The Quartet of Desire: An Encore & A Preview

       On Sunday, I introduced everyone to the Quartet of Desire. There was a lot packed in that introduction, so I thought I would share again some of the key points here in a blog post.

       What is that Quartet?

       The Quartet of Desire is a set of four deadly sins that all have one thing in common: they are all disordered desires for fulfillment.

       The first three Deadly Sins we treated—Pride, Sloth and Anger—are less oriented towards fulfilling our desires. They are more like conditions of our heart and soul: Pride is a condition of self-exaltation or self-sufficiency in pride. Sloth has to do with spiritual laxity, an underlying lack of care in our soul for our soul’s true good. And anger is that state of self-justifying or self-righteous indignation. Each is clearly a character flaw, too.

       None of these first there is a desire for something but rather a state of heart or mind. A desire is out will wanting something beyond ourselves that we lack. Pride, sloth and anger might involve some desire(s), but that’s not their basic character.

       So now let’s meet the Quartet of Desire!

       The Quartet of Desire plays a winsome but sinful melody of desire—of desire longing to be fulfilled, however it can. There is always something at least momentarily gratifying, even exciting and fun, about each of these desires. But each of them is, at root, an excessive, distorted or twisted desire. In envy, greed, gluttony and lust there is a longing for something that is basically good—something God originally created as good—but thanks to the fall, these desires in us go after those goods in all the wrong ways.

       We first met the Quartet of Desire on our Lenten retreat on Envy. Our sermon Sunday morning was on Greed. Next week we get to know Gluttony and then we wrap things up with Lust.

       Envy is that self-comparing desire that longs for the good that someone else has…but which you lack (or think you lack). It could be the good of physical appearance, athletic or intellectual abilities, money or position or honor. It matters not. All of these things are basically good, but with envy, your desire is disordered. You feel like you lack whatever that good thing is—a thing which someone else has—and feel in your heart a grasping, covetous even contemptuous desire towards them. It’s as if you want to take away the good thing from them and make it your own. It’s often a subtle and difficult thing to detect (that’s why we needed a whole day retreat devoted to it!).

       Greed is wanting goods and resources—chiefly money—in an excessive and distorted way. Like Mr. Big Money Bag in our image, greed wants a bigger and bigger bag—or holds onto the one we’ve got with an iron fist. You don’t have to be rich to be greedy. Poor people can be greedy, too. You just have to desire more and more and more money or possessions than you currently have. It is an insatiable desire for more.

       Gluttony longs for fulfillment, normally, in food and drink. It is the pleasures of excessive consumption. In a way, gluttony does not just have to be for food and drink, but for anything in excess—any sort of pleasurable good could be a ‘gluttonous’ longing, it’s just we normally associate with the excessive consumption of stuff that goes in our mouths! But the same could be said about greed, too. So gluttony primarily concerns the desire and pleasure not of things (greed) but of food or drink.

       And finally, lust? To quote that great country ballad, it’s looking for luv in all the wrong places. It’s love and intimacy you want—both very good things—but you seek it in the wrong way. If greed might be a gluttonous longing for money, so too, lust might be a gluttonous longing for the pleasures of sexual intimacy. Lust is seeking sexual gratification outside of the healthy boundaries of the covenant of marriage. (Lust within marriage can in fact happen. It is often the origin of a lot of marital sexual abuse. So that’s why I stress: within the healthy boundaries of marriage.)

       In each of these sins, there is a longing for the fulfillment of our desires. It is just that the object of our desire—or our manner of fulfilling it—is different in each: for another person’s good(s), for money, for food and drink, or for sexual pleasure.

       The Quartet of Desire sings the ballad of a restless soul. Our collect today says it best. It riffs off of a great quote by St. Augustine, who so memorably said:

       “LORD, You have made us for Yourself,

but our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

       Augustine is teaching the key point: the LORD God created in us a desire for the good blessings of this life—the objects of both envy and greed—and for the good blessings of delightful food and human intimacy—the objects of gluttony and lust—but to long after such things with a restless desire is to desire them in unlimited, unhealthy and ultimately, destructive ways. They are good desires run amok, unrestrained by God’s good way.

       For Augustine, limitless desire ultimately points to only One possible fulfillment—in the infinite God!—but in us, these sins seek out their fulfillment not in the creator but in created things. Yes, that restlessness points to God! So whenever you feel envious, greedy, gluttonous or lustful, you can actually stop and recognize in those longings their true object: God. But we often fail to do so. Mainly because these feelings are powerful, and often feel--in the moment at least--very enticing, even fulfilling. When we, however, exchange a desire that is meant for the Creator for His creation, that is what we otherwise call:

idolatry.

That’s where we ultimately wind up with the Quartet of Desire sins. And that is why they are so deadly. They are powerfully enticing lures into idolatry.

       Let’s be clear on one final point: the classic teaching on the Seven Deadly Sins is not there to blame us and shame us for having these desires…but it is ultimately to call us, through the cross of Christ, back to rightly ordered desires. To restore those desires to the dignity they originally possessed before the fall—and to transform them and make them more like Christ’s own.

You catch that? It’s not really about putting the genie back in the bottle and getting us back to the pristine state in the Garden of Eden. No, our innocence is now lost. It is more about, with full cognizance of sin and its toxicity, to receive the gift of holy desires—Christ-like desires—transformed by His grace, to where now, those redeemed desires, can actually be part of the LORD’s redemptive work in the world. And not the source more sin, more evil, more destruction.

       Oh, don’t we want that?

       I know I do.

A Preview

       Come this next week, March 15th, and meet the next member of the Quartet of Desire:

Gluttony! 🍔🍟🍕🍺🍷🥃

By way of introduction, here are a few thoughts about how the final two members of the Quartet--gluttony and lust--are connected and different from the first two, envy and greed.

There is a special thing that the final two deadly sins in that Quartet of Desire have in common: Both gluttony and lust are pleasurable. Often, in the instant, in the moment you are experiencing them: very pleasurable, indeed! Pleasure acts as a kind of magnetic force or a tractor beam that can suck us into gluttonous and lustful behaviors.

Neither envy nor greed have quite that immediate connection to pleasure. We have this expression "green with envy." Well feeling green is not a very pleasurable thing, is it? The sick emoji is green! So to be green with envy is almost a sickening feeling  of covetousness or perhaps even contempt towards another and their better fortune. Unless you just are a hard core people hater, there's really nothing especially pleasurable about marinating negative feelings towards others! Is there?

Likewise, greed often does not feel very pleasurable. Having a lot of money can feel great...but desiring money is the core of greed and that desire may drive and motivate you, but it might involve a lot of very unpleasant things--like hard work or great personal sacrifice. We might experience the end goal of greed as pleasurable but not necessarily the process of getting there nor the attachments in the greedy heart!

Not so, however, with gluttony and lust. The process is often quite pleasurable indeed! Great food or drink--even the very thought of it--can bring  great pleasure. Thus, the allure of gluttony. Over 30 years after a feast I enjoyed one magical night at my Italian friend's family villa, I can still taste the fresh mozzarella and garlic bread grilled on the wood fired grill and the lush homemade Chianti.

So too is the experience of sexual arousal in lust. A mere thought or a mere image can be powerfully pleasurable--packing as powerful a punch as a hit of heroin, according to recent neuroscientific research. So potent are lustful fantasies and images, to where they too can be seared into the brain decades later.

Pleasure has that capacity. It is probably the greatest, most powerful motivator within us. So much so that some philosophers have mused that seeking pleasure and, conversely, avoiding pain are the most basic human motivators there are.

We also are painfully aware, though, that pleasure in and of itself is no indicator of morality! And what feels best in the moment might actually best the worst for us--might just us in a whole heap of trouble and be incredibly destructive, too.

Yet, such is the allure of gluttony and lust!

Join us Sunday for more on these two final Deadly Sins!