The Hitchhiker’s Guide (16)
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. Galatians 5:16 NASB
The desire of the flesh – “We are defined by the way in which we orient ourselves to desire.”[1]
Paul wasn’t a Platonist. At times he certainly sounds like he believes in two separate worlds: the material, corrupt world of the flesh and the heavenly, pure world of the spirit. But Paul doesn’t denigrate our physical existence as if everything about embodiment is evil. He doesn’t ask us to get rid of all our physical desires and become enlightened spiritual beings. No, he simply says, “Don’t carry out those desires that lead away from God’s presence.” How do we do that? By walking in the spirit. But what that means isn’t so clear. It’s like telling someone that their real problem is eating. Eat too much, eat the wrong stuff, and the body suffers. But you can’t avoid those consequences by refusing to eat. That also has dire effects. You have to find the balance between the need to eat and the desire to eat. Life is always like that. Choices.
We must remove the Platonic philosophy which the Church ladled on Paul by reading the verse in terms of the yetzer ha’ra and the yetzer ha’tov. Our Western Christian heritage has imported so much Greek thinking into words like “Spirit” and “flesh” that it’s nearly impossible to avoid the implicit dualism found in them. But yetzer ha’ra and yetzer ha’tov don’t come to us with the same Platonic background. And since they don’t, we need a fresh way of understanding Paul, like this: “But I say, walk according to the yetzer ha’tov, and you will not carry out the desire of the yetzer ha’ra.” Since the yetzer ha’tov and the yetzer ha’ra are both essential to being human, we don’t get caught in the mistaken idea that we have to escape physical necessities in order to be spiritual.
“‘A man will be held accountable to God,’ said our Sages, ‘for refusing to enjoy the things that he is permitted to enjoy’ (Yer. Kid. 4.12, end).”[2] Judaism isn’t asceticism. Passion, joy, and pleasure are not only permitted; they are required. Refusing to eat in order to lose weight is not the answer. One must eat in order to be healthy. The secret is knowing what and how to eat. That is the purpose of Torah. Torah instructs us in bodily spirituality, i.e., the strengthening of the yetzer ha’tov. Bodily spirituality is discovered by bearing the burden of another. “If we remember that Torah study leads to the acquisition of Torah and that Torah is acquired by bearing the burden of another, and when we realize that prayer is understood in Mussar as hearing the cry of another, we understand that when [desire] causes us to forsake these activities, we are abandoning the path of the upright.”[3] Torah isn’t religious instruction. It’s yetzer ha’tov instruction in the midst of yetzer ha’ra existence. Its purpose is to allow us to experience the joy of substituting the good of another for our desire, and discovering joy in the process.
Step 16: Study Torah in order to increase the strength of the yetzer ha’tov.
Topical Index: asceticism, joy, Torah, Spirit, flesh, yetzer ha’tov, Galatians 5:16
[1] Ira F. Stone, in Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Upright, p. 88.
[2] Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Upright, p. 163.
[3] Ira F. Stone, in Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Upright, p. 154.
“Bodily spirituality…” yes, indeed! Yet, not merely the spirituality of the deformed soul of man with a body— having forfeit by his transgression the very nature of that divine image for which he was formed to embody… holiness!
Now it is that man is able to reflect and bring forth only death as he labors under the curse of death, being now “exiled”… cast apart from any reflection of the divine image and nature he was created to mirror in his own life, a life that was to embody “living out” the reflected divine holiness in man’s bodily form.
Moreover, the curse of death now constitutes any of mankind’s choices “fruitless.” Having been created to be fruitful and to multiply and to subdue the chaos that yet remained on the earth (that was yet void of God’s image; that is, all that did not reflect God’s glory)… man was allowed now (for a very brief moment) his being (as God’s created being in form, yet also now in this moment existent apart from the divine holiness he was formed to mirror in his embodiment), now manifest only as the futility of the curse under which mankind labors in forfeiture of the divine image of holiness.
But there is yet one, (and only one) choice that remains to and for man… it is God’s own choice of his gracious mercy both to and for man in Christ Jesus… a choice conveyed by the Spirit of God on the basis (i.e., hypostasis– substance, ground) of believing God’s Word, a Word both given and manifest in the form of a man, the man Christ Jesus, the eternal life of God in form as a human. Indeed, this is the choice now left for man, the choice of the principle of liberty and life, or the choice (even if by default) of the principle of bondage and death.
Whether or not such inclination (of yetzer ha-rah and yetzer ha-tov) is an actual principle allowed to man in order that he choose, it is certainly left to man to choose the choice that is also of God’s choosing… the divine principle of liberty and life found only in the glory of its divine form manifest in Jesus Christ, and confirmed and affirmed through the power of the spirit sent by the risen and exalted Christ Jesus, both King and Lord.
“I invoke as a witness against you today the heaven and the earth: life and death I have set before you, blessing and curse. So choose life, so that you may live, you and your offspring, by loving Yahweh your God by listening to his voice and by clinging to him, for he is your life and the length of your days in order for you to live on the land that Yahweh swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them.” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)
Moreover, it is the reality of God’s grace as the foundation of the reality of man with God in covenant that can and will preserve the superstructure of all reality that is built upon it, because his (God’s) word has promised it. And indeed, “all other ground (as foundation) is sinking sand.”