We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations. (1 Samuel 8:19c-20a)

God’s plan to bless all peoples on earth (Genesis 12:2-3) required his chosen nation, his servant Israel, to be different from every other nation in the world. Success hinged on that difference. If Israel would follow God’s ways instead of imitating the people around them, their blessedness would be apparent to everyone.

At times, the difference between the Jews and their neighbors was subtle and difficult to see. At other times, the difference was impossible to ignore. For example, Israelites had every Saturday off work. That was noticeable and, I suspect, enviable. Further, every employer in Israel was required to give workers extended time off for each of the three great yearly feasts – we’re talking about weeks and weeks. Who doesn’t like time off?

Another conspicuous difference between Israel and their neighbors: in Israel, newlyweds were exempt from military service for an entire year. If there had been Facebook then, one can imagine a twenty-year-old Israelite man posting pictures of himself relaxing by a fire, holding hands with his bride as they walked along Galilee’s lakeshore, and putting their feet up on a Sunday afternoon. It was enough to make an Amalekite army grunt green with envy.

Other differences may not have seemed so appealing. Jews ate differently – no bacon double cheeseburgers ever! They were required to fast for special days. They not only didn’t have to work on Saturdays; they couldn’t work, even if they were farmers, and the nasty weather of the previous weeks meant they needed to get their crops out before they rotted on the vine.

Being different has its perks. It also has its challenges. In Samuel’s day, Jewish people faced a particular challenge. Their nation was not only different in its diet and work schedules. It was also different in its governance. All the other nations had kings, but Israel was ruled by God through judges.

That had worked well for them for many decades. The chronicler records that the Philistine Confederation, which had challenged and oppressed Israel for a generation, had been subdued, and Israel was at peace with its neighbors (1 Samuel 7:13-14). Nevertheless, the Israelite people believed they were missing out. Other nations had kings, and kings were cool – impressive, striking, celebrated.

The fear that one is missing out is as old as Adam and Eve. The desire to have what others have, and the belief that having it will secure and satisfy us, has been part of human experience throughout history. It is also the reason for much unhappiness.

People not only want what other people have; they want what other people want, a fact that has been consummately exploited by Madison Avenue and by social media influencers. Such people know that having the new car or the latest look won’t secure or satisfy anyone and, in fact, they are counting on it. The last thing they want is for people to be secure and satisfied.

But that is what God wants for people, which explains the significant emphasis and instruction on desire in the biblical writings. For example, the last of the Ten Commandments (or Ten Words) instructs us not to covet. This prohibition is not intended to deprive God’s people of any good thing, only of dissatisfaction and unfulfillment.

St. Peter warns Jesus’s people to keep their distance from “fleshly desires,” which he says “war against the soul.” When that war has been waged, the soul is likely to find that her security and satisfaction have been plundered, and the Trojan Horse that allowed the thieves to gain admittance was fleshly desire.

We warn our children to keep their distance from the wrong crowd, from drugs, from the promiscuous girl or the popular (but morally-deficient) boy. That may be necessary counsel, but Peter went radically further, warning people to keep away from the very desire for such things. He understood that good desires must be cultivated and harmful desires (those that usurp and starve our good desires) curbed.

It is not that desire itself is wrong, as some have claimed, for God is the desire-giver: “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 37:4). But this does not mean that God, like a genie from a bottle, will give us the object of our inadequate, second-hand, and often illusory desires – a shapelier body or a vacation in Rio, for example. Instead of giving us the object of our desire, he will give us the desire for an object, a desire that will shape our life in extraordinary and beautiful ways.

For our children and for ourselves, we must learn both to cultivate and to curb desire. We will never succeed in curbing desire if we are not cultivating other, stronger desires. However, the place to start is not with our desires but with God, the giver of desire. We must learn to delight in him, a delight even many Christians have never experienced.

Just as wrong actions are much less an issue when wrong desires are not present, wrong desires are much less an issue when right desires are present. And right desires will be present when we delight ourselves in the Lord. This is the first step toward joy, the crying need of the church, and the promise of genuine fulfillment.