Brothers and Sisters -

There once was a rock 'n' roll band called the Murder City Devils. They had a song called "I Want a Lot Now." The British artist Damien Hirst titled his autobiography I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, With Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now. What a great title to capture our generation's voracity for experience. Wanting, I think, is the bottom line of human existence. When Woody Allen was questioned about an affair that he had with his adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. He responded, "The heart wants what it wants." All the religions of the world, even the secular ones, reckon with desire in some way or another. The Buddha believed that desire and strivings were the source of all human suffering, and that we must strike them from our hearts in order to achieve enlightenment, to achieve Nirvana. The Christian pastor John Piper writes that there is a deficiency in our wanting, that we don't want enough, that we are too easily satisfied with lesser things than the love of God.

Sigmund Freud was an atheist. He wrote that "religion derives its strength from the fact that it is in line with our instinctual desires."

Mike Yaconelli wrote that, "our search for love, for meaning, for happiness, is often our search for God in disguise."

Is God real because we want Him or do we want Him because He's real?

Your Friend to the Bitter End,
-zfa