How Do We Know God Exists? Our Desire Proves It
I would like to spend more time thinking about the way society has developed, but I want to look at it in a different way. Today I would like to think about how our desires prove that Christianity is true.
In particular, I am thinking about how the vast majority of human beings over the years have behaved concerning marriage and the desires that fall into that category. Christianity has a far different and far more coherent view of human sexuality than does the naturalist in our day. And it is very relevant to our thought process and discussion.
Though we are not immediately aware of the difference between us and the rest of society concerning this line of thought. This is the reason we are more concerned about the content of our children’s tv shows, books, and other media. This is also why we will often say that we don’t believe Sex Education should be taught in school. And that is something we will discuss later in this post. In fact, I believe this to be one avenue through which we can proclaim the gospel as we discuss these matters with others.
As human beings, we have desires that move us to perform certain activities and do certain things. And most people within our society today have bought into the naturalist story concerning our origins. And so it shapes a wide variety of discussions on this topic today.
Since I began working out, I have been listening to different people discuss things like weight loss and fitness. It has almost become an obsession. The area interests me far more than it should. But I have noticed on a lot of occasions that they reference the naturalist in this area as if it is a universal truth.
In talking about what people should focus on in the gym they will talk about what each gender finds most attractive. They will quote research about what men or women find attractive and almost always give a naturalistic explanation for why this would be the case. They quote it as if it is a universal truth that everyone is on board with. But it’s not. And the reality is that Christianity does a much better job explaining human desire than does the naturalistic framework.
The Naturalistic Explanation For Desire Does Not Exist
From the outset I am going to say that if you surf the web for this information, you will find a variety of explanations. And the reason for that is interesting, they really can’t explain it. There is a variety of explanations concerning why we choose certain things over others because it seems there is not really an explanation for them.
Some believe that our desires are preloaded into our brains due to some sort of biological mechanism that comes from our ancestors. Some popular proponents of this are Gad Saad, who is a professor and author that discusses the Evolutionary basis for our desires. These desires can be preferences of fruit over candy to mates.
Others believe that every child is born a blank slate and is conditioned through their surroundings to prefer certain things to others. Joseph Simmons, who is a social scientist from Yale University.
Essentially, this would mean that everyone is still arguing about what causes us to prefer one thing to another. And the answer to this question still alludes the naturalist. But they claim to know why men prefer certain women and women prefer certain men.
The Naturalistic Explanation For Sexual Desire Does Exist
It seems, however, that the naturalistic world has coalesced around one idea in particular concerning why we have the impulse to do the things that create more human beings. The naturalistic viewpoint is that these desires are ingrained in human beings for the survival of the human race.
One Psychologist, who is very well known, Jed Diamond. He’s been on television a lot, interviewed concerning relationships a lot, and at this point is probably known world-wide. He argued in an article on Psychology Today that the forces of evolution so drive human beings that “we can’t ignore the forces of evolution”. And that many of the problems that men and women face with regard to finding a spouse are because “evolution has little interest in our happiness, just in our reproductive success.”
The argument is that human beings choose the spouse that they intuitively believe will best carry on their genetic material. They are arguing that men seek out the women to be with and marry that will produce the best results for his offspring. Women seek a man that will produce the best offspring for her to birth and raise. And men seek women that will produce the best offspring for her to birth and raise. And this is supposed to explain all of the impulses that human beings have with regard to our own desires.
These desires supposedly explain men’s impulses to be with a woman and get married as well as their impulse to be with many women. When you start thinking about it, it doesn’t make all that much sense. The reason is that it claims to explain marriage and not marriage in the same way.
Naturalistic Understanding Of Society’s Development Is At Odds With Their Understanding Of Sexual Desire
Evolution can be placed upon anything and twisted in such a way that it can explain everything. It can even explain things that are contradictory with itself. And really, that would mean it doesn’t explain anything at all.
It’s like when you talk with someone that believes a crazy thing. You ask questions to them, and they can explain everything. They will even contradict themselves in their answers. It’s sort of like that.
A few weeks back I looked at the evolutionary biologists explanation of humanity. The claim is that “competition for food in a time of scarcity and stiff competition made a group behave differently. They hunted different gave and cooperated more. This group not only worked together, but they shared among the group for the good of the group.”
At that time I quoted Michael Tomasello who is a professor of psychology at Duke University. In his article “The Origins of Morality” he wrote.
“An essential part of the process of obligate collaborative foraging involved partner choice. Individuals who were cognitively or otherwise incompetent at collaboration—those incapable of forming joint goals or communicating effectively with others—were not chosen as partners and so went without food. Likewise, individuals who were socially or morally uncooperative in their interactions with others—for example, those who tried to hog all the spoils—were also shunned as partners and so doomed. The upshot: strong and active social selection emerged for competent and motivated individuals who cooperated well with others.”
If you use AI to answer the question of how marriage developed it spits out this answer,
“Marriage is a reproductive social arrangement that is universal and has evolved to support species with young that are highly dependent on their parents.”
I would also like to note that AI searches the internet for answers, it doesn’t just make stuff up. It used articles like this one to come to that answer. A Harvard Professor and prominent political scientist, James Q. Wilson wrote that,
“If the human infant were born able to move about and feed itself, as is true of sharks, marriage would not exist…Human marriage is a reproductive alliance.”
The problem is that when a person takes this one idea and forces it upon all of humanity, it really does not work. It is not a universal truth as people today believe that it is.
If this were truly a biological impulse that we are compelled to follow, as is the claim, then one would think that this would eliminate adultery and the impulse to be a fornicator. But it does not. According to the naturalist this is also the reason behind the impulse for fornication and adultery.
The Christian Understanding Of Desire
The Christian doesn’t view life in the same way the naturalist does. And so, the
Christian understanding of these desires is far different. And, in my opinion, actually explains why things are the way that they are. Life gets a lot more complex as your children move into the teenage years. And so, I’ve given some reading and thought to these topics.
Why do both boys and girls go through such dramatic bodily changes?
Why do both boys and girls have changes that take them from not thinking about these things to suddenly thinking about these things at a certain age?
Why do both boys and girls, for the most part, aspire to be married and have children?
Why does adultery and fornication exist to the level that it has in the past or does today?
Christianity explains these things quite well. The Bible explains these things quite well.
This is what I’d like for you to see today. Christianity is coherent where other ideologies are not. And if we just go back to the creation of mankind and do some thinking, we realize that this is the case.
We read the creation of mankind in Genesis 1-2. In Genesis 1:26-30 we read the mandate given to human beings, and this tells us a lot about what we were created for. When we understand this, we begin to understand why we have the internal drives that we have.
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.” (Genesis 1:26-30 ESV)
Why do I say that this explains our desires? Here is the reason. God created us in His image to multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. We are hardwired for this by God.
We are hardwired to produce offspring. In fact, the Apostle Paul tells us that it is a supernatural gift to not desire this.
“Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:1-2 ESV)
The desire is itself there for a reason. The desire to have the relations that could lead to children is a good desire, given by God, so that we can have children. This impulse is not a bad thing. It is good.
Now, we were not created to be like the animals. We were created for this to happen within the confines of marriage. We see this in the first marriage.
“Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” … So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:18, 21-25 ESV)
The rest of creation was good. The only thing that was “not good” was that fact that man was alone, without a wife. And then, woman was created.
This means that, Christians believe that there is an impulse to procreate, but this impulse is to lead us to marriage.
Christian Parents Should Be Concerned About This
A teenage boy that is undergoing all sorts of changes, feelings, and desires is not undergoing a strange change that will wreck his life. He is undergoing changes that are supposed to lead him to marriage. Good guidance from parents will tether these feelings to this truth.
A teenage girl that is going through a lot of changes in her life, and is a ball of seemingly untethered emotions, is going through a preparation for this. She has a desire to date, not because it is some unruly desire. But because she has a God-given desire to fulfill this mandate. Good guidance to daughters will also tether these feelings to this truth.
And this is what we find in Scripture.
In thinking about our own children, we attempt to heed the advice of Song of Solomon on this matter. It’s application to our children is multifaceted
“I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.” (Song of Songs 8:4 ESV)
If desires are intended to move us toward marriage, then we should not attempt to awaken them before it is time.
We have not allowed our daughter to date, think about dating, or be anywhere close to a thought about dating because it’s not time. That, in our opinion, would be to “awaken love” before the time has come for that to happen. She is nowhere near ready to be married, therefore it would be unwise for us to allow her to be involved in activities that would do so.
Countless numbers of young people are drawn into a dozen or so relationships before they graduate High School. And I would argue that they are inadvertently doing things that “awaken love” before it is time.
It may seem like I am meandering off the topic a bit, but really I am not. We need to live consistently with our belief. If we truly believe that these desires are given by God, then they need to be harnessed for the intended purposes. If this is what we believe, then we ought to live like it.
We intuitively understand this when we discuss the sorts of things that are on our children’s cartoons. We understand this when talking about the types of books that our children will read in a school library. We ought to also see that dating habits among our children should be thought of in the same way.
Do not awaken love before it pleases.
And when this is discussed in our society today, we would do well to discuss how we view these matters differently than a lot of other people do. We don’t believe the naturalistic explanation, so we don’t live in the naturalistic way. We do not believe that we should awaken love before it pleases.
What then do we say about adultery and fornication?
Christians Explain Non Marriage Through Disordered Desires
This is a question of ordered desires vs disordered desires. And this is something that Christians have thought about from their Scriptures a lot.
A few years ago I was reading a book by C.S. Lewis and I read something that sort of rattled me. I couldn’t track down the book the quote was from, but I’ll sum up the idea for you here. And it’s one that you’re not quite ready for.
C.S. Lewis didn’t really like children all that much. He said he was not fond of them. This is somewhat shocking considering that he was the author of some very good children’s fantasy books. He wrote the Chronicles of Narnia. But he wasn’t really fond of children. I took that to mean that he didn’t really like to be around them that much.
But what C.S. Lewis said about this fact was quite enlightening. And it is very Scriptural. He didn’t consider his lack of fondness for children to be a good thing. That is, his lack of fondness for children signaled to him that there was something wrong with him. He considered that a defect in himself.
Now, here is one of those areas that people could get pretty upset about. But the Christian explanation for why many people choose not to get married, others choose not to have children, why people choose to fornicate, and others choose to commit adultery is because their desires are defective. I know that people are not supposed so say this sort of thing today, but this is exactly what Christians have believed for a very long time.
When mankind fell in Genesis 3, we were corrupted. All of humanity was corrupted and continues to be even to this day. Sin wrecked us. And because of this our desires are distorted. When man rebelled against God, it changed him to the core.
This means that the good desires that we were given have been corrupted. Those good desires that were given to us by God can be distorted and can lead us astray. The good desire that should move us toward pregnancy, when followed heedlessly, will sometimes lead to fornication. And sometimes, that desire can be distorted and it lead to adultery.
It is fairly easy to see how the good impulse that God gave us is often distorted and used for evil. If we look around the globe today, we can see the many ways that this distortion helps us to understand both marriage and not marriage.
Conclusion
I want to end by saying that I know that by this point in our society’s history, the naturalistic model for desire is very engrained in people’s thinking. But that does not mean that it is right. When we look into the naturalistic model of human sexuality, it doesn’t really make sense.
As Christians, we want to be people who truly understand the world and are able to interact with people concerning what they believe. We want to have the tools to engage with people in our society and tell them why Christianity is right and everything else is wrong.
And we also want to live according to the truth. We are not people that live according to the whims of our age. We live according to the Wisdom of the Ages. And we are able to tell others why we do this as well.
R. Dwain Minor