Why Did God Give Us Our Most Basic Human Desires?

By Brian Lowther

If you’ve been tracking with the RWI for any length of time, I imagine you are the type of person whose deepest hope is to live a fruitful, meaningful life in view of the kingdom of God. But, do you ever struggle with the fact that you have other, more surface-level desires that often stand at odds with that deep hope? As an example, I have always wanted to own a jet pack. Just think of the traffic I could avoid! I also have a deep and abiding love of naps, palindromes, listening to my dad recount the events of a baseball game, and a very quiet part of me would love to spend a few leisurely years sailing around the Caribbean. These trifles make me feel quite happy. But what good is happiness if the real goal is God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which is essentially a battle against darkness and evil? [1] Are all of these surface-level desires engineered in me by God’s enemy to divert me off course? Or has God instilled them in me for some good reason?

To answer, it goes without saying that Satan can corrupt our desires causing us to pursue them too far. The word for that is sin. But in this five-part series, I’ll assume that these desires at their root are good and programmed into us by God for a good reason. Specifically, I think his reason is to help us participate with him in bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which involves destroying the works of the devil. What follows are six of the most common human desires and how they help us participate in this task.

Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Survival?

My most basic desire—in agreement with popular psychological theories like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—is survival. I desire food, water, rest, sanitation, hygiene, security, and safety.

It seems obvious how this desire would help me in the battle against evil. Without it, I would give up and end my life when I encountered hardships.

The will to live is remarkably strong. I witnessed my wife battle through a terrible case of morning sickness. For five months extreme nausea was her all-day companion, vomiting was the norm and eating was unthinkable. I was terrified that she would starve to death. We went to urgent care countless times for intravenous fluids. But somehow, she never gave up hope. And one day, she started to get better. Now we have two children, meaning she went through this ordeal twice. How do people survive such things? Or worse things, like concentration camps or human trafficking? Why is this desire to live so strong?

I think it is because God knew that at times, the enemy’s attacks could be grisly, heinous, and appalling. Our desire to survive must be proportionally tenacious.

Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Pleasure?

If my ability to survive is not threatened, my next immediate desire is pleasure. I desire solitude, amusement, thin-crust pizza, frequent trips to the beach, maybe a jet pack—and any number of other physical or aesthetic comforts.

I think pleasure has a two-fold purpose in the battle against evil. First it acts as our “leave” from active duty. It recharges us so we can rejoin the battle. Even in wartime, soldiers don’t fight a battle indefinitely. They must take leave on a regular basis, or risk losing their minds.

Second, pleasure acts as aspirin or morphine when we experience the pain and suffering of battle. Such as: 1) The physical pain of existence, e.g., injury, handicaps, disease; 2) The mental anguish from failures, burnout, rejection, conflicts, or loss; and 3) The emotional turmoil from doubts and fears which I believe are whispered into our psyches by the enemy as a form of psychological warfare (see here for more on this). I think of pleasure as a momentary escape from these forms of existential suffering.

In the next installment, I’ll tackle the question, why did God instill in many of us a desire for power?

Endnote

[1] I realize that the battle against evil is a main theme among other main themes in scripture. I fully embrace the idea that God’s original and ultimate plan was and is for us to dwell with him and his holy angels in harmony for an eternal future. However, in the mean time, the RWI seeks to explore and advocate a “warfare worldview,” partly because we feel it is underemphasized in the body of Christ today and partly because we think it will inspire new action. If you’re new to the RWI, see the following brief essays for an introduction to the warfare worldview:

1. The Warfare Worldview           
2. The Story of the Cosmic Conflict    
3. Kingdom Mission So Far, in 500 Words
4. Three Views to the Problem of Evil: View #3

Photo Credits: 
1.  Jetman: Ars Electronica/Flickr
2. Bindweed plant breaking through asphalt: Mark Dixon/Flickr
3. Strawberry Shortcake: Sonny Abesamis/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute.

Three Views to the Problem of Evil: View #3

Nick Kenrick/Flickr

By Brian Lowther

Ralph Winter once said, “There are very many people, even Bible-believing Christians not just non-Christians, who are profoundly puzzled, perplexed, and certainly confused by the extensive presence of outrageous evil in the created world of an all-powerful, benevolent God.” In other words, if God is all-powerful and all loving, then why is there so much evil, disease, and suffering in the world?

In this third and final post, I will explore one last Biblical view addressing this question. [Click here for Part 1, and here for Part 2.] As before, I won’t venture to interpret any scripture passages. I’ll simply list the passages that at a surface level, seem to support the view I’m exploring.

View #3: Suffering and Evil are a result of a Cosmic War between God and Satan.

This conviction shows up any time someone encounters evil such as disease, demonization, or natural disasters and understands them through the lens of the warfare worldview. For example:

• “Life is war and the world is a battlefield, ravaged by eons of conflict among powerful invisible forces.”
• “Evil originates in the wills of Satan, fallen angels, and sinful people, rather than of God.”
• “The mystery of suffering resides not in God’s providence or because of an arbitrary streak in his character, but in the warfare that engulfs creation.”
• “Evil happens because in a war, casualties and accidents are expected and very likely. ‘Bullets fly, bombs explode, mines are stepped on, and children are maimed.’ [1] In a war, suffering is not an intellectual puzzle to solve. In a war, suffering is a given.”

Scriptural Support

This understanding is taken from the Bible, where you can read of numerous indications of a cosmic war between God and Satan.

• Paul describes the necessity of the Armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) in this war, which is not a war between flesh and blood, but against “the cosmic powers over this present darkness and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)
• Jesus repeatedly calls Satan "the ruler of this world" (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), Luke suggests that Satan owns all the authority of all the kingdoms of the world (Luke 4:5-7), Paul calls Satan "the god of this world" (2 Corinthians 4:4) and "the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2), and John says “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." (1 John 5:19)
• Luke summarizes Jesus’ ministry as “doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.” (Acts 10:38) Similarly, John explains, “the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). And Paul confirms that the death of Christ was meant to “break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14).

Key Advantage

One of the great benefits of adopting this view is that it creates a posture of revolt and resistance in the face of evil, rather than a passive resignation that often characterizes the response to the other two views. Evil isn't to be puzzled. Evil is to be confronted and overcome.

Surprisingly this conviction doesn’t come up nearly as often as the previous two views. However, it is older than Christianity itself. In fact, the primary way the early Church Fathers (such as Origen, Athenagorus and Tertullian) explained evil in nature was by blaming Satan and his demons. [2] This view was pre-dominant until St. Augustine in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries. Before he became the most influential Christian thinker of all time, Augustine was part of a religious sect called Manichaeism, which had two equal gods, one good and one bad. As he was inching back toward Orthodox Christianity, he reacted against this dualistic worldview so dramatically that he essentially banished references to an Evil One, taking a view in which there was no intelligent angelic opponent to God at all. Or, if there was, he did very little, all things instead being God’s initiative. 

Questions

But should we take this view to be the universal explanation for all evil? If so, a few questions arise.

• To take this view seriously, we have to take angels and demons seriously. To many people today, especially in the West, the notion of a personal, real, and active Satan who has great power in the world is ludicrous.  
• How does this view make sense of texts like the book of Job? In Job, it’s clear that Satan caused all of Job’s suffering. It can also seem that God controls every move Satan makes.
• Does this view attribute to Satan more power than he has?
• Does this view inevitably lead to Christians who are angrily militant, authoritarian, or even violent? In other words, does this view inevitably lead to tragedies like the ones that occurred in Waco in 1993 or Jonestown in 1978?

Conclusion

I personally feel that the explanation that people suffer because the world is engulfed in a cosmic war offers some important philosophical and explanatory advantages to the two other views I’ve explored. However, this is partly because I grew up with the other two views as the pervading theological assumptions, and frankly I always felt something was missing. Can these three views be synthesized into a more complete answer to the problem of evil? Is it possible to hold all three views in tension? Or does the third view cancel the other two or vice versa? These are questions for another day.

Endnotes

[1] Greg Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1997) 58.
[2] See more here: http://gregboyd.blogspot.com/2007/07/argument-from-early-church-fathers.html

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute. 

Warfare Worldview

By Emily Lewis

Flickr/Debbi Long

When I was in high school my dad introduced a new figurine to our mantelpiece nativity set. It was a sinister looking red dragon that perched atop the porcelain stable, grimacing down at the farm animals as if waiting to snatch away the infant Jesus. This was, of course, a reference to the account of that event in Revelation 12, and my three brothers were thrilled to have some much needed grit added back to a story that had been made innocuous by the retelling. 

My father was making a larger statement, one he made countless times during our formative years, to lend meaning to both the decisions and the tragedies of our existence. He always told us, "Life is war."

My grandfather and RWI founder, Ralph Winter, wrote, "Once Satan is in the picture—if we believe he is—no amount or kind of harsh or heartless evil should be unexpected. When we reinstate his existence as an evil intelligence loose in God’s creation, only then do a lot of things become clear and reasonable. Suffering, in a perverse way, starts to make sense."  Whether making sense of things this way is new to you, or a concept you've grown up with, I invite you to explore it further on our Warfare Worldview page. 

The Story of the Cosmic Conflict

We have already mentioned the Warfare Worldview many times on this blog. It reframes our view of history and is reflected in our interpretation of current events. But if you are new to this line of thinking you might wonder how different the story of mankind looks through the lens of the Cosmic Conflict.

Citing from John Eldredge, Beth Snodderly, and Ralph Winter, who was intimately, personally acquainted with war, these reflections outline the history of this universal struggle in four acts. But, more importantly, it traces from the beginning, to the present, and beyond, our own role…

"Humanity wasn't created merely as a consequence of Lucifer's sin. We weren't intended only to fight a war. While the warfare theme permeates the Bible, so do other themes such as of love, joy, rest, relationship and righteousness. After all, what would be our role in the 'next' life, when sin and evil are no more, if we are merely infantry for this one?"

Choices: The Challenge of the Evil One

By Beth Snodderly

A Story to Illustrate Ralph Winter’s "12th Frontier of Perspective: The Challenge of the Evil One." 

Flickr/Steve

Once upon a time …
Well, actually, before our time began,
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit called for a very special meeting of the Heavenly Council. “We have decided to make a new kind of creature in our image,” the Trinity said. “And we want some of you angels to be their guardians and watch over them and help influence them to make wise choices. We are appointing Lucifer, the cherub closest to our glory, to be the ruler of the new world where these humans will live.”

A dialog between God and Lucifer might have gone like this:

God: We are taking a big risk in creating humans and putting you in charge of their world. But we think the risk is worth it because of the GREAT potential for GREAT LOVE. We want heaven’s rule to be freely chosen on earth.

Lucifer: I’m honored that you have chosen me above all the other angels, to be the ruler of these new creatures in my world. 

God: Well, you need to realize that they may not always choose to follow your leadership. They may rebel against you, or even try to harm you. We’ve already taken that risk in giving free choice to you angels.

Lucifer: Don’t worry. I won’t let them disobey. I’ll MAKE SURE that they follow my rules.

God: “The meek shall inherit the earth.” My kingdom is not ruled by force.

Lucifer: You made ME the prince and ruler of the earth. Now it is MY kingdom and I’ll do things MY way. I’ll KILL OFF anyone who doesn’t want to do what I say. In fact, I, the cherub closest to your glory, will expect my humans to worship ME.”

God (sadly): “You were the seal of perfection
          Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
          …You were on the holy mountain of God.
          You walked amidst the fiery stones.
          You were blameless in your ways
          From the day you were created—
          Until wickedness was found in you.”

Then there was WAR in heaven.

“Michael and his angels had to fight the dragon.” “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”

“How you are fallen from heaven, day star, son of the dawn; you are cast down to the earth.”

As for the earth, after Michael and his angels got done battling with Satan and his angels, the earth was a mess. It was tohu wabohu. You can read in Genesis 1 how God went about refashioning the earth to make a place where humans could live—because he still intended to create those humans.  

But you might think that now God had a problem. How was heaven’s rule going to be freely chosen on earth when the ruler of the earth had already rebelled against heaven’s rule? Now the whole world was lying in the power of the evil one. And God couldn’t just take back the rulership he had given Satan. That would be to go back on his word. That would be to deny God’s own trustworthy character.

But God had a plan.

God always finds a way to overcome evil with good.
God always knows how he will respond to every possible choice that angels or humans could make.

God planned to work through humans who would choose whom they would serve. In a way they would be voting for who their ruler should be—Satan, or God. 

In his wisdom, God knew that humans would not be able to resist the wiles of the devil without supernatural help. And they needed Someone who would show them what God’s will looks like on earth. Someone who is wise and good and loving. And Someone who would be willing to take the risk of being rejected by the very people he was trying to help. Since no one else in heaven was willing to take that risk, God himself had to make the choice to risk being betrayed and killed.

And sure enough, God the Son was the victim of violence. He was the Lamb who was slaughtered. But we are called to have faith in the God who has faith in himself. The Lamb was willing to be slain, from the foundation of the earth. Because he knew that God’s power is greater than death. He knew that death would not be able to hold onto him. And that was God’s peacemaking way of defeating the enemy. 

“And the God of peace — will soon crush Satan under YOUR feet.” Because he has brought us out of darkness into the Kingdom of his beloved Son.

Dearly beloved, If God so loved us, we ought to choose to love — one another.
We can choose to be a display window of what God’s will looks like — on earth.

Beth Snodderly is President of William Carey International University and holds the degree of Doctor of Literature and Philosophy in New Testament from the University of South Africa.