What do I want? Why do I want it?

What do I want? Why do I want it?

I asked Darien to lead Pastor’s meeting this week by bringing us something good from the biblical counseling training he has been receiving. He did not disappoint.

He led us through an utterly convicting discussion of heart-idols via an article by David Powlison.

What makes our desires wrong? The question becomes particularly perplexing to people when the object of their desires is a good thing. Notice some of the adjectives that get appended to our cravings: evil, polluted lusts (Col. 3:5; 2 Pet. 2:10). Sometimes the object of desire itself is evil: to kill someone, to steal, to control the cocaine trade on the Eastern seaboard. But often the object of desire is good, and the evil lies in the lordship of the desire. Our will replaces God’s as that which determines how we live.

John Calvin put it this way: “We teach that all human desires are evil, and charge them with sin–not in that they are natural, but because they are inordinate” (Institutes, ed. Battles, p. 604). In other words, the evil in our desires often lies not in what we want but in the fact that we want it too much. Natural affections (for any good thing) become inordinate, ruling cravings. We are meant to be ruled by godly passions and desires. Natural desires for good things are meant to exist subordinate to our desire to please the Giver of gifts. Grasping that the evil lies in the ruling status of the desire, not the object, is frequently a turning point in self-understanding, in seeing the need for Christ’s mercies, and in changing.