Pleasure and How to Change Our Desires

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

-- C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

These final few weeks of Lent we have been exploring the so-called Quartet of Desire: Envy, Greed, Gluttony and Lust.

I have made several comparisons and contrasts between the members of this quartet, whose underlying unity is that all of them are sins of disordered desire. Each one aims at something which is good—because God created it so!—but which fallen human nature desires in sinful ways.

On Sunday I further argued that what makes both gluttony and lust so alluring is that they powerfully appeal to our sense of pleasure. I want to expand on that thought here…and then explore how, with the LORD’s help, we might break free if we find ourselves enslaved by pleasures—gluttonous, lustful or otherwise.

So first…

Pleasure!

Great food is delicious, great drink is delightful! 

Sexual intimacy is pleasurable—often incredibly pleasurable!

Indeed, the promise of pleasure is nestled deeply and unavoidably in our eating, drinking and engaging in sexual activity. 

And—don’t miss this—that is a good thing!

Pleasure in its simplest, most basic form simply tells us: Awesome! Love it! When the pleasure synapses in our brain light up, it’s the brain’s way of telling us: I like that! Do it again!

And make no mistake: God created us that way, and He called it good. Christians are not anti-pleasure. There is nothing at root wrong with—and, in fact, a whole lot to commend—pleasurable experiences in the way God has hard-wired our brains. If God had not made it a pleasurable thing to cuddle with a newborn baby…or for a baby to seek her parents’ smiling faces…or to begin with, for humans to conceive babies, where would as a species be? 

Pleasure is a powerful educator because it is a super effective ‘glue’ for encoding in our brains the pursuit of good and essential things in life.

The problem is: Pleasure can be misused. Much like Super Glue, which can make wood and plastic stick together—or our fingers! So, too, pleasurable things can easily attach us to the wrong things, or in the wrong way. 

Pleasures can be enjoyed in excess. Pleasurable experiences can be manipulated in dysfunctional, disordered ways. God meant for us to enjoy good things in their good and proper way. But when we rip them from their God-given context and purpose, we use them to serve the self alone—what Paul called ‘the flesh’—and promote the way of the world and the devil, not of the LORD and His kingdom.

Pleasure as Super Glue: We will come back to this on Sunday when we discuss lust.

In the meantime, I want to address the toughest thing of all: How to break the bonds of that Super Glue? 

I have heard it a million times in a pastoral counseling session. It is the million dollar question every Holy Spirit-convicted Christian asks: 

How on earth do I find freedom from my disordered desires?

If I no longer feel like the master of my pleasures but they have mastered me…

If I keep turning to the pleasures of food, drink or sexuality to satisfy my longings for comfort, consolation or care…

If I am self-medicating the pains of my past or my present with pleasure…

…how do I stop?

No one has pondered this question more profoundly than Scottish theologian and philosopher, Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847). His classic essay “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection” argues that there are two ways we can rid ourselves of unwanted desires:

either (1) by a demonstration of the world’s vanity, such that the heart will be prevailed upon to simply withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or (2) by proposing another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, such that the heart will be prevailed upon not simply to quit an old affection (which would have nothing to succeed it), but to exchange an old affection for a new one.

According to the first method, the “world’s vanity” is our motivator. Basically, that means we convince ourselves of how unreasonable, unproductive, unhelpful, even destructive–in short: vain–the gluttony is in the life of a Christian.

It is like the writer of Ecclesiastes bemoaning, "vanity of vanity!" And showing the vanity of a way of life rooted in “eat, drink and be merry.” 

In other words, we might already believe our gluttonous desire is deeply unpleasing to God–perhaps even immoral by God’s standards–but in trying to break free from it and to motivate ourselves to follow God’s ways, we go through an Ecclesiastes-like thought experiment and realize the way of the world in us is a dead end.

Practically, concretely, how would that work?

We might contemplate how our gluttony is triggered by our social media usage, so we might eliminate that. This is more behavior modification than desire modification...but maybe desire follows behavior change.

Problem is: that presumes another desire–a discipline–to quit social media! Do you have that desire? Can you maintain it in the face of all sorts of other pressures (work, your social network)?

Or we might show how harmful it is to us, resulting in weight gain or sluggishness at work or whatever.

Problem is: that presumes we are bothered enough by these problems that they themselves would motivate different behavior. Take weight loss. It is hard. We might realize gluttony causes weight gain...but is weight loss a good way to reign in the underlying desire behind it? Nope.

Or we might explore how it is rooted in dysfunctional impulses or trauma from our childhood past.

Problem is: that presumes we already have the desire and motivation to confront our past hurts and the ability and support to find true healing from them. No doubt, a good support group or therapist can definitely help here. And there is no doubt that healing past wounds could help address the underlying issues. But who and what is the greatest, most effective agent of healing?

Thus, Chalmers point is that this first approach–the “world’s vanity” approach–will not ultimately work. He's actually even more pessimistic than I am! He insists: it is “altogether incompetent and ineffectual” to produce the desired change of desire.

Now, let me be clear: I as a pastoral counselor think there can be some genuine help from the above insights and strategies...but where I agree with Chalmers, they all remain incomplete––if the LORD is not ultimately at the basis of them all.

So let's say you do find a change of heart through one of those means above. Are you necessarily replacing it with a deeper love of God? It could be a deeper love of self. Or else, as we saw from the Desert Fathers a few weeks back, you could be motivating yourself by means of some other sin like vanity and pride!

In other words, is your truest, deepest desire to be filled more with the LORD than your gluttony or lust or greed or whatever? Until that happens––until that is your deepest motivation for change––all other means of change on their own are dead ends into other sins, most likely into a deeper enthrallment with yourself!

It's interesting to note here that the classic AA Big Book insists you cannot and will not gain victory over your alcoholism and stay permanently on the wagon without a true higher power to which you submit. AA is basically agreeing with Chalmers on this crucial point!

So Chalmers wants to convince us that "another object, even God" is "more worthy of its attachment, such that the heart will be prevailed upon not simply to quit an old affection...but to exchange an old affection for a new one."

His argument is rooted in 1 John 2:15:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

The love of God is thus the truest, highest motivator of all. To truly love God crowds out the love of the world and its many delights and affections.

Practically, it might look like this:

If we understand more deeply and truly accept our status as beloved children of the Father, we shall experience His joy in us. So we will begin to feel less needy or anxious.

If we meet Jesus the Great Physician amidst our trauma and pain, He alone can touch and heal the deepest wounds imaginable. So you no longer feel the need for the pleasure to medicate the past.

If we find our identity more in the Kingdom of God with Jesus as our loving LORD, we will experience a more powerful sense of kingdom what it means to be a citizen of heaven. So when we lack earthly provision, we can rest assured in our heavenly provision and destination and thereby experience comfort amidst adversity.

And if we need the discipline to say No to social media or Yes to a healthy diet as a means to stop experiencing or stop being triggered to disordered desire, the love of God and the experience of His love can more powerfully motivate our discipline than anything else.

And so on.

That is how the expulsive power of a deeper affection––and identity with––Jesus Christ is the ultimate basis of growing in us newer, better, more godly desires.

And to go back to the beginning epigraph of this post, to that CS Lewis quote: that love, that desire, the pleasure is a much higher order pleasure than any of these others, is it not?