Understanding our human needs and desires.
We are following up on the previous post and asking ourselves why we, as Mankind (MK), do anything in the first place.
I have a need
I need the toilet. I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. I’m tired. I smell. I have a bodily need that must be satisfied within a short period of time, and so I am looking around right now, making a plan. I eat and drink and go to the toilet and sleep and wash.
This is the stuff we all go through every day. These are non-negotiables, part of looking after myself.
I have a want
She is pretty; I want to have hair like hers. He has a big red car; I want a bigger one. The latest technology has just been released; I must have it. I want stuff, but I don’t need it, but I want it.
I must integrate with my peers
I live in a society of children, peers and elders. There are basic requirements that must be satisfied to live within the society and the culture I find myself in. In my case, I went to kindergarten, primary school, high school, university, job, found a wife, had kids and raised them all within the influence of the circles I exist in. I drive on the left-hand side of the road, obey the rules the government sets before me (well, most of them) and do my best to stay out of trouble because I don’t do conflict.
I feel like it
Now it gets tricky, and this is where conflict starts, first from within and then without, which is the opposite of within, meaning the conflict has transitioned through the skin barrier and is now outside. It started in our body and was not that visible, but whatever decisions were made with the counsel of Voices in our head have now been communicated with the outside world in some form or fashion.
I feel like it. This is what I want to do.
In its rawest form, watch children interact with the world. The paths they decide to follow are based mostly on what they are currently feeling. Asking them to break out of their current stream to do something else is an interesting experiment. You can see in their eyes as they consider the instruction to determine where this fits into their stream.
“Take your breakfast bowl to the kitchen and rinse it clean.”
Can I do it while I’m doing what I’m doing?
Do I need to stop what I’m doing?
How long will I have to stop for?
What are the consequences of not doing it?
Have we been through this process before, and what could the longer-term consequences be?
Oh, look, squirrel!!
“Take your breakfast bowl to the kitchen and rinse it clean.”
But we grow up and take all the experience of processed instructions with us into maturity.
Am I still operating in the stream of what I feel like doing?
I think so. The difference is that I have learned to move outside of it to do what needs to be done. The maturity comes into it when I have learned to do that with kindness, both to myself and the others that I interact with. Now, when I enter my stream, I take a big breath and enjoy it, but I cannot feel entitled to the space and must be ready to relinquish it easily.
Sometimes that goes well, and oftentimes it doesn’t.
The point with all these things that happen inside of us is that they all have a Voice when confronted with an instruction from God. MK was told, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” When the first test of that instruction came, as witnessed in Gen 3, what combination of Voices echoed inside MK’s head as the First Disobedience slowly showed its true form?
There was a need; MK may have been hungry.
There was a want, there were benefits that were not currently available.
Eve found support in Adam, so MK was OK with this.
And it felt so right as the serpent described the benefits they would have.
No one asked God.
And God did not interfere because He gave MK the choice, and the choice was to choose between what He said and what they were enticed to do.
And MK argued from a position of poor recollection, pride and personal desire.
And that is the same process we are confronted with every day.
With all our history, I think we would still make the same decision because that is who we are.
Every Day
Every day, several times a day, I am confronted by the temptation to do something contrary to God’s Word. If we take the simple and easy-to-understand direction given by Paul in Eph 4:29 as an example, I can tell you now that every day, despite knowing that I am to build others up with what I say, I don’t.
While I am talking, I have a poor recollection of the verse because I am consumed with the conversation.
I talk from a position of pride because I surely know what I am doing, and I am unlikely to listen to anyone who says anything to the contrary.
I have a desire to be heard, to be right and to be seen in a positive light, and I will form my conversations around that.
The worst is when I think I am building someone up when, in reality, they don’t feel it. Clearly, that is their fault. The more negatively they consider my speech, the more wrong they are because I have their well-being at heart, don’t I?
And that is one verse.
I am Mankind.
This is how we roll.
We think we are on the side of the Bible, and yet our very actions deny that. Our life speed interpretation of God’s Word is faulty at best.
We think we are on the side of the Bible, but don’t point anything out to us because we are so broken by our past that our internal psyche can barely deal with the negativity of life, let alone some well-meaning soul confronting our own faults.
I am still like the first MK.
They did not feel the need to call on God for everything, and neither do I.
No wonder I need Jesus to fill the very large gap between who I am and who God is.
We can now circle back and realise that God built this ‘flaw’ into us. It exists in all Mankind. The inability to see our need for God in everything that we do. The inability to see ourselves clearly enough to recognise this. We are always on the back foot. When we read through the Old Testament, all we see are the weaknesses of the Israelites. When we read through the New Testament, all we see is a continual stream of instructions from Paul to the churches addressing their weaknesses. When we read the beginning of Revelations, all we see is Jesus berating the churches for their shortcomings. Occasionally, an exception stands out.
What makes us think we are any different?
It makes my need for Jesus all the more desperate.
~~~ THE END ~~~