A Belief System in a Phrase
The famous, and often quoted phrase, “If I find in myself a desire no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world” has stirred the hearts of many and provoked much thought. From C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, this statement has within itself many tenets of foundational Christian belief. With all the books filling up so many libraries today explaining what different belief systems actually believe, C.S. Lewis did it in a simple phrase. Now by no means would this be an exhaustive view of his beliefs and only a speculation into his full intent of the phrase, but it does hold some major principles which are worthy to be recognized and discussed. In this phrase Lewis uses desire as an awareness to consciousness, to morality, to a teleological purpose or design, and ultimately to a destination which brings about a transcendence. These are wonderful foundations in arguing the truth and validity of the Christian faith.
To begin with, Lewis establishes on the neutral ground that all humans have desires, but he moves the reader in such a direction as to recognize the mystery within these desires. He shows the conflict within the vast realm of desire in the human experience. The very fact one can discover the mystery is the fact one has discovered consciousness to even question such a mystery. This involves mankind’s rational and cognitive ability to want or desire to discover what lies underneath such a mystery such as the origin of these desires. The questions “Why do I feel this way?” or “Where did this desire come from?” or “What does this mean?” are in themselves a discovery of consciousness. Yes, consciousness does remain a mystery, but the awareness of it creates a wonderful starting point to which one can begin investigating in depth as to the purpose of these desires. What is amazing is the very vehicle in which we use to discover or recognize certain discoveries within the human experience is in fact a sort of proof of our uniqueness as a species. In the very least it should force the questions of “What is consciousness?” and “Why are humans conscious?” and “Conscious to what?”
The second is the insatiability of certain desires. The fact that certain desires are met and certain desires are not met can lead to a discovery of a moral innateness. Why does the lustful desire for sex, money, fame, etc. leave a person empty and unfulfilled? Why does the fulfillment of certain desires or lack thereof also follow along closely to a code of morality? Why is there an “ought” to “is” relationship in the first place? Once the discovery of this correlation between desires met and morality is recognized then the question for where morality comes from can begin to be asked. The moral argument Lewis obviously thought to be a strong one for the existence of God as also seen in his book Mere Christianity. The incongruous nature of desire in relation to that which the world offers to fulfill it can be a great indicator of a need for something more.
The third aspect of this phrase which is so interesting is the purpose or design of desire. In the human experience there are good desires and bad desires, but when the bad desires are fulfilled they seem not to be fulfilling and vice versa. In fact that which seems to be good may not in
