Sum of All Desires

So I’ve got a few thoughts and theories that I haven’t put out there yet. Mostly it’s because I often feel like I’m nowhere near to being a quotable authority on anything. And I guess it feels that way mostly because my Teacher kind of knows absolutely everything. Even the serious posts in this blog are meant just to question our “knowledge” of spiritual things in favor of the realization that God’s ways and thoughts are far above our own. And who’s to say?

That said, I’ve got some ruminations about God, scripture, and human nature. And I guess the only way to get feedback on my thoughts is to put them out there. So here’s one of my favorites…

One day, as I took some prayerful time in reading scripture and journaling, I began to consider the selfish nature of people, including myself. Where do we get that? Is that a sin thing? How do we get over it? I thought about what it means to be selfish. Simply put, I think it basically means to act in one’s own best interest. Okay, but then how can one be selfless? Let’s say I do something for someone else to my own harm. Why would I do that? Wouldn’t I expect that it’s because I should, or because there’s a longer-term benefit to myself? And this led me to the idea that nobody can really do something they don’t want to do.

Example: Let’s say a bad guy stormed into the room and pointed a gun at my wife’s head and said, “It’s her or you!” Of course I’d volunteer to die in my wife’s place. But why? It’s because my desire for her to live is greater than for me to live. Also I know that I should because as her husband I’ve got to keep my promise to protect her. And honestly, I expect there’d be a heavenly reward of some kind too.

So although I’m acting in another’s best interest, that’s only because I’ve projected my best interests onto them. I’m still actually acting to my own benefit. I’m doing what I want to do, but it’s not so bad. So I thought… if that’s not so bad, is it good? God is good. Is God selfless? Well, He shows indescribable mercy and grace to us. But that’s not anything that he doesn’t want to do. And in fact, it’s to His glory that He does the things He does. Maybe we’re actually like God in that way. We’re free to do what we want, and really we can only do what we want. The thing that’s most like selflessness is to project our best interests onto someone else, but that’s not something that we don’t already want to do.

Let’s bring it down to real world, every day example: There were classes in college that I absolutely hated. Either I disliked the topic or was completely bored. I didn’t want to go to those classes. At the same time, I was set on getting a degree. That’s something that would be valuable for the rest of my life. I did want to graduate. So I don’t want to go to class, but I do. That’s strange. Can I really say that I don’t want to go to class? No. Actually I want to go to class so that I can graduate, and that desire is stronger than my desire to avoid that class. I’m weighing the options, comparing the outcomes, and when I add up my desires there’s a net result… I want to go to class. That’s what I call the sum of all desires.

Stemming from my thoughts on selfishness, the sum of all desires is really just a way of defining my thoughts, which shows that I can never really do anything I don’t actually want to do. I find this theory to be fairly practical in my everyday life too. When there’s something that I don’t want to do, I think about what really is the sum of my desires. It makes it easier to do that task without sulking or complaining when I realize that I actually do want to do it. It even makes the task a little more enjoyable.

This isn’t an airtight theory, I’ve learned. My wife has also had some good thoughts to the contrary. As we’ve discussed it, there’s an argument against the sum of all desires that’s mostly along the gender line. For women, feelings and emotions and desires are something much more real then men generally consider them to be. My wife thinks that conflicting desires are separate desires, each existing on its own, and that the one can’t just cancel the other out. If you have two feelings about something, you have two feelings. That’s a good point too.

What do you think? Can desires be summed? Or can you really do anything selfless? Is God selfless, and why does that feel like such a bad question to ask? What does it look like to not be selfish? Tell me your thoughts on any of these questions, or just tell me your opinion of the theory. You know you want to leave a comment, but what is the sum of your desires?