We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Quotes to Chew On: Desires
Marcos de Madariaga via Compfight
Here’s a quote that comes to us via Andrew Sullivan’s blog:
“We are rarely presented with an authentically fulfilling trajectory for our desires… If we are created for infinite satisfaction, we really only have three choices about what to do with our desire in this life: We will become either a stoic, an addict, or a mystic. The stoic squelches desire out of fear, while the addict attempts to satisfy his desire for infinity with finite things, which, of course, can’t satisfy. That’s why the addict wants more and more and more. The mystic, on the other hand — in the Christian sense of the term — is the one who is learning how to direct his desire forinfinity toward infinity,”
Category: General
Tags: Christian Living, Desires, Kingdom Living, Quotes, Temptation
Related Reading
Greg Interviews Jeremy Jernigan on “Redeeming Pleasure”
Greg: Thanks for agreeing to this interview Jeremy. Having read your soon-to-be-published book Redeeming Pleasure, I’m really looking forward to its September 15 publication. Okay, to get started, suppose I’m a stranger and we meet in an elevator. I notice you have a book. I ask who wrote it and you tell me you did. I then…
The Bible, Government and Christian Anarchy
This “essay” contains my informal reflections on biblical texts that I believe support what some call “Christian Anarchy.” Consider it a very rough draft of a future project. I’ll argue that Kingdom people are called to pledge their allegiance to God alone, not to any nation, government, political party or ideology. Because Kingdom people are…
The Cosmic Scope of Spiritual Warfare
Yesterday’s post briefly introduced the reality that we live in the midst of spiritual warfare. This is the reality of being a part of creation where Satan prowls like a roaring lion (1 Pet 5:8-9). The Scriptures make it clear that all of creation is in need of redemption. While most Christians assume that the…
Speaking of “the Poor”
D. L. Mayfield wrote this guest post on Love is What You Do titled The Language of Poverty. How do we think of and interact with “the poor” on a daily basis? Here’s some good insights should impact our lives as Kingdom people. From the article: Words like “the poor” mean something. They are rich,…
The Nature of Temptation
How does temptation work? Based on James 1:13-16, Greg unpacks the way that desire can give birth to sin. But desire is actually rooted in our longing for God, and the desire itself—and therefore the temptation itself—is not in and of itself a sin. God created us with a “hungry heart” so that he could…
The Cost of Holding On
Given Greg’s recent Twitter comments on the question of how we view what we own, we thought this article in the New York Times was particularly timely. What is the cost of holding onto things? As we accumulate more and more possessions, do we pay a price beyond the actual price tag? Although this piece…
