Why do you do what you do?
I recently spoke with a friend who had pursued a degree in psychology. Her aim was to understand this very question—what drives people? Unfortunately, my friend ended her search frustrated by the lack of any objective, definitive answers. Among the many competing theories of human behavior there is no clear answer.
As a Christian who believes that the Bible is the divinely-inspired Word from God, completely true in all it affirms, and that it contains all the truth our Creator knows we need, I believe the Bible provides the only objective, definitive, and accurate answer to the question at hand.
The Bible teaches that God created humans as embodied souls. Our body is the vehicle driven by our soul. Your ever-changing body, chemistry, and appearance does not define you. Rather, what truly defines you is your soul. While some try to distinguish between soul, spirit, heart, and mind, the Bible uses all those terms as synonyms—they are your inner person which will live beyond your bodily death.
When writing about the inner person, the biblical authors overwhelmingly preferred the word heart. And when we collate what the Bible says, we learn that the heart speaks, plans, desires, thinks, emotes, acts, and worships. In fact, that last trait, worship, is really what defines everything else about you. We worship something when we seek to obtain our identity from it, when we desire it to protect us and provide for us, and when we seek to gain satisfaction and fulfillment and pleasure from it.
We worship our possessions when we live as though they, above all things, can give us pleasure. We worship our loved one(s) when we act as though they, above all things, can fulfill us. We worship our job when we work as if it, above all things, gives us our identity and value.
So why do we do what we do? Because we strive to obtain, achieve, or appease whatever we think will meet our deepest desires. Then we get angry, controlling, and fight when someone or something gets in the way. Through this grid you can understand why two people married, and why they divorced; this person murdered, that person worked hard for success, and the other lives on the streets.
It’s been said, we do what we do because we want what we want, and we want what we want because we think what we think. We think something will bring us happiness, so we want it, and we strive to get it and fight when we can’t get it. This is crystalized in James 4:1-5.
When we worship something other than God, that is called idolatry. God alone is the supreme source of joy, satisfaction, fulfillment, and identity. We can only know ourselves and experience true life in relationship with Him through Jesus Christ. Only then can we experience and live the kind of life He created us to have. Idolatry always leads to frustration and pain. True worship leads to life, joy, and peace.
Gabriel Powell is an Associate Pastor at Hope Bible Church in Columbia, Maryland. He serves there as a biblical counselor, ministering to people seeking biblical answers to modern problems.