Unshackled Moments ~ October 3, 2017 ~ What Drives Us

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.

- C. S. Lewis

Creation gave us instincts for a purpose. Without them we wouldn’t be complete human beings. If men and women didn’t exert themselves to be secure in their persons, made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter, there would be no survival. If they didn’t reproduce, the earth wouldn’t be populated. If there were no social instinct, if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society. So these desires—for the sex relation, for material and emotional security, and for companionship—are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.

Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives. Our desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for an important place in society often tyrannize us. When thus out of joint, man's natural desires cause him great trouble, practically all the trouble there is.

- from Step Four in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

The needs mentioned in the above passage from the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions are necessary, and we function poorly, if at all, when they are not being met. As Maslow

pointed out these are the basic needs for life and there is a hierarchy that determines the importance of each level. When we have no food or water we aren't driven or care much about prestige and esteem. But if our basic physiological needs are met, we begin to feel the drive of the next level and so on. But it becomes obvious after a little self examination to see that our need to protect and satisfy self has failed, and our discontentment has driven us to attempt to satisfy and indulge our natural, God-given instincts in unhealthy ways and at the expense of all else.

Step Four shows us how to examine our lives and see where our selfishness in these areas led to damage in our lives and the lives of others. It helps us to see the patterns of our behavior and to see which of the levels effects us the most. We are all different, with our own individual brokenness. The first problem with the hierarchy of needs is that the concept does not account for our self destructive obsessions and brokenness. Anorexics who fall for the lie that they must control things and or must be skinny to achieve belonging and love will ignore the body screaming for sustenance and starve themselves to death trying to meet the need for things higher on the pyramid. An over-eater trying to fill the need for love and comfort with food will ignore the warnings of doctors and, on the flip side of the same coin of the anorexic, destroy the body trying to meet higher emotional needs. Drunks and druggies ignore the need for food, safety and right on up the triangle, drinking and using for the effect the chemicals produce, hoping against all evidence to the contrary that the effects will meet the need and make things better. This idea is true for all addictions and areas of bondage. They are an attempt to meet a need which has taken control of us, and despite the addiction failing to meet the need and leading to misery and destruction, we continue to look to it as the solution.

But what need? What need is it that is so overwhelming that trying to fill it and satisfy it will drive us to destruction and throw the normal hierarchy out of whack? The need that Maslow left off, the one under the physiological level. It's the true foundation of the pyramid buried beneath the sand and the dust from which we were made, unseen, but either holding it all together, or in absentia the foundation of life fails slowly but completely and we make a mess of the visible trying to shore up the unseen. The bondage and addictions and habitual sins of our lives are the symptom, not the problem. The problem is a spiritual one, a spiritual sickness we are born with. The first foundation is the spiritual need of life. We were created to have relationship with Daddy, and the needs of the spirit outweigh the needs of the emotions and the body.

When we are in the right place of closeness to Daddy we can face starvation and sickness with peace and without being driven to sin, and even as the body fails, the spirit can rejoice. When we have awareness of Daddy's care for us and are fed, being secure is something we look to in Him, not in our surroundings. But when we are fed and safe behind the walls of our homes and aware of His great love for us, we don't have to chase the love and approval of people. Do you see? Examination of the root of our personal issues, or even subscriptions, is necessary, but the basic truth for all of us is that the root of our discontent, the hole we try to fill above all else, no mater the details and differences of how we've tried to fill it and the destruction we've caused, is a God-shaped hole. The solution is a spiritual one, and the answer is Jesus. He and relationship with Him is the foundation to a life that is worth living and that can remain worth living no matter the status of the fulfillment of the needs that rise above the dust of the flesh. He can give us peace and joy rooted in love so rich and full that nothing, no need, no calamity, no anything, can take it from us. When we have Him and an awareness of His great love for us, we have no need that is greater than the need He meets in our spirit. The other instincts return to their proper place, and we can enjoy and pursue food, security, sex, romance, approval, having a place in society and the rest in healthy and right ways. We can abstain from those things and silence those drives that once held us captive and led us to destruction.

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