This reason takes some explaining because the push of desire toward God developed slowly like a strong tide moving up a bay. My earliest years as a boy were characterized by a longing for high adventure. Tales from Robin Hood, Tarzan, Treasure Island, Zoro, and King Arthur all captured my imagination and gave me the following convictions about life: (a) our lives can matter and significant acts can be done (b) all of life really is a struggle between good and evil (c) personal decisions matter and real dangers exist (d) we are part of a larger story, but must faithfully play our role. Of course, at the time these truths were only felt—not expressed.
Although I loved escaping church services for the hills and rivers around Milton-Freewater, I never escaped God in these places. I still remember vividly one June summer day as the sun hung low in the west, I sat on a plank that spanned an irrigation ditch. A locust tree in full bloom shaded my perch and my bare feet dangled in the cool water. Each gentle gust lifted a sweet fragrance from the clusters of flower that drooped from the tree. I remember feeling tremendous joy and sadness at the same moment. Joy in the beauty, and sadness that the beauty must quickly pass away—that nothing lasts. Like so many of the Renaissance poets I longed for permanence—for a way to “eternize” all that is good and beautiful. I seemed to have been born mourning the loss of childhood and the mutability of beauty.
While living in eastern Oregon, my parents began a tradition of packing up the kids and fleeing the crackling heat for the cool breezes of the coast. We always camped in a forest service campground at the base of Cape Perpetua. The lush green of the ferns, alders, pine, and Sitka spruce was as exotic as any south Pacific island. We camped by a stream that poured over rocks and lulled us asleep. Mom made pies and jam on her Coleman stove. As we drove out of the campground, the bittersweet sadness of our departure would sometimes bring me to tears. My heart ached for life to be more—for some final Eden we would never leave.
In the eighth grade, I sat in the back of my English class and lost myself in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. After reading the last page, I was filled with great sadness and walked out to a hillside with a large thicket of blackberry vines. As I sat there thinking about Tolkien’s world, I looked into the blackberries and thought, “If only a hobbit would stick out his wooly head!” Tolkien had stirred in me that desire for high adventure and great deeds of enduring importance.
Much later I encountered the writings of C. S. Lewis who described this process as the dialectic of desire. As we near or pursue some object of desire, we realize the object was not really what we desired—it was only a shadow or foretaste of that which could truly satisfy. I now live thirty minutes from the Oregon coast. I have not yet grown weary of the beach, but I know that which I ached for as child was not the beauty or coolness of where I now live. I longed for something more ancient and something more transcendent. I longed for Eden—I longed for a redeemed planet.
I also long to be a part of the true story. The adventure where my choices matter: where loyalty to Jesus matters, where the risk and even sacrifices of following Jesus matter, where a battle must be fought, and we must have faith that good will, in the end, triumph even if some battles are lost. The true narrative of Scripture satisfies these desires.
In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis formulates this as an argument for God’s existence. He argues that man has a desire for food and there is food. Man has a desire for sex and there is sex. He argues, “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.” The dialectic of desire is still at work in me with every sunset and passing of the seasons. As I watch my boys leave childhood behind, I long for the day when we are as innocent as children, as wise as sages, and as powerful as kings. As Ecclesiastes says, God “has set eternity” in my heart.
