How Can Too Much Desire be Dangerous in Marriage, in Life, in Everything? Here's How

It’s a nice scene isn’t it, that title slide?  That beautiful river is the Natchez River in Beaumont, Texas.   And most of the time, in fact, almost all the time, it looks just like that.  But two years ago, when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, it didn’t look like that at all.  No, it blew right past those banks, and when it did, what happened to Beaumont and the other areas around that river?    What happened is what you see in the pictures to the right.  In just a few days, those waters wreaked havoc.  The river destroyed homes and businesses. It put family after family in danger.   And I’d imagine even now, a lot of those families are still struggling to recover especially as yet another flood hit only a month or so ago.

But think about it.  This good thing, this beautiful river became this awful thing. Why? The water pushed beyond its natural boundaries, and what happens? Devastation.     That’s what happens when good things go beyond their boundaries.   Yet people can be blind to that truth, to just how awful blowing past the boundaries can be.  But when people don’t see this truth, it brings a similar devastation in families, in relationships, in the world around us.   How do you avoid that devastation in your families, in your relationships, in your life?  In these simple yet powerful words, God shows the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

Deuteronomy5:18

In talking about this commandment, we’re obviously talking first of all about sex.  God is saying that people committed in covenant relationship with each other do not go outside that relationship for physical intimacy.  But in these words, God is pointing to something deeper than simply sex.  God is pointing to both the goodness of desire and its danger.  When desire lives within the boundaries, within the banks so to speak, it brings life, vitality, beauty, joy.  But when desire moves past those boundaries, past those banks, it brings devastation and heartbreak. 

But before we get to that deeper message of desire, we need to focus on the first message, the particular goodness and danger of sexual desire.   Now, granted, Christians have too often made way too big a deal of sexual desire, almost treating it as the unforgivable sin.   But the culture in reaction to that has gone in the other direction, almost implying that sexual activity is just a few steps beyond a handshake.  And now with the internet, you can see sex everywhere even when you don’t want to see it.   But ironically, all that sexual liberation hasn’t really worked.  In fact, studies show people are having less physical intimacy with each other than ever.  Our nation’s birthrate is even going down as a result.  So, why didn’t it work?

We’ve been doing some work around our house, and we have a handyman neighbor, Andy, who has been doing some work for us.  When Andy and I talk, he sprinkles the conversation with a certain word, that I’ll just describe as the F-bomb.  And when he does, it kind of rattles me.  That surprises me a bit, because if I’m honest, in moments of frustration, I’ve said the same word.  

But here’s the thing. Folks have done studies that have shown pretty much everyone has a reaction to that word.  That word generates an immediate emotional response.  People have no control over it.  It just happens. 

To give you an idea of what this response feels like, I’ve put together this little exercise that gives the same response.  Do you see these words?  Name the color of ink in which the first set of words are printed. 

red  blue  green  blue green red

Ok.  Now, name the color of ink in the second set. 

red  blue  green blue  green red

Was it harder?  Yeah.  Our mind resists naming those colors.  It makes us feel that we’re getting them wrong, even when we’re not.  It actually has a name, the Stroop effect.  Now that F-bomb word that Andy used creates a similar effect. That word has the power to disturb in ways other words don’t.  But why? What’s the big deal?  It’s because that word talks about something that does have power, that whether we admit it or not cannot be taken lightly.   And so, when we hear someone throw out that word so casually, we feel the disjunction.  It just doesn’t feel right.  And that disjunction tells you, sex matters.  It matters a lot.  Sex can create life where life did not exist before.  What’s more powerful than that? 

So, God designed a place in place where this incredible, awe-inspiring power can reside.  God designed a life-long committed relationship in which this power best gives life and nourishes others.  But marriage will not work unless you respect the power of what it contains.   If folks treat its commitments lightly, if they break the banks, then what is beautiful become destructive.  So, God says here. Don’t do it.  Don’t break those banks.

That’s what adultery does.  Adultery breaks this bond of commitment between two persons, one sealed with the most intimate act that human beings can share. And once those banks are broken, it’s hard to recover from the damage the breaking of those banks will cause. 

But saying all that still doesn’t get to the heart of the issue.  Why do people who are married have affairs to begin with?   What drives that, and believe it or not, it is almost never sex.  More than that, why does God again and again refer in the Bible to the unfaithfulness of God’s people to love and serve God as adultery.   Why does God use that image of all things?  What is going on here? 

For the last 15 years or so, a Belgian psychologist, Esther Perel, has traveled the world studying what makes people cheat.   And she has learned.  Almost never does sexual desire come up as the motivation.   Invariably she will hear one word again and again as people describe their affair.  It made me feel alive.   And that word, alive, says everything about the problem that lies at the heart of not only adultery and marriage in our day and age, but also what lies at the heart of every human problem. 

And to see that, let’s look at how folks view marriage today.   As Esther Perel puts it, in our culture, most folks look to marriage to provide everything.  They want their partner to be their best friend, their never-failing ally, their closest confidant, the most awesome parent, the greatest lover, their emotional companion, their intellectual equal, and the list goes on.   And that’s all great except no human being can be all those things all the time.  People look to marriage to provide what it can never provide.   They look to their partner to provide essentially what only God can, to give them life, to make them alive.  And when their partner disappoints, too often folks walk away, which in its own way is a form of adultery.  Or if they don’t walk away, they may fall into unfaithfulness.  And that way of thinking about marriage, points to the deeper problem that drives all human unfaithfulness not only in marriage but in everything including our relationship with God.  We look to everything else to meet our ultimate desires rather than to the One who created us, who is the One who gave us desires in the first place, and the One in whom every desire is ultimately met.   What does this looking elsewhere look like?

In one of his letters to the early Christian church, Jesus’ disciple John wrote these words:

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

The word John uses here for lust gets to the heart of the problem not only with marriage but with everything.   John uses the Greek word: epithumia   John could have just used, thumia.   That word means desire too.   But epithumia means a huge desire, an epic desire so to speak.  In fact, that’s where we get the word epic from.  

Epic desires can be good desires.  Jesus uses that word, epithumia, when he talks about desiring to eat the Passover with his disciples.   In other words, it describes God’s desire for us.  It’s epic, which is pretty cool!   And if you have an epic desire for God, that’s very cool too.  

But too often, epic desires don’t stay limited to God, they go beyond their banks to go everywhere.  And the result is destruction.   So, if you look to your partner to give you only what God can give you, it’s going to wreck your marriage, and likely mess up your partner.  After all no partner can fill that job description.   And it makes being your partner an impossible task.    

But this problem of epic desire goes beyond marriage.  It impacts pretty much anything.   

For example, it’s fine to eat to live.   But if you live to eat, then your desire has become epic.  It has blown past the boundaries.  And it has taken over your life.   And life is full of all sorts of good desires that when they become epic, when they go past the boundaries, they bring destruction, even death. 

Take the next set of epic desires that John talks about, the epic desire of the eyes.  That’s when you live your life for how you look, how you appear to others.   And again, that same epic desire leads to affairs.   Why did people say their affair made them feel alive?  They said that this person valued them or appreciated them in a way their partner didn’t.   Or maybe their partner in the adulterous relationship offered something that made them see themselves differently as more beautiful, more accomplished, more desirable.  But whatever it was, the same problem lies at the heart of the issue.  What leads to affairs ultimately is this.  You first look to your partner to provide what he or she can’t provide.  And when they disappoint you. as they invariably will, you look elsewhere.  But guess what.  Wherever you look, you’ll never find what you desire there either. 

But again, you don’t need to be married to get caught in an epic desire.  We live in a world that demands you look a certain way or have a certain level of success.   So, people work themselves to death to get the appearance of success or get surgeries to acquire the appearance of beauty and the list goes on.  And why do they do that?  Whatever it is has become an epic desire, the source of their meaning, their worth.  But the devastation of this sort of epic desire doesn’t end there. 

How often have you lied or got defensive about something because you didn’t want to look bad, because you didn’t want to admit you were wrong?   Why was that so important to you, to be right even when you knew or at least suspected you weren’t?  It’s because if you were wrong or rather appeared to be wrong, what did that say about you, your worth, your value?   Do you see how this epic desire of the eyes wrecks you, whether you are married or not?

And that leads to the worst epic desires of all, what John calls the pride of life.   And these epic desires, you’ll find a lot in religious circles.   Have you ever had a martyr fantasy?  You feel someone has done you wrong or hasn’t appreciated me enough.   And you think to yourself.   What if I got some dread disease, or better yet keeled over from a heart attack while doing something nice and selfless for them.  Oh, then they would see, my goodness, my saintliness. How bad they would feel.   And when you do that, you are caught up in this pride of life.    

Pride of life wrecks marriages in two ways.  First, it can wreck it by leading you into an affair because your partner doesn’t appreciate you.   You deserve an affair dadgummit.  Or at least your partner deserves you having one because they’re so bad.  But the wreckage doesn’t stop there.   Marriages can come back from affairs, even become stronger.  But if the wronged partner carries resentment, gets caught up in pride of life, won’t forgive, that healing won’t happen.

What do I mean?   Esther Perel talks about affairs in this way. She says. I don’t wish an affair on anyone.  It would be like wishing cancer on someone.  Yet, she notes.  How often have people shared how their cancer gave them a renewed perspective on their life, even shifted their lives in ways nothing else could have.   She tells couples who come to her after an affair.  You will have two to three marriages in your life, and they could all be with the same person.  With this affair, your first marriage has died.  Are you ready to begin creating the second? 

And that brings us to that question of why God uses adultery to describe our unfaithfulness to God?   God uses it because it fits.   We look to people and things to give us what only God can.   Why?  It’s because we let that epic desire for God that lives within each of us go beyond the banks to speak.  We’ve let it overflow into our relationships, our attachment to things, into everything. That overflow of epic desires leads to addictions that devastate us.  It leads to wrecks in relationships not only between spouses, but between kids and parents, between friends, and even with our selves.   More than that, it wrecks God’s heart.   And yet when we strayed, God didn’t walk away.  God kept reaching out again and again.  And in Jesus, God even offered up his life to bring us his straying beloved home.   And as you see, as you experience, as you open yourself to that desire, to God’s epic desire for you, to how God brings you back into this beautiful marriage again and again, it will free you.  It will free you from looking for those epic desires to be met anywhere but in the one who epically desires you.   And in that love, that infinite, passionate, ever abundant love, than every desire will find its right place in your marriages, in your families, in your appetites, in every place in your life.  And in that love, adultery will not tempt you for you will have found the ultimate love, the one not even death can take away.