Dean, Jetter School of Business Mount Vernon Nazarene University
Secretary, Board of Directors Christian Business Faculty Association
Eldredge, J. (2000). The Journey of Desire: Searching for the Life We've Only Dreamed of. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
This book examines our desires as Christians. What are we passionate about? And is it okay to be passionate about them? Eldredge says that passion can be a good thing, though it can also be a bad thing. The key is to not let the fact that passion can be a bad thing keep it from becoming a good thing—indeed, a godly thing—in our lives.
This is a great book. Perhaps its essence can best be summed up through a passage on page 202:
Life is a journey of the heart that requires the mind—not the other way around. The church sometimes gets this backward and makes knowing the right things the center of life. It's not; the heart is the center of life. Desire is always where the action is. However, staying alive to our desire is not enough; we know that only too well. We must bring the truth into our hearts to guard and to guide our desire; this is the other half of our mission. With a recovery of heart and soul taking place in many quarters, my fear now is that we will abandon the pursuit of truth and try to base our journey on our feelings and intuition. "Follow your heart" is becoming a popular message in our culture. Or as Sting sings, "Trust your soul." It will not work. Our spiritual fathers and mothers knew this only too well. In The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis warned, "Our own opinion and our own sense do often deceive us, and they discern but little." We must cling to the truth for dear life. And so our spiritual forbears urged us to bring both heart and mind together.
