Friday, January 23, 2009

“He will give you the desires of your heart:” Is God tricking me?

I always took/take courage in Psalm 37’s proclamation: “Trust in the LORD and do good…Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart” (3-4). If I trust God, delight in Him, and do good, He will give me what I desire.

Then one day I reread the sentence differently. [Of course, not knowing the original language and words in Hebrew is problematic here; arguing semantics via translation isn’t too scholarly. But I think that my point remains.] If I trust God, will He give me the object of my desire, or will He give me simply the desire? To make a silly example, if I desired a car, would God give me the car, or would He give me the desire to want a bike instead of a car?

I know this may sound like a silly discussion, but I think it has consequences for how we view ourselves as Christians and humans. When Basil and I were talking one bright day, we came up with a potential answer; but I’m interested in what other people think before I blab on about my own ideas.

4 comments:

  1. Headmistress Experience, that bitchy teacher, has taught us all that God doesn't give us whatever we desire. I would think the classic Christian response is that our deepest desire is for God, and that as we grow deeper in love with him, our will conforms to his, and thus our desires become increasingly oriented toward him - S of Ss, Basil's theology of communion, etc.
    (this transformation of will is suggested by the command/exhortation to "take delight", also see psalm immediately prior talking abt. drinking from river of God's delights, God being a fountain of life, seeing light in God's light.)

    Howev., I wouldn't want to rely on that interp. exclusively, as later in 37 K.D. observes that in his long experience, he has "not seen the righteous forsaken, or his children begging bread." (v.25.) K.D. was responsible for running a country, so he prob. understood his prayer in a practical way as well: God would protect him and his people from plague and famine and help him kick Philistine ass. And J.C. told us to pray for our daily bread, so I guess this is all to say the psalm probably also refers to at least bottom-tier Maslovian needs in addition to spiritual desires.

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  2. my initial thought is, prayer better play out in a practical manner, in the "daily bread" sense. Anthing else strikes me as the sort of philosophical meanderings like John's initial interpretation. To me that sort of line of thought is just a tricky way of saying that prayer doesn't do anything, or rather, prayer does work despite the fact that there is no method of judgement to verify it. That prayer, while perhaps correct, leaves me with a prayer shaped hole...

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  3. Think again.

    The interpretation I offered isn't a tricky way of saying prayer doesn't do anything, or that there is no method of judgment to verify it. It says prayer does something different than we may initially expect. And there are methods of judgment to verify those unexpected effects, e.g. the canonization of saints.

    Also, for Christians in Zimbabwe, prayer isn't playing out too well in a practical matter.

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  4. I agree with John42 – on (I think) all levels. First, “verifying” the practicality or usefulness of prayer is a silly idea, if we’re talking about using the Scientific Method or other empirical techniques, like it seems like Porch Rat would like to. It’s like trying to measure a person’s basketball ability simply by measuring their size: there’s a lot that cannot be figured out by this method of measurement. (Sorry if the analogy doesn’t really work…it does in my head, so damn it!)

    On another level, my initial answer to my own question is similar to John42’s first response. My initial question of whether God will give us the object of our desire or desire itself if “trust Him,” etc. is misleading. I think the two are the same. Sorry to repeat my Kierkegaard quotation, but here it is again: “Become the self you truly are.” In essence, what we truly want and what God will give us through trust is one and the same. I may think I want a car; but there’s a deeper desire in me to be what God has called me to be. So God is not tricking me if he changes what I want; in fact, my desires are being refocused or recalibrated toward something that was always there to begin with.

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