Highlands Post Column Mar-2016

29th Feb 2016 Highlands Post (Outreach Media)

When you’re hungry does it feel scary? For about 800 million people around the world, the feeling of hunger is the feeling of dread – the reminder that, if you don’t find food soon, you could die. In Australia though, most of us are so well off that, when we speak about ‘hunger’, we could be talking about a gourmet treat or lust. People speak of hungering for sushi or a holiday. Hardly serious problems! More like itches that need gratification.

For more than fifty years Abraham Maslow’s, ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ has been used to explain how humans order their priorities. And the most basic need is always ‘survival’ followed by ‘safety’ followed by ‘love and belonging’. The top of the pyramid includes more superficial needs like ‘esteem’ and ‘self-actualization’ – which is where religion and God fit in.

It sounds right. It makes sense. Who has time to worry about the meaning of life when you’re on the brink of starvation or being attacked by wild animals? But Maslow’s theory is under scrutiny.
The Bible teaches that God is our most basic need. When God explained to the nation of Israel how dependent they were on him, he said, ‘Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’ (Deuteronomy 8:3). God was telling them that He was their reason for life, their explanation for existence, supplying not just daily bread but the very breath of life.

And everyday experience bears this out. There’s an old saying, ‘There are no atheists in fox holes’. The point is that in wartime, as in any life-threatening crisis, people often turn to God. They don’t say to themselves, ‘I’ll sort this crisis out first and then think about God’. No, they know they need God’s help straight away and so they turn to him.

If your heart is aching with an emptiness that just can’t seem to be filled… if you’re life seems to lack purpose or hope … then know that your spiritual hunger will be fully satisfied by turning to Jesus – God’s only son sent from heaven for you. The one who said the most comforting words a truly hungry person could ever hear – “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

Ian Brunton