Creatures
are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby
feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim;
well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is
such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this
world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another
world. (Mere Christianity, Bk. III,
chap. 10, "Hope")
Christian apologist Peter Kreeft
explains that this argument can only be understood by first noting the
difference between natural desires (for things like food, sex, and beauty) and
artificial desires (for things like cars, political office, and the Land of Oz).[i]
Kreeft also explains that “the natural desires come from within, from our
nature, while (artificial desires) come from without, from society, advertising
or fiction.” He further points out that “the second difference is the reason
for a third difference: the natural desires are found in all of us, but the
artificial ones vary from person to person.”[ii]
Yet both Lewis and Kreeft overlook a number of fundamental problems with this argument. For example, they both fail to clarify whether our desire "which no experience in this world can satisfy" is a natural or artificial desire, and more importantly, whether such a "desire" is the result of a soul longing for God or simply the cause of original sin which led Adam and Eve, much like Lucifer himself, to seek to "be like God." It was the latter, after all, that not only led to Satan's fall from Heaven, but also to the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and the curse of original sin that has allegedly plagued humanity ever since. Indeed, even old King David was a victim of his desires of always wanting more, whether it was his own private temple, a crown, or another man's wife.
Yet both Lewis and Kreeft overlook a number of fundamental problems with this argument. For example, they both fail to clarify whether our desire "which no experience in this world can satisfy" is a natural or artificial desire, and more importantly, whether such a "desire" is the result of a soul longing for God or simply the cause of original sin which led Adam and Eve, much like Lucifer himself, to seek to "be like God." It was the latter, after all, that not only led to Satan's fall from Heaven, but also to the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and the curse of original sin that has allegedly plagued humanity ever since. Indeed, even old King David was a victim of his desires of always wanting more, whether it was his own private temple, a crown, or another man's wife.
Second, Lewis and Kreeft also overlook how Christianity
often uses artificial desires to promise its customers an everlasting fulfillment
of their natural desires. It does this by first creating its own version of the
Land of Oz (i.e., Heaven) and then promising those who are fortunate enough to
reach it (i.e. God’s “elect”), that all of their desires, “which no experience
in this world can satisfy,” will be satisfied. There is no evidence to
prove that such desires will be satisfied in Heaven, however, and plenty of evidence to
suspect that they won’t. Just look at
the story of Satan and his minions, or the story of Adam and Eve.
Satan was God’s original angelic
all-star. In Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12-15, for example, he is described
as “an exceedingly beautiful angel,” and “likely the highest and wisest of all angels.” Yet
despite being “the wisest and most beautiful of all of God's creations,” Satan was still “not
content in his position” in Heaven. So,
like anyone who ever spent too much time in a middle management position, he tried to
climb the corporate ladder. He was
rewarded for his ambition, so the story goes, by being summarily fired from the
business of building a lesser world. And he wasn’t the only one.
The ranks of Satan’s minions soon swelled with the mass exodus of angels who all seemed to regard Heaven as a kind of Egypt of Everlasting Servitude. And the fact that all of them choose to be roasted alive for all of eternity in a “lake of fire,” as it says in the Book of Revelation 20:10, rather than be forced to go back to work for such a despotic deity, may only demonstrate not how stubborn they were, but just how truly miserable a place Heaven really is. And if so many angels, including “the highest and most wise of all the angels,” failed to find satisfaction in Heaven, why is Lewis so sure that lowly human beings would be able to find it there? After all, Adam and Eve never did.
The ranks of Satan’s minions soon swelled with the mass exodus of angels who all seemed to regard Heaven as a kind of Egypt of Everlasting Servitude. And the fact that all of them choose to be roasted alive for all of eternity in a “lake of fire,” as it says in the Book of Revelation 20:10, rather than be forced to go back to work for such a despotic deity, may only demonstrate not how stubborn they were, but just how truly miserable a place Heaven really is. And if so many angels, including “the highest and most wise of all the angels,” failed to find satisfaction in Heaven, why is Lewis so sure that lowly human beings would be able to find it there? After all, Adam and Eve never did.
According to one interpretation of
Genesis, Adam and Eve were both immortal and living in the
equivalent of Heaven already, in the Garden of Eden. Yet despite the fact that
their “immortal longings” were already satisfied[iii],
they still had a “longing” to “experience” what it would be like to “be like
God.” For if they were truly satisfied with their eternal paradise to
begin with, then why did they eat the apple? Some people claim it was because they
had “free will,” and with that free will, they impermissibly wanted to “become
like God.” But the very act of wanting to become like God is itself an example
of the desire for “infinitely more.” Although the choice may have been “free,”
in other words, it was the desire for “infinitely more” that prompted it.
The third problem with this
argument is that it provides a cure for the very desire it relies on. That is,
it provides at least some satisfaction - through the ‘worldly experience’ of religious
faith - to the very thing Lewis claims “no experience in this world can satisfy.”
It does this by curing the longing for
“infinitely more” with the religious belief that we will one day have “infinitely more,” once we get to
Heaven and, as both Lewis and the Serpent in Eden promise, we “become like God.”
Lastly, both Lewis and Kreeft fail
to notice how the “natural desires” that we experience as mortals would all become
“artificial desires” if we were immortals, because such desires would no longer
be “natural” to an eternal soul. They similarly fail to notice how the “artificial
desires,” for things like money and power, are actually the “natural desires” of
entities like corporations, governments, and institutional religions. Hence, a desire that is
“artificial” to a single person is one that is often “natural” to a collection
of people. As food is to the individual, in other words, so money is to a religion,
political party, or even an empire. That
such entities can only acquire the one by first exploiting our desire for the
other is probably why the existentialist philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich concluded that institutionalized religion is always demonic.
Contrary
to what Lewis and Kreeft argue, however, our desire for “more” is not necessarily
proof that we were made for an eternal afterlife. Instead, it may simply be the
means by which nature compels the human species to propagate itself to a higher
level of evolution. Indeed, the very "desires" that Lewis claims come from God, are seen by many religions, including many Christian religions, to come more from the devil, via a consumerist economy that is designed to instill in every customer an addiction to an appetite for things that only grows by what it feeds on. But whatever the case, the desire for “infinitely more” is certainly
not proof that every single person on the planet wants to join
the Cullen’s family and live forever on the blood of Christ. It only proves how a religious belief can profit from the ethos of Wall Street bankers by turning
the dreams of avarice into the promises of Heaven.
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