Wanting What We Need
Copyright 2013 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
We do not need the “God” we want or the “God” we do not want. We only need God as He truly is, irrespective of either our positive or negative desires.
An overabundance of subjectivity is part of our fallenness as a race. Being emotional beings is not a problem in and of itself (God Himself has strong emotions.) The problem comes when our passions become more of a driver in our spiritual lives than they should be. Feelings are not intrinsically sinful. What we do with them can be.
At any given time our emotions can be leading us closer to our Lord or farther away from Him. This is a function of how accurately those emotions are painting spiritual reality. It does not so much matter if they seem to us positive or negative; most of us tend to know both poles of feeling on a regular basis. This is part of our nature as bearers of the image of a passionate God. What is far more important is how much credence we are giving to them as far as what they may seem to tell us about His nature. It is in allowing either extreme to define our perception of God that we often get into trouble.
Emotions and desires are intimately intertwined in the human heart. We tend to want what we feel is good and not want what we feel is bad. This may be an obvious point, but it bears repeating because how we deal with desires that are mediated by our emotions has profound ramifications for our spiritual lives. It can be argued that nothing is more important for us than who we ultimately decide God is because that is the greatest determinant in whether we decide for or against Him. We dare not make that decision based solely, or even wholly, on whom we want Him to be or not be; to paraphrase the discovery of Moses God “is Who He is”, nothing more and nothing less.
Whether we like it or not Who we desire Him to be is irrelevant to Who He is. It, however, is very relevant to who and where we will be eternally. It is vital that we come to know God as He really is. How to best get there is the problem we all face (and it should be stated here that the answer to this problem is not necessarily to elevate human reason at the expense of human emotion. Both our cognitive and emotive perceptions are equally fallen.)
This is where both God and His word come to the fore. The best way we can arrive at a true knowledge of Him, in defiance of what may be a faulty system that amounts to wish-fulfillment, is through a Holy-Spirit inspired knowledge of the Bible. We can learn to apprehend God’s revelation of Himself in the pages of scripture, but the only way this happens is through both immersing ourselves in meditation on that scripture and praying that it will be made real to us by His Spirit. We must also ask that this true knowledge of the Divine will become the one thing we most deeply desire. As this prayer is answered both the Bible and the Spirit behind it will become our “avenues” to Objective Reality. Our subjective desires must yield to this reality if we are ever to come to know the Lord we profess to serve. Only then we will recognize Him not as who we want or do not want Him to be, but as who He really is.
This may not be what we initially want, but it is what we finally need.