Freedom from Felt Needs
What do you need? Such a broad question has a number of answers. You might think “I need food to live.” Or perhaps you need respect from your spouse. Biblically, you need the Lord’s forgiveness in Christ. While some “needs” are legitimate biological needs (like food and water) or biblically-defined spiritual needs (like peace with God), a lot of “needs” you and I have on a given day could be put into a category of “felt needs.” They aren’t needs that come from explicit Scripture and they aren’t literally needed to keep us breathing.
How you and I think about felt needs has vast theological implications. It is very easy to assume that when the Bible talks about joy and satisfaction in Christ it means Jesus will provide for all of our felt needs. For example, perhaps you have a felt need of a romantic relationship. Did Jesus promise to satisfy that desire? When does that desire, even if it isn’t inherently sinful, become a sinful lust? I am currently reading through “When People are Big and God is Small” and a quote from the book helped me immensely when thinking through these questions.
“If I stand before (Jesus) as a cup waiting to be filled with psychological satisfaction, I will never feel quite full. Why? First, because my lusts are boundless; by their very nature they can’t be filled.
Second, because Jesus does not intend to satisfy my selfish desires. Instead, he intends to break the cup of psychological need (lusts), and not fill it.
“When People Are Big and God is Small” by Edward Welch
Most of our “needs” are really lusts in disguise
This quote comes from an entire chapter where Welch seeks to distinguish between different types of “needs”. According to Welch, there are biological needs, spiritual needs, and what he calls “psychological needs”. The first two are self-explanatory but Welch spends a significant amount of time discussing psychological needs. Essentially, Welch makes the case that the prevailing view of humanity in the modern day it that we are empty cups that need to be filled. Humans have extensive longings that can either be fulfilled by sin or by God.
The problem with this model, according to Welch, is that oftentimes “longings” or “needs” are really just sinful lusts in disguise. They become idolatrous desires that you and I expect God to meet. You and I can desire even good things more than we desire God’s glory. Or you can desire the right thing for sinful reasons. For example, I was reflecting after reading this chapter that a “psychological need” I find within my own heart is a need to be respected by others. When people give me the respect I feel I need, I end up feeling pretty good about myself.
But what happens when my felt needs of respect and approval from others are not met? I end up either angry or depressed. Now, at this point I could address these felt needs by saying to myself “God has given me all the approval and acceptance I need in Christ.” This is simply a more theological way of saying “God meets my felt needs of respect and approval.” But this ignores the deeper question of whether my felt needs for respect and approval are legitimate to begin with. Beneath my desire for respect and approval is the sinful belief that God has created this world to make much of me and that those around me exist to see and extol my value. When examined carefully, these “felt needs” are nothing more than the desire for self-glory.
Jesus does not meet all of our felt needs. And that is a good thing.
Welch’s quote above helped me immensely because it helped correct my false thinking about how Jesus addresses my felt needs. First, Jesus does not satisfy your every desire or “need” because many of them are either sinful in essence or in proportion. You and I will always have, on a given day, countless desires that we can easily frame in terms of “needs”. You and I have a sinful tendency to view the world in terms of “our my needs being met?” rather than “am I glorifying God and loving others Biblically?”
Welch’s quote reminded me of the good news of the gospel: Jesus didn’t come to fill the cup of my every desire. He breaks the old cup and gives me new desires. He sends me His Holy Spirit who empowers me to “deny myself” rather than satisfying myself. Jesus makes much of Himself and of the Father and invites me to do the same. Why would Jesus ever satisfy my sinful, small, selfish desires? How would that ever be good news for you or for me? Instead, in Christ, you and I get a new heart that desires the things of God and cares less about our own felt needs and instead seeks to love those around us.
Implications
1. Examine your felt needs critically and Biblically to see if there is sin lurking beneath the surface.
“The heart is deceitful above all things.” And modern cultural terminology does not help. Is it possible a lot of the things you consider “needs” are really sinful lusts in disguise? Spending time to examine your deeply held and cherished desires scripturally to see if there is sin in them is a difficult and painful process. But if what Welch is saying lines up with the Bible’s teaching, and I think it does, then there is probably a host of sinful desires in your heart that are masquerading as “felt needs”.
How can you repent of sinful desires and reorient yourself to Christ unless you first see them for what they are? The modern culture has so convinced you and I that every felt need is legitimate that we may be calling sinful desires “sweet names” and excusing ourselves from repenting of them. As I said, honestly examining deeply held desires is painful and difficult. But if you would grow in our Christ-likeness, your desire for God, and your love for others, the cost of painful self examination is worth the benefit of joyfully and prayerfully repenting of sin.
2. See yourself as a watering can, not an empty cup
After reading Welch’s metaphor of the empty cup and how Jesus breaks that cup of felt needs, I asked myself “what would a more Biblical metaphor be for the believer?” If you have had your spiritual needs met in Christ, you should be full of the fruit of the Spirit and the joy of knowing peace with God. You are, in that sense, like a watering can full of abundance to pour into others. Of course, just like Jesus, your goal is not me help other people satisfy their felt needs. Rather, you pour out the truths of how Jesus has given you “everything for life and godliness.”
In other words, once you are free from constantly seeing yourself as an empty cup, you are more free to love other people around you. That can take the form of practical assistance in biological needs, like food, water, and shelter. Or it can mean blessing them by sharing the abundance of Christ with them. It might be harsh to say “Jesus smashes the empty cup of your felt needs”, but it is freedom! Freedom from constantly needing God and other people to satisfying every desire you have. Freedom from feeling angry or depressed when your felt needs aren’t met. And freedom to prioritize God over self and others over self, as Jesus laid out clearly when asked what the two greatest commandments were.
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