Albert Camus once wrote, “Because I longed for eternal life, I went to bed with harlots and drank for nights on end.” Ironically, the very act of sin is a cry to experience life to the fullest. Every person is born with an insatiable thirst for transcendence, the opportunity to experience something that takes us outside ourselves to a place where we are so enthralled that every fiber of our being feels fully alive. We all long to know what it is to experience being one with something bigger than ourselves. The best we can do alone is to manufacture a mundane monotony that we instinctively sense is a pale substitute for the Life we hunger to experience.
In an effort to escape the land of Mundane Monotony, we sometimes listen to the sultry sirens that seduce us into sin. We mistakenly believe that there is something out there that can scratch the nagging itch in our souls, only to discover after sinning that we weren’t itching there at all. Apart from divine intervention, a person can spend a lifetime trying to satisfy a yearning that refuses to be squelched by artificial means.
James said that we sin when we are drawn away by our desires. (James 1:14) Drawn away from what or whom? Temptation is the lure to have our focus be carried away from Jesus Christ. Sin happens when we allow ourselves to turn from Him and to something else in order to try to find life elsewhere.
When we sin we soon discover that it never accomplishes what we really want. Sin can gratify, but never satisfy. It’s like eating a candy bar when you haven’t had a meal all day. It gives you an instant rush of gratification. You feel suddenly energized and it seems like you’ve made the right choice . . . for a short time.
Then the rush disappears and as the blood sugar level suddenly and drastically drops after eating the candy bar, and you find yourself feeling weaker and more depleted than you did before you made the choice to choose an empty snack over a satisfying and nutritious meal. You’re left once again feeling fatigued and unfulfilled. You know you need something more substantive and sustaining. It isn’t uncommon at that time to feel a sense of self-condemnation for having chosen to try to satisfy our hunger with such an unhealthy snack.
It’s the same with spiritual hunger. Albert Camus acknowledged that he searched for life in harlots and drunkenness. Where do you seek to find Life when you are drawn way from Jesus? What cheap substitutes have you been tempted to allow to take His place? It doesn’t have to be something as garish as harlots and drunkenness. It could be something much more respectable to other people than that.
James described the process like this:
“Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren” (James 1:14-17).
It begins when we experience a hunger within us. Often the hunger itself is not inherently wrong but temptation comes when we try to fill the hunger in an inappropriate way. For example, the hunger to experience the deep joy that can only come from Christ may be substituted by seeking the rush that drugs can bring. The desire to be loved, one that our God is more than willing and able to meet, may reach out to be met through an illicit relationship. Many a legitimate need that could readily be met by Jesus Christ can become a temptation when we allow ourselves to be carried away to try to have that need met in another way.
Once we have crossed the line of decision to sin (when lust has conceived), we commit the sin. Like eating the candy bar, there may be an immediate sense of pleasure but it doesn’t last. Sooner or later, we experience the death that always accompanies such a choice. Sin is always a dead-end in one way or the other.
There is a subtle danger that a legitimate hunger can seek to be met through things that don’t look wrong on the surface. Many people have tried to satisfy their hunger for an intimate relationship with Christ by substituting church work. Have you done that? It’s often easy to know the answer to that question based on this: If I were with you right now and asked you to tell me about your relationship to Jesus Christ, what would you say? Think about it. What would you say to me?
If you would immediately start to tell me about your church and your involvement in church, that should be a red flag. There is a big difference between religious activity and a relationship with Jesus Christ. In the culture of the modern church, it become easy to substitute what we do religiously for who we are in Christ and what we enjoy each day with Him. Our grace walk is not defined by religious activity but by our union with Him. Of course, authentic spiritual service is an overflow on an intimate relationship to God but that’s not the same as religious business that masks as something eternally real.
Whether it is cheap wine or even church work, anything we look to other than Jesus to satisfy our hunger becomes a sin to us. Christ alone will satisfy your hunger. Only He will offer the transcendent pleasure of being fully alive. Don’t be drawn away from Him. He loves you and offers you life to the fullest. Anything else is empty calories.
