Christian Living

How Unfulfilled Desire Points Us to God

Author Amy K. Hall Published on 10/07/2016

C.S. Lewis expert Jerry Root explains how experiences and earthly loves awaken desires in us that will ultimately point us to God:

Lewis also writes in several of his books about what he calls the dialectic of desire. So I take my desire that’s awakened by something, and I connect it to that thing. I find out in time that thing doesn’t ultimately satisfy. And so, in disappointment, I disconnect and connect to something else. It doesn’t satisfy. I disconnect and connect to something else. And he calls it the dialectic of desire. And if I find nothing on this earth will satisfy it, it begins to point me towards the transcendent....

I may begin from a realm of not being enchanted at all. Now something awakens in me this sense of enchantment. I move from enchantment to disenchantment because the thing that the desire’s tethered to can’t fulfill me. And in that disenchantment, I start on this dialectic of desire, until finally, I find that the real object of my longing is God, and I come to the place of re-enchantment, with the proper understanding of the right object....

God gives gifts to awaken desire, but the gifts that He gives are those things that moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. They can’t ultimately satisfy. And so, consequently, these mutable gifts awaken in me a desire for the ultimate immutable gift, the unchanging gift, the gift of God Himself.

Watch the rest of the video below, and see more videos by Jerry Root on this subject at the Forum of Christian Leaders website.