The vulnerability of desire
Is there anything more vulnerable than wanting? Admitting I have a desire for success, for an opportunity, even a person—sharing with other people that there’s something or someone you want but aren’t sure if you can have is one of the most deeply vulnerable experiences we have.
It’s also deeply human. Cravings, passions, desires—living in a cause-and-effect world, these kinds of things feel dangerous because they’re so out of our hands. I can’t create the outcomes I want—I can’t make a person get elected, an employer hire me, or make someone return my affection. To admit our desires is to open ourselves up to loss or rejection—which is such a raw vulnerability to emotional pain that we will often do anything we can to avoid it.
One of the ways we avoid our humanity is judging. Sometimes judging can feel so helpful, can’t it? I can even fool myself into thinking it’s kind, sometimes, to diagnose someone else’s problems. But all it does is reassure me that I’m not as bad off as I fear I am—or at least I’m not alone in it. If I can put myself above someone else, it gives me an illusion of control.
Judging really comes down to that, doesn’t it? Fear of my own faults and limitations. Fear of vulnerability. Fear of being human. Maybe if I find the weak spots in others, I won’t feel quite so vulnerable myself.
But of course, as Jesus points out, it doesn’t work. Judging others seems to be the sort of distraction from ourselves that actually creates more blindness towards what really matters**.
So maybe we judge to feel more powerful, but here is an equally deadly, but more subtle path: we kill off our desires. We go numb. Sometimes avoiding vulnerability means going along, living status-quo lives, stifling the desire for anything more, and simply accepting what comes. Jesus challenges us to something greater—something greater that requires a lot of faith. The faith to name our desires and passions—to name the very human parts of ourselves that crave something more—and the faith to take our desires to a Divine parent who loves us infinitely and provides for us infinitely and offers us abundance on abundance.
We’re averse to naming our hopes, dreams, passions, and even our needs. We’re averse to asking for help, because we think it means we’ve failed. But Jesus says that’s where we actually succeed.
Success in the American work ethic doesn’t leave a lot of room for asking for help. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and the prototype of a self-made person tend to scoff at dependence on God. This fierce independence comes with a cost.
On a small scale and a large one, the cost is connection. Without vulnerability I’ll never be able to receive, and without the ability to receive, I’ll never experience true connection. Without vulnerability, I’ll never experience grace—not from myself, not from others, not from God.
As he often does, Jesus offers us a path of humility—now hear me clearly: not a path of self-deprecation or self-deprivation. A path of humility, in which we admit our longings and our limitations. Humility—humans recognizing themselves as humans. And instead of attempting to overcome this humanity, we embrace our desires and our limitations, and order them within trust in the power of a loving God.
A God so loving, in fact, that it was important enough to be fully human and fully divine in the person of Jesus Christ. A God who did not conquer weakness, but entered into it. A God who did not power through vulnerability, but created connection through it.
When we realize we cannot overcome our humanity and embrace it instead, we realize that there is nothing (absolutely nothing) that needs to change about us in order to step into a life of abundance. There, in full acceptance, I’m freed to admit my longings and desires, and in immersing myself in vulnerability, I find myself immersed in the Great Mystery of Love.