September 9, 2007 · Ecclesiastes 3:11

Ecclesiastes 3 9-13

“And Augustine will say in the confessions, you have made us for yourselves, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. It's the condition of every human. We are made in the image of God. We desire God. We have a built-in desire for the infinite, for God, and this is a difference between Christian thought and some other forms of thought. See, desire itself is not evil. God has put the desire for eternity in our hearts. We hear sometimes that eternity or desire for eternity, desire for God is itself sometimes evil. How do we see this? Well, Buddhism would argue that desire is a source of all evil. We need to eliminate desire. I would say in one sense, it's true that all evil that we see is a result of desire. But that doesn't mean desire itself is wrong. It means that desire has one end that is desire for God, and when we turn the desire towards other things like pleasure or treasure, that's when evil springs up. So desire is the source of evil, but it is not evil itself, and when our innate desire for the true Holy God is grasping with God, then desires be being fulfilled in the way that it was meant to be fulfilled. There should be a natural desire that we should cherish desire for God.”