Kethuvim

Have you ever wondered where the motivation comes from, that drives us to do the things we do? Maybe you have and maybe you haven't. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've been looking at my life and I've realized that my life is marked by a deep-down disquiet. There's a rumbling inside of me, at the deepest part, that I'm not happy and peaceful. I think if we all take the time to look deep enough, most of us will find the same inner feeling. That's not to say that there's nothing in my life that brings me joy or happiness, I'm just saying that deep down, I'm not right. I have this nagging sense that I'm not as I should be. In the Bible, we're told that God longs for his people to be free. Maybe the sense I'm getting is that, deep down, I don't feel the freedom that God has promised me.

I'm certainly not blaming God for any of this. He's provided the way to life and peace, I'm just, frankly, not following that way to the best of my ability.

So what motivates us? I guess the best way to say it is...emptiness. Deep down, a great many of us are empty. This feeling that something isn't right within us can basically be defined as emptiness. What this emptiness leads to is lust. We always associate lust with purely sexual motivations (and rightly so a great amount of the time), but lust takes on many different forms. The Greek word for "lust" translates literally as "in the mind." So lust is anything that grips our minds and won't let go. For some of us, sex is what grips our minds, for some it's shopping, for some it's drugs, for some it's alcohol, etc. When we lust after something, we are convinced that we can't live or be content without that something. Do you see what this leads to? Affairs happen because a man/woman is convinced that they will never be happy until they have that other man/woman. Alcoholism happens because the alcoholic has a sense of disquiet, and is convinced that alcohol will make him/her content. Some of us have a deep down sense of emptiness that leads to us having to buy the next trendy item. "If I just had that iPhone..."

The problem with all of this, is that lust can't deliver on the promises it makes. It can't make you content, it can't fill the emptiness. All it can do is make you lust for more. Think about how this progression plays out in real life. Rapists and sex offenders didn't just wake up one day and decide to do what they do. It was a long process that began with a lust for sex that continued to grow and grow, and eventually morphed from a "harmless" addiction to porn, to a monstrous addiction that led to violence. Porn stars didn't just wake up one day and decide to be porn stars. It started at a young age when that girl decided that the "guy of her dreams" could fill the void inside of her. What started as an "innocent" and casual fling morphed into an addiction that she can't get out of.

The question that all of this leads to is, "How do you fill the emptiness?" More to come next week.