Pastors

Holy Greed

Leadership Books June 2, 2004

I WAS ON MY WAY TO EAT at a friend’s house, a gourmet cook of the nouvelle cuisine persuasion—she made exquisitely great food, beautifully presented, but usually not enough for my appetite. Those delicious little servings mocked me. I had missed lunch that day and was ravenous as I made my way to her new address. There was something missing in the directions and I was having a hard time finding her house.

As I drove around, famished and lost, I kept driving by a fast-food restaurant that specialized in hot dogs. The aroma emanating from the drive-thru food trough was having the same effect the sirens of the Greek myth had on the hapless sailors who sailed into their waters. I don’t merely want a hot dog, I need a hot dog, I reasoned. She never serves enough food anyway. Why not have just a little snack to hold me over until I find her house?

I stopped to order a snack. But what to order? The menu was huge. After a panicky exchange with the disembodied voice from the speaker in the drive-thru, I settled on a regular hot dog, a kraut dog, and a chili dog. The hot dogs really aren’t very big. And what’s a hot dog without French fries?—a day without the sun, oatmeal raisin cookies without cold milk! So I ordered a large fries to cover the demands of the three hot dogs. Fries are salty and hot dogs are spicy, so I added a large soft drink to wash all this down. I felt much better.

When I finally found her house, she had prepared a wonderful meal. It was probably the best meal I didn’t enjoy. I was so full, I even left food on the little plates.

A parable of prayer, this silly but true story. Or rather, a parable of prayerlessness. Why don’t we pray? We don’t pray for the same reason I couldn’t enjoy that gourmet meal; we’re stuffed in our spirits, full, over-loaded, packed, soul-crammed—not with the Bread of Life, but with spiritual junk food. Before it is anything else, lack of prayer is a lack of hunger for God.

Too easily pleased

Does God think we want too much or too little out of life? What is his chief complaint with us? Let’s look at what C. S. Lewis has to say about it:

[If] we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.1

That last line is the answer: “We are far too easily pleased.” Our desires are not too strong, they’re too weak. That, I believe, is God’s chief complaint with his people. To add insult to injury, it seems that most Christians tend to think the opposite of God. They see him as a kind of nouvelle cuisine chef, pretty good but stingy.

Just how upset is the Lord about all this? He says it is cause for even the heavens to ” ‘be appalled … and shudder with great horror.’ ” As he describes it to Jeremiah, ” ‘My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water’ ” (2:12-13). They prefer no water to living water, less over more. Mere drink, sex, and ambition outdraw infinite joy! Go figure.

Filling our bellies

Broken cisterns are idols, God-substitutes. They are the spiritual hot dogs we ingest on the way to God’s banquet. They dull and eventually kill our appetite for the deep and nourishing richness of his holy fare. Like the Turkish delight the witch gives to Edmund in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, they are insatiably unsatisfying.2

Broken cisterns can even be legitimate hungers, like the craving for food of people who are genuinely hungry. After Jesus miraculously fed the multitudes by the lake, they wanted to make him king. So he escaped to the other side of the lake. They followed him there, too. When they found him, he confronted them with words that one doesn’t speak lightly to folks living in what we would today call a Third World country. He said, ” ‘I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you’ ” (John 6:26-27). Jesus speaks harshly, for the Greek word translated “had your fill” is a word that is used of animals filling their bellies. He takes a dim view even of a legitimate appetite if it dulls one’s hunger for more important things.

Contrast their appetite with King David’s, who was in a real desert and was really hungry and really thirsty. But he knew his physical hunger pointed to something eternal and deeper than mere food. It was a signpost to God. He wrote:

O God, you are my God,
  earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
  my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
  where there is no water.…
Because your love is better than life,
  my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
  and in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the
  richest of foods.

(Ps. 63:1, 3-5)

We can fill our bellies with things other than mere drink, sex, and ambition. They could be mere work or entertainment. Or mere church. It happens when we let the pressures of maintaining a religious organization crowd out living and longing for the kingdom and glory of God. The disappointment and exhaustion of ecclesiastical exertions—of endless meetings and gatherings and committees and programs—can dull our appetite for God. Quietly, imperceptibly, we begin to expect less of him, and end up being satisfied with that. Perhaps at the beginning of our ministry we wondered, Why was it that wherever Paul went people rioted, but wherever we go they serve tea?

But over time, we sigh with the chap who wrote, “My cry used to be, ‘Win the world for Christ. ‘Now it’s Try not to lose too many.’ ” The church can be so very, very dull and dulling. And those who serve it can become the same.

Not that there is anything wrong with the dull. Brother Lawrence spied the glory and presence of God amid the dirty pots and pans of a monastery kitchen. That is the point. He wasn’t satisfied with the dull. He was still hungry and thirsty for righteousness. He insisted on looking for glory in the dull, on serving God in the mundane. So he prayed as he scrubbed and scrubbed as he prayed, believing with Irenaeus that the “glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.” He would settle for no less than to meet face-to-face with the living God, even if it was over a kitchen sink. If he could search for God and find him amid pots and pans, is it too much to pray that we do the same in the dulling routines of church life in our time?

We must pray that God will give us the same holy hunger and greed for God! We must look for his glory in the mundane of mere “churchness.” We must demand that we find it. We must wrestle with God, as Jacob wrestled with the angel, refusing to let go of him until he blesses us.

Restoring the hunger

Two things have helped me restore my spiritual hunger. The first is simply to memorize some of the hungry, ravenous, visionary prayers of Scripture. Paul’s prayers are especially good for this. Take, for example, his prayer for the Ephesians, that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (1:18). Or, “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (3:19).

The thought of memorizing prayers seems an artificial and stilted way to restore something as vital as spiritual hunger. But consider what Rabbi Abraham Heschel said to the members of his synagogue who complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt. He told them that it was not that the liturgy should express what they feel, but that they should learn to feel what the liturgy expressed. Recited faithfully, great thoughts put into great words can do that for us. True, God’s way to change us is to first change our hearts, working from the inside out. But paradoxically, sometimes the route he takes to our hearts can be to work from the outside in. Memorization can be to our hunger for God what practicing a musical instrument is for performance. It can be the singing of the scales of the soul.

So learn these prayers, these hungry, visionary prayers of Scripture and the great saints—the distilled wisdom of the church. Say them as you step into a board meeting or face a pile of unanswered correspondence. Recite them as you go through your telephone messages and as you drive to the hospital. And if the prayers don’t express what you feel, pray them until you feel what they express. Settle for nothing less than the measure of all the fullness of God.

Another way to restore your hunger for God is to choose hunger of another kind—to engage in the ancient practice of fasting. I have only recently, and with great reluctance, walked on this path toward spiritual hunger— actually, stumbled onto it is a better way to describe it. I’d like to tell you about it.

Someone said the prospect of standing before a firing squad marvelously focuses one’s mind. Other things can have the same effect: for instance, the telephone call from a friend of mine last March in which he told me he thought perhaps the Lord was leading us to fast for forty days. Us? I hate to fast. My previous experience of fasting had left me feeling like the man my dad joked about who hit himself over the head with a hammer because it felt so good when he stopped. Even liver and onions would have hit the spot when I broke the fast.

But I don’t think chat’s what the Lord Jesus was shooting for when he set out on his forty-day experience in the wilderness.

The benefits and meaning of fasting had eluded me. I’d tried it before, but instead of insights I got irritable. No, I got nasty. When Bill Bright reported on his forty-day fast, I held him in awe, but with the same detached awe I have for a man who can run a mile under four minutes. It’s amazing that he can do it, but it would be futile for me to even try.

So my friend’s call got my attention. I trust him, so if he thinks the Lord may be saying something to him about what we should do, I’ll give it serious consideration. I did, and as I prayed about it, the unwelcome conviction grew in me that a forty-day fast was precisely what God was asking of us. So we covenanted together with about thirty or forty other people to do this for the forty days leading up to Pentecost Sunday. The purpose would be to fast and pray for the two things Jonathan Edwards urged the churches of eighteenth-century New England to pray for: the spiritual awakening of the church in our town and beyond, and the spread of the kingdom of God worldwide. The mode of the fast would vary from person to person. Some would take only juices. My wife and I would do a “Daniel” fast and eat only fruits, vegetables, and grains— no meats, fats, or sugar. From time to time during the fast, as the Lord led, we too would have a day of juice only. Also, whenever possible, all of us who had covenanted to fast would meet for an hour of prayer on Friday mornings.

From command to permission

The fast ended, I lost about twenty-five pounds, and while it remains to be seen exactly what our prayer and fasting will mean for the wider kingdom of God, my mind has been marvelously focused in a few important ways. The first is what a slave I can be to food. Food and its consumption is omnipresent in my life. It is the all-purpose elixir. Am I sad? Eat. Am I happy? Eat. Tired? Eat. Angry, depressed, bored? Eat, eat, eat. Do we have a social occasion? We must eat. Do we have a meeting to discuss business? We should eat. And on and on and on. I must have food. My life can be a parody of 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. “Be [eating] always, [eat] continually; [eat] in all circumstances.” I’m exaggerating, but I can see possibilities for the enjoyment of food at every turn.

Your food may be your addiction to work or to sex or to entertainment. I am convinced that for much of the church in North America, it is our addiction to the busyness of programs and church activities.

I was surprised, then exhilarated, at how free I was during the fast. To my delight, I discovered that what I decided I must not do for a season was also something that I may not do. What began as a command quickly became a permission. The permission? Not to have to live on the level of my appetites. We muse eat to live, God made us that way. But he made us for more than food, he made us for himself. And if we glom on to his gifts so that we lose sight of the Giver, we become not only idolaters but slaves, and we starve spiritually.

That brings us back to those broken cisterns—the God-substitutes, the craving for salt of a man dying of thirst. It’s what Jesus said to the hungry crowd: “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (John 6:27). The saying “You are what you eat” is true in more ways than one.

Because of this, it soon became apparent to me that ending the fast would be as important as beginning it. For as the fast came to an end, I actually became a little nervous, almost afraid to go back to eating normally, for fear I might lose the new freedom I had gained—lose it with the freedom to eat more varieties of food.

Second, my mind was marvelously focused on the fact that gluttony is about more than mere volume of food. It can also express itself as an inordinate interest in the experience of food, making taste buds promiscuous and stomachs ravenous for novelty and variety. I eat out often, and one of my occupational hazards comes through the increasingly voluminous pages of menus I open in restaurants. Some read like travelogues, describing the exotic, even spiritual experiences I will have if I order this item or that. I’ve seen chocolate desserts described as “pure sin” and roast beef and mashed potatoes as “comfort.”

The fast focused my mind on the simple goodness of God’s creation. At first, the foods I restricted myself to made the prospect of a meal seem a boring event. Beans again? Another salad? But soon I rediscovered just how good a mere carrot can taste. A carrot, nothing more. Or a plain slice of bread, or a crisp apple. With simplicity comes gratitude and joy.

Blessed are the hungry

The third and most marvelous focus the fast brought to my mind was that food is ultimately not about food but about God. This is also true with all other appetites and longings, be they ambition or companionship or success or sex. The meaning of hunger, indeed of all desire, is to point us to God. It can be a good thing to be hungry. We shouldn’t be too quick to make it go away, for it can teach us much about our frailty, need, and ultimate emptiness and despair apart from God. Dissatisfaction and discontent, longing and restlessness can be marvelous tutors.

The seventeenth-century pastor and poet George Herbert pictured God pouring every blessing into his human creature—beauty, wisdom, honor, pleasure—but stopping when it came to the blessing of rest or satisfaction. Herbert reasoned that if God bestowed rest along with all his other blessings, man would remember God’s gifts instead of God himself:

He would adore My gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature.… 3

God decided it would be better for us to be rich, yet weary and hungry:

If goodness leade him not, yet weariness
May tosse him to My breast. 4

A full stomach can be cause for deep gratitude, or as it has so often been the case for me, cause for spiritual dullness and torpor. A little hunger never hurt anyone, but its absence might. We are more than our stomach, much, much more. We may never know this until we let it ache.

Perfect Host

What’s your image of God? The Bible portrays him as King, Warrior, Husband, and above all, as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Have you ever thought of him as a host? When the Prodigal Son came home, his father threw a big barbecue to celebrate his return. Jesus said God is like that. Can you picture him dressed in black pinstripe pants and a red brocade vest, face beaming with delight as he fills the glasses of his guests?

He showed himself that way to the prophet Isaiah:

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
  come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
  come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
  without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
  and your labor on what
  does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat
  what is good,
  and your soul will delight
  in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
  hear me, that your soul may live”

(Isa. 55:1-3).

There’s pleading in those words. God wants us to come and eat and be satisfied in him. Can you see him humbling himself, even leaving the party, and going outside to plead with the son who won’t feast? Begging him to come inside and eat and be joyful in the joy of his father? He’s still doing that with his prayerless people.

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1949), 1-2.

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (New York: HarperCollins, 1994). The more we eat, the less we like what we eat, but the more we want to eat it. So Frederick Buechner defines gluttony as raiding the refrigerator to cure a case of spiritual malnutrition; and lust as the craving for salt of a man dying of thirst.Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 31, 54.

George Herbert, “The Pulley,” (New York: AMS Press, The Fuller Worthies Library, 1874), 183.

Ibid., 184.

Copyright © 1998 Ben Patterson

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