout C.S. Lewis’s book Mere Christianity, he makes many claims and assertions that essentially dig at what Christianity truly means at its core. While Mr. Lewis certainly puts his own interpretation on many of the things he reasons in the book, I believe he simply is trying to take the truth of what Christianity is and break it down in a practical, understandable manner using many different analogies, metaphors, and other imageries. One of the topics he addresses is that of human desires and therefore the nature of such desires, whether or not satisfaction exists for those desires, and whether or not we ought to act on these desires.
In book three of Mere Christianity, Lewis discusses the behavior of Christians and thus talks about morality, virtues, and ethics. Whether he is speaking of sexual morality, social morality, whatever it may be, he always seems to conclude that the actual desires of a person, within the nature of who they, are never bad by definition. Rather it is the context, the multitude, and the manner of which we carry out our desires that can be either right or wrong. And I believe this argument is valid and sound mainly for these reasons:
1) Desire wouldn’t exist without fulfillment
2) Impulse does not equate to immorality
3) This world is not complete
So first of all, desire would not exist without fulfillment, or, as C.S. Lewis himself puts it, “creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists”. The supply of fulfillment requires the demand of a desire. Cause and effect are at work here. Last year in school, we read R.C. Sproul’s, The Consequences of Ideas, where he talks about the law of casualty, which essentially asserts that every effect must have an antecedent cause. As Sproul himself points out, “[The law of causality] is not the same thing as saying that every thing must have a cause because then God himself would require a cause. The law of causality refers only to effects and is an extension of the law of non-contradiction.”
Literally from the effects of life itself and living as created beings, we have desires, which first demand a prior existence of satisfaction to those needs or desires. Now for example, we have reasoning skills, can think rationally, and have desires to learn, there are such things as Truth and Logic. We have the need to feel connected to others, receive attention and be in relationship with people, there are such things as community and friendship. We desire fairness. Justice exists. We have sexual desires to be known and loved, there’s such a thing as intimacy. We get hungry! Food exists. Desires, in their realest, rawest, and purest form are not good or bad—they’re natural and exist because fulfillment also exists. As the law of causality implies, not only do effects require causes, but causes will therefore always produce effects. Supply and demand, cause and effect, both these laws are excellent examples of how needs, desires, and otherwise effects must first originate and require the existence of the supply, the satisfaction, or the cause to also be there.
So, as we’ve established, desires at their core are simply natural, not right or wrong. This leads to the second point; impulse does not equate to immorality. However, this is where most people get hung up or stuck. Desires are natural, yes, but it’s also very easy to abuse the natural impulses we have and use them to an extent or in a context where the action can then be deemed clearly as good or bad. Sex exploited and done outside of a marriage covenant, indulging oneself in food without care to moderation, developing toxic, needy connections with others by disrespecting friendship, even committing murder because one desires fair justification for a wrong done unto them, all these examples show natural desires completely abused and manipulated.
Another aspect most people fail to realize about this concept is that satisfaction to desires often exists within moderation. Indulging oneself in something over and over with no care to limits or parameters will only create a stronger craving for such a thing whose fulfillment becomes harder and harder to come by. As C.S. Lewis says regarding sexual morality, “everyone knows that the sexual appetite, like other appetites, grows by indulgence. Starving men may think about food, but so do gluttons; the gorged, as well as the famished, like titillations.” Desires are easy to exploit, turning our natural needs into foolish actions carried out in improper context or unhealthy quantity. But, again to reiterate, the impulse itself, for food, love, praise, justification, is not immoral. This world offers us temporary, false satisfactions to our God-given desires, which leads to my final point.
This world is not complete, nor is it fully satisfactory in any sense of actual contentment. It is broken. It is flawed. It lies to us—promises us eternal joy when all it offers is momentary happiness. It certainly makes for a difficult environment for our desires to be lived out as they were meant to be. But, thank goodness, it doesn’t end here, at least not for Christians. Mr. Lewis brilliantly goes on to posit, “earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy [us] but only to arouse us to suggest the real thing”. This world is but an echo, a slight glimpse into what the next world offers and who awaits us there. Now, because this world is so faulty and, as we’ve discovered, unable to meet our needs entirely, people find it quite easy to slip into faulty mindsets as a result.
In Mere Christianity, chapter ten of book three we read about the two types of perspectives many people tend to adopt once they realize this world essentially lied to them and they believe their desires cannot be fully met. First Lewis describes the “Fool’s Way” and how this man blames the means in which he carries out his desires. That woman he pursued, that expensive estate he purchased, the vacation he took, the job he mastered, all things that in the end disappointed him because his desire was not met in its fullest sense. “[This type of person] trots from [this to that] always thinking that the latest is ‘the Real Thing’ at last, and always disappointed.” The second person is what C.S. Lewis calls “the disillusioned sensible man”. This man essentially gives up on pursuing the fulfillment we all crave. After much disappointment, he quickly settles down and lives a melancholy life in which he doesn’t expect much from people, things, or enterprises. In the end, both of these outlooks are incorrect because, as we’ve established, desires can’t exist without satisfaction, but also this world is broken and cannot provide us with that ultimate contentment we seek.
So…. what are we to do? We are first to realize that our desires and impulses are not wrong or sinful or immoral. We then must be careful not to act on them in ways that are indeed wrong, sinful, or immoral. But, we aren’t then to just sit back and lose hope that what we crave will never present itself. In fact, it has already presented itself. God, our cause and us as His creation and effect, find what we search for in Him and His Son and Spirit, who now, we as Christians have access to…in this world, right now. Since we have this knowledge and this relationship with our Creator, our actions that stem from our desires do not have to be done incorrectly. Plus, we can stop searching for we have already found the answer. God can meet our needs in this world, but even better, once we arrive in the country we were made for, as Lewis describes it, I bet we’ll find that we come to know an even greater satisfaction to our desires, which we didn’t even know we fully craved in this world.
Those are my thoughts for today:)
-Sarah