One of the preeminent aspects of discovering who we are is understanding our desires. Because we become what we love, what we desire. But where do our desires come from?
Understanding how desires are formed and reformed brings the possibility of moving from the domain of death to the domain of life. The domain of death is ordinary consciousness, status anxiety, mimetic rivalry, fragmented self, living in shame and unworthiness, in fear of death. The domain of life which we enter by the Spirit, through the portal of grace, is where we become intoxicated with God, experience an aroused consciousness, an integrated self, free from status anxiety. It is where we are others-oriented, self-giving, with no fear of death.
In his book, Desiring the Kingdom, James K.A. Smith makes a cogent case that we are not simply people-as-thinkers shaped by ideas or people-as-believers shaped by faith, ultimately we are people-as-lovers, shaped by desire. This is why when it comes to experiencing transformation, it is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information, but about the formation of our hearts and desires. So how are our desires formed? Where do our desires come from?
The Nature of Desire
One of the most influential scholars of our time, René Girard, through his study of the great novelists, cultural anthropology, mythology, psychology, and theology developed a theory of desire that has started to reshape the hard and soft sciences including theology. Through his 20 books and scores of articles, Girard makes the case that desire is mimetic, acquisitive, and rivalrous.
Girard, like others, considers desire the most fundamental human characteristic. Unlike the romantics of his day who speculated that desire is born out of our own autonomous selves, the first characteristic of desire for Girard was that it is mimetic. This simply means that our desires are acquired by adopting our model’s desires. We imitate the desires of our models, those whom we look up to or are close to. In other words, imitation is the fashioner of desire. We borrow our desires from our models.
Desire is also acquisitive. We tend to desire or covet what our neighbor covets. This is revealed in the 10th commandment. This dynamic can be observed in any kindergarten room. There may be 100 toys in the room, but because acquisitive mimesis is at work, every child wants to play with the same toy.
Madison Avenue and the entire commercial industry is based on the reality of acquisitive mimesis. But as adults, we prefer to think of our desires as unique and self-generated. We don’t like to admit or even recognize that we imitate the desires of others. Through his insatiable studies, Girard discovered pride blinds us from how mimetic desire works in our lives. It even causes us to conceal our own memetic desire from ourselves.
Finally, desire is rivalrous. Because desire is mimetic, it always has the potentiality of becoming competitive. In other words, we often find ourselves competing with the object of our model’s desire. Let’s say you want to be best leader in the church. Seemingly nothing wrong with desiring to be the best leader. But let’s say that others who look to you as a model, subconsciously (as our desires are often below the surface) imitate this idea of wanting to be best leader, while in their own subconscious mind they are denying their imitation of you. When you see this desire in them, you will find yourself desiring to be the best leader even more. As you and those who look up to you both desire to be the best leader, it will have a snowball effect, until you become rivals of each other. In time, the object of both of your desires (being the best leader) disappears. When this takes place, you and your rival become doubles of each other, mimetic twins, both repelled by each other, the more you are attracted to each other.
Michael Oughourlian, a mimetic psychotherapist, a Girardian student for over 30 years, works with a lot of troubled marriages. He shares how couples often find that the very desire that drew them together transforms into a force that separates them just as violently as it united them.1 He is always surprised when couples fail to see how they become prisoners of the mimetic mechanism working in them.2
He alerts us to our tendency of being blind to mimetic reality and its dangers, “The true nature of desire, its mimetic character, along with our denial of that truth, leads us ceaselessly to copy within ourselves the desires of everyone we encounter, subjecting ourselves to their influence, and by the very act of imitation, making them into rivals and indeed obstacles to the fulfillment of what we think are our own desires.”
Regarding the rivalistic nature of desire, he says, “The other essential truth about desire is therefore, that rivalry is always connected with it: because I desire the same thing as the other and deny his claim to be the origin of that desire. I make him my rival, and as this rivalry takes shape, I am led to desire all the more what he desires and to try to take it away from him. In this manner, desire and conflict escalate.”3
By nature, we are all caught up in mimetic desire. It is what makes us human. Mimesis is universal, like gravity, none of us can extricate ourselves from it. We are unceasingly under the influence of others. If this is the case, how do we escape this mimetic trap which often leads to rivalry, scapegoating, and division in the church?
Escaping the Mimetic Trap
Oughourlian writes, “The purpose of mimetic psychotherapy is to release people who are bound up in those types of endless rivalry, to gradually unmask and unravel their illusory attachments and make them free to choose other models. Once our tendency to imitate is recognized as such and accepted, it can itself liberate us and protect us instead of enslaving us.”4
When I first started in ministry, my primary models were mega-church pastors. As a result, they gave me the desire to have a crowd and to get a crowd in whatever way I could. Over time, I could see how this made me seek the applause of people more than God. One of the two moments when I faced physical death, God showed me the error of my ways. I repented and found new models. Models who prized Jesus first. Models who valued the micro over the macro, who valued life-forming discipleship more than public gatherings, who valued tight-knit communities more than monologues, and who valued boundary-crossing mission, more than gathering people who look and think like you.
When Paul was writing his letter to the church in Philippi, it was personal, because it was a church he co-founded. He was updating his friends in Philippi on his imprisonment, thanking them for their generosity, letting them know how their friend Epaphroditus was doing, and encouraging them in their midst of suffering. At the heart of the letter, Paul wanted them to know that the Good News was still being advanced, despite his imprisonment. His own circumstances didn’t matter. Whether he lived or died, didn’t matter.
What mattered to Paul was that the Good News was moving forward. The Good News that Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not. The gospel is nothing other than the reconciliation of the world to God through Christ, the reconciliation of us to one another, and the reconciliation of us to all of creation. What mattered to Paul, what would make his joy complete, is seeing his friends in Philippi understand how the Good News meant that there was a whole new way of being and belonging. He wanted them to live into this new reality that is mediated through Christ, by the Spirit, so that they would work out what God has working in them.
Selecting Better Models
Central to the letter to the Philippians was a dispute between two leaders in the church, Euodia and Syntyche (Phil. 4:2). Paul’s solution to their mimetic rivalry was to give them different models to imitate. As Paul writes, “Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us a models, keep your eyes on those who live as we do” (Phil. 3:17). Paul is providing his community, which had fallen into mimetic rivalry, models worth imitating. He starts with the ultimate model – Jesus Christ.
Because we are all captive to mimetic desire, Paul’s remedy is to offer his community better models. He lifts up Timothy as a kenotic model, writing, “I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare. For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ” (2:20-21). Timothy knew he belonged to Christ, thus had the mindset of Christ, and lived for others. By imitating Christ, Timothy escaped the rivalry so common in his time and ours.
Epaphroditus is also given as an example and model. Paul calls him his brother, co-worker, and fellow soldier (Phil. 2:25). He shares how he risked his life and almost died for the work of Christ (Phil. 2:30).
Finally, Paul gives himself as a model, he writes, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put into practice. And the God of peace will be with you” (Phil. 4:9). Paul refuses to use his inherited or achieved status (Phil. 3:4b-6).
Author and professor Timothy Gobis writes, “Paul had formerly placed full confidence in his inherited credentials and in his lifetime pursuit of a constructed social identity based on the central elements of his Jewish heritage.”5 But now, Paul, in his imitation of Christ, empties himself of all his ascribed and achieved honor, and considers them garbage, compared to knowing Christ. Paul discovered that his identity was found in Christ and that he didn’t have to construct it according to the prevailing winds of societal favor.
The Romantic Lie and Revelatory Truth
No doubt that the saints in Philippi were imitating their leaders (Euodia and Syntyche), and so they too fell into the mimetic trap, and were engaging in mimetic rivalry with each other (Phil. 2: 3). So, Paul was reminding them as a community, who they are is determined by to whom they belong. He writes, “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (Phil. 2:1-2).
The romantic lie that Girard warned us against is that our desires are self-generated as individuals and that we become somebody by ourselves. But we don’t discover our identity individually, but interdividually. It’s the in-between, our relationship with others, that creates our inner selves. Paul is reminding the Philippians that they are who they are because they belong to Christ through the Spirit. They are who they are because of their relationship with Christ and one another. The reason he wants them to be of the same mind is because their sense of being is wrapped up in the community to which they belong. He is letting them know, if you have tasted this new way of belonging, then continue to work out what God is working in you. He is helping them understand that identity is not something we construct, but something that we receive from Christ and each other.
The Supreme Model
Jesus is given as the first and most supreme model, which if they choose to imitate, totally reshapes how they relate to one another. Jesus’s model was the Father. All of what he said and did was a reflection of the Father (Jn. 5:19), which is why when we see Jesus, we see the Father. Jesus’ own identity was shaped by his view and relationship with his self-giving, non-rivalistic Father. Thus, when we imitate Christ, we in turn have love for the Father and discover that our identity as his children is a gift. We receive our identity from Christ and our community, which is why we must consider others as more important than ourselves. For how we view and treat others will ultimately be reciprocated. Our identity is developed as we root ourselves in Christ, and join with others who are like minded.
Do you want to live on a different plane of existence and move from the domain of death to the domain of life? Then don’t try to construct your sense of identity in competition with others, it only leads to death, fragmentation, and anxiety. But if you are willing to die to the old way that you constructed your sense of self and give yourself to God and others, you will find yourself becoming more integrated, more free, and more loving because you realize that your sense of being is wrapped up with those to whom you belong.
Notes
- Jean-Michel Ourghourlian, The Genesis of Desire (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2010), 2.
- Ibid. 12.
- Ibid., italics his.
- Ibid., 13. Italics mine.
- Timothy G. Gombis, Power in Weakness: Paul’s Transformed Vision for Ministry (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021), 22.
