"Why do people choose the substitute over God himself? Probably the most important reason is that it obviates accountability to God. We can meet idols on our own terms because they are our own creations. They are safe, predictable, and controllable; they are, in Jeremiah's colorful language, the 'scarecrows in a cornfield' (10:5). They are portable and completely under the user's control. They offer nothing like the threat of a God who thunders from Sinai and whose providence in this world so often appears to us to be incomprehensible and dangerous . . . [People] need face only themselves. That is the appeal of idolatry."
- David F. Wells
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
[H]e has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
-- Ecclesiastes 3:11
Sehnsucht (ZEN-sookt) -- From the German. A practically indescribable longing, craving, or yearning.
We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it...
-- C. S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"
When we broke ourselves with our sin, the image of God in us was fractured, and the sound of its breaking is like a signal from our hearts sent out to deepest space in search of reception. It's been said we all carry around a God-shaped hole. There is something missing. This is a rather static concept inferior to the German concept of Sehnsucht. Lewis writes of it best. But other artists capture it equally well and better. Poets Whitman, Eliot, Auden. Novelists Austen, Auster, James. Van Gogh and Hokusai. Rachmaninoff to Radiohead. King Solomon. There is an active ache inside of us. We are groaning with creation.
We all groan. But we deal with it different ways. What do we do with Sehnsucht?
1. We drug it.
Perhaps the most common way we stifle this longing for God is by pouring false gods into it. "Every one of us is from birth a master crafstman of idols," Calvin says. From meth to porn, shopping to Facebook, the world does not lack for anesthetics. Most people commit to an endless cycle of temporarily satiating Sehnsucht. It's endless, of course, because drugs wear off.
2. We deny it.
This approach often goes hand in hand with idolatry, and is at its core self-idolatry, as plenty of people simply say they aren't broken, they aren't missing anything, they don't have that "inconsolable longing." They've got a happy family in a nice house with a two car garage supported by a good job and nothing bad has happened to them, and they just don't think they have cause to suspect they long for anything more. Of these people, John Kramp, author of Out of Their Faces and Into their Shoes, wisely reminds us, "You can be lost and not know it." Let's not pretend every person apart from Christ feels lost without Christ. This is probably the most dangerous position to be in.
3. We deify it.
This approach is becoming more popular in professing Christian circles, particularly among younger generations. At some point, the longing itself became more interesting than the longed-for. Idolaters of Sehnsucht don't mind reveling in the mysteries at the expense of their Author, because mystery seems so much more interesting than revelation. Those who settle for the longing itself rather than the settler of the longing coddle their doubts, cherish subjectivity, and elevate uncertainty.
4. We delight it.
"If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,'" Jesus says to the woman, "you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." How do you delight the longing? By finding the receiver tuned to its frequency. Only the enjoyment of God himself makes Sehnsucht truly beautiful. Only the rest of the Savior finally solves our weariness. The cry of our hearts has one authorized interpreter, and this once unknown tongue, a lament, a barbarous yawp (thank you, Whitman), translates to a joyous yawp when spoken in its native land.
You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are not at rest until they find their rest in Thee.
-- Augustine
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Comments on "What We Do With Sehnsucht":
2. Evan
- 03/29/2011 4:43 pm CDT
Great post Jared. Also gives me an opportunity to share one of my favorite Lewis paragraphs from the same essay you quote.
In speaking of this desire for a far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and tell, though we desire to do both...Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter...But all that is a cheat...The books or music in which we thought beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
3. dave
- 03/29/2011 6:02 pm CDT
Very, very well put. Particularly your third point, which succinctly describes what is going on in a big way in America right now.
4. Karl
- 03/29/2011 9:23 pm CDT
I think we can sometimes overstate point #4 though. As GK Chesterton put it: "After I became a Christian I discovered why I have always been homesick at home."
Chesterton doesn't say he *stopped* being homesick at home. He merely discovered why - he realized that the longing did have an object. But while that realization brings relief and there are moments of rest and clarity and joy, the consummation yet awaits and we groan for it along with all of creation, and in the meanwhile even with the revelation we have been given we do only see as through a glass darkly. Some branches of the Christian faith do a better job of acknowledging that fact than others.
Evelyn Underhill, another significant influence on Lewis, wrote well about the longing that Lewis labeled sehnsucht.
6. damien
- 03/30/2011 11:30 am CDT
lewis' shorthand for this deep longing was "joy." his first experience that he recalls of that strange thrill was when his brother warren showed him a little box containing a "world" he had created using moss and sticks and such. throughout his life, lewis felt the pangs of joy when he read tales from norse mythology (he called this "the great northerness") or tolkien. just the title of william morris' "the well at the world's end" transported him into a state of anticipation and strange familiarity with something unknown.
i love lewis for identifying and writing about this. as a child my experience of this deep thrill and beauty was evoked by exploring the natural world, especially in its smaller scale. looking at starfish and sand dollars at the ocean, or turning over rocks and logs in the woods to search for salamanders, or just looking at or petting baby animals...my glimpse of the unfallen world to come.
7. Richard
- 03/30/2011 4:42 pm CDT
Is God the author of "sehnsucht" or did we create the concept of a god to fill a natural human longing for connectedness to something outside of ourselves? We are all overwhelmed by the beauty of nature as children due to our natural curiosity, but we have to be taught to attribute it all to God. I think the concept of God comes partly from man's attempt to explain what he doesn't yet understand about nature or his own unfilled desires.
8. damien
- 03/30/2011 6:40 pm CDT
as i see it now, we start out with a firm belief in god (as creator). we tend to stray from this or are guided away from it, but the main impetus toward unbelief is our own dislike of god as absolute authority. my own wandering led me to an atheistic stance. when i was acted upon by god, and given the gift of faith (different from mere belief, and what jesus calls being "born again") my first thought was "aha! i knew there was god all along!" but it's so so so much more glorious than just the promise of an afterlife, or an improved creation. the real essence of salvation, as i see it, is being liberated (from sin and enmity) to enjoy god forever.
9. Steve Martin
- 03/31/2011 11:21 am CDT
I'm of the mind that we do not seek God. We are born rejecting God. We may seek gods. We do.
But God seeks us. And through the hearing of the Word, He gives the gift of faith.
In short, it starts with God, continues with God, and ends with God.
Not a popular view, but I think it is biblical.
10. dave
- 03/31/2011 3:35 pm CDT
We teach children all kinds of important things. We would be remiss not to.
11. Robin
- 04/07/2011 1:03 am CDT
I think this longing in Lewis is what attracted me most to his writings, it is true we all yearn for something that cannot be filled by anything in this world. It is an awareness that we are broken and far from what we should have been, it is our life long romance which all other loves and ambitions mimic. I personally found the fulfillment of this longing in knowing Jesus, really knowing Him (not just knowing about Him).
12. jez
- 04/07/2011 6:52 am CDT
Excellent post, with only the following striking something like a false note for me:
"Those who settle for the longing itself rather than the settler of the longing coddle their doubts, cherish subjectivity, and elevate uncertainty."
In my own case, I happen to feel it would be wrong to fake certainty, and while subjectivity and doubt are not cherished nor coddled, it is better to recognise them than to hide them. In short, professing faith for me was and would be a dishonest trick.
I find theists are over-keen to accuse others of deifying things. I know what it's like to have a God, and believe me there's no similarity to admitting to doubt, subjectivity and longing.
13. Jared
- 04/07/2011 7:25 am CDT
Jez, but I would differentiate between being honest about doubt, uncertainty, and the like and elevating/coddling them. What I mean is, I'm not saying it is wrong to be honest about where one is.
The question isn't, Are you uncertain? or Are you doubtful?
The question is, If you could be certain and have your doubts removed, would you?
I am looking mainly at people within the Christian fold who have come to love questions and hate answers.
14. dave
- 04/08/2011 4:28 pm CDT
"I am looking mainly at people within the Christian fold who have come to love questions and hate answers." -- So exactly right.
Leave a Comment:
What a great post. Very insightful - especially the "Deify It" category.
How do you characterize the imago dei both before and after the Fall? (outside of its brokenness)