Desire's End or What Pac-Man Really Wants

For the past month or two, I have been intrigued by some sayings that I came across in the book of Proverbs, sayings that have to do with desire. I have been trying to wrap my mind and heart around these verses because on the surface they seem so good, yet at the same time, experience could dictate otherwise. Which is it? Are these sayings untrue, or do I need to go deeper to discover what they are really saying? Today, I want to talk about DESIRE through the lens of these three proverbs. I bet you are wondering what they are. Let's jump in!

King Solomon, the same guy I quoted much of in my last post, had this to say about desire in a book we now know as Proverbs: "The desire of the righteous ends only in good, but the hope of the wicked only in wrath." -Proverbs 11:23

Lest this proverb be shucked off an anomaly and not worth really considering, there are two other proverbs that say something very similar in the chapter just before: "What the wicked dreads will overtake him; what the righteous desire will be granted." -Proverbs 10:24

"The prospect of the righteous is joy, but the hopes of the wicked come to nothing." -Proverbs 10:28

Do you see a pattern here? See what this king is saying? It almost seems too good to be true, when taken at face value, and too many experiences of failed hopes can further the argument to give these sayings little real attention and to quickly move on. But we can't move on. We shouldn't. We'll miss something very deep, very important. And since when does experience become the barometer for truth? I find that often my own experiences have been misinterpreted by a cloudy vision on my part, thus preventing myself from knowing the truth of a situation for what it really was. So let's include experience in our discourse but treat it with less weight than it is due.

I want to break this apart some, as I do believe King Solomon is getting at something deeper than what's on the surface of these verses. Yet what is on the surface is not to be missed. Let's just focus on the first one. It says that "the desire of the righteous ends only in good," as opposed to the hopes of the wicked, which don't end well. Here is where experience would come in and tell us, "Ah, ah! Not so fast! That's not how it really works. Look at all of those selfish people who do whatever they want at the demise of others and get away with it! They get what they want. Their hopes aren't completely deflated." Or, experience might say something like this, on the other side: "You consider yourself righteous, yet look at all of the desires in your life that haven't been fulfilled. Look at all of the times in which you've hoped and not received that which you desired. Surely something is wrong here."

I was journaling just earlier, and trying to pick apart this proverb in question (from Proverbs 11:23). Something hit me. It is perhaps the END of our desire that it truly fulfilled, and I don't simply mean "end" as in "end of life," though that can be true at times. It hit me that someone who has a truly righteous desire, a hope or want that comes from a place that is pure and is centered in God, is going to indeed get that desire fulfilled, the root of it, or the END of it.

Let's look at it this way. If you are desiring to do something great with your life and have a specific way in which you aim to do it, it is very likely that you will achieve that, but perhaps you won't. However, the desire itself is good, what is driving it and what is at the root, so the END of that desire (what ends up actually fulfilling it) is going to be nothing but good. Make sense yet? Let's break it down further:

Let's look at Pac-Man. ("Pac-Man?" you might ask. Yes, Pac-Man. It just came to me. Let's see where this goes.) What is Pac-Man's desire. His desire is to eat all of the little dots in his path, and the fruits along the way while preventing getting eaten by any ghosts. There are many ways in which Pac-Man can do this, but let's pretend that he had one set of directions he wanted to follow, and one set only.

"I, Pac-Man, want to go straight, left, up, left, and right, then eat only cherries and and a banana along the way to my destination."

Now, what if Pac-Man, because of the ghosts who come along to corner him, has to take a different route? Suppose he gets to go straight, left, and up, but finds he has to go right first, then right again? And what if he missed the cherries and banana but he got a good gulp of strawberry along the way? Let us also suppose that Pac-Man completed his level. He arrived at his destination, and the end of it was good. Did he get what he wanted?

I think our lives are similar. There are all kind of things that we desire, when perhaps what we really desire beyond the specifics are the root, heart fulfillments that those specifics provide. In Pac-Man's case, he wants to get to his goal in a certain manner and have some tart and sweet fruit along the way (the cherries and the banana). Maybe he could have gotten everything just as he wished, but in our example, he got strawberries instead (and went another route). I conjecture that strawberries are both tart AND sweet, so Pac-Man got the better deal. And he reached the end of his destination, albeit going a different way.

Am I saying that we are never to desire specific things, since there is something deeper underneath that we want and will receive the root fulfillment from? No, not at all. Actually, I would say the opposite. In a world where multiple ghosts and roadblocks come to divert us from the path we've set ourselves on (Pac-Man, speak, mind you), it is all too easy to give up on desiring wholeheartedly and instead settle for whatever comes, or worse, remaining complacently stationary. It is good for Pac-Man to want those cherries, just as it is good for us to desire specific things! Maybe he will get the cherries (he sometimes does), and maybe we will achieve what we are specifically desiring (often times we do). I daresay it is in pursuit of those desires that we can come to a place of receiving the END of that desire, whether it is what we specifically sought out for or not. Imagine Pac-Man not moving anywhere. Those ghosts would gobble him up in a second, and do so repeatedly until...yup...Game Over. But that is not you and me. No, we shall be brave enough to desire, and we will win. Leave the wrath for those pesky ghosts. That's the end of their desire.

Are you afraid to desire? Are you desiring, but not desiring as big and and boldly as you think or know you can? Don't brace yourself for disappointment and forget to move. That's no way to live. Desire boldly, and let that desire move you in extravagant pursuit of that which you long for. If your desire is rooted in righteousness, you'll be fine. And the way to make sure it is rooted in righteousness is...well, I'll leave you with one other verse, one of my favorites, from the Psalms, and you can figure it out.

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." -Psalm 37:4