Three Yearnings

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy…” (Psalm 16:11)

In this part

Three Yearnings—Belonging, Achieving, Influencing—are explored through Aristotle’s map, and then re-centered by Christ. Yearnings themselves are not evil; they are dangerous only when treated as ultimate ends. Belonging becomes anxious approval; Achieving becomes restless recognition; Influence becomes fear-driven control. The cure is fullness: belonging received as adoption, achievement practiced as discipleship faithfulness, and influence surrendered to humble service.

How it begins

There are those who ask questions because they want answers to satisfy their curiosity. And then there are those who ask questions because they cannot bear to live without the answers—because their lives depend on them.

Aristotle belonged to the second kind. Among the existential questions he pressed toward were these: How should a person live well? What is worth pursuing? And what counts as genuine fulfillment—not for a moment, but for a life? He was not handed a creed, nor raised on Israel’s Scriptures, and he did not know Yahweh—the God of Israel. Christ had not yet come; even the language of the gospel would have sounded like a foreign tongue.

Yet Aristotle reached for the same human truth with which every soul struggles: what does a person pursue when they are trying to become whole?

Born in 384 B.C., Aristotle studied under Plato in Athens and later taught and wrote across fields as wide as logic, ethics, politics, and the study of nature. His lasting impact came from how he approached knowledge: disciplined reasoning, careful observation, and a search for the ends toward which human beings live. He argued that human flourishing—what he called eudaimonia—is not a fleeting emotion, but a life that fulfills what a human being is meant to become, achieved through habitual virtue and right action.

Christian thinkers later found in Aristotle a sturdy way to speak about purpose, virtue, and the human good. That influence was especially profound through Thomas Aquinas many centuries later, who helped Christians articulate the moral and spiritual shape of the good using Aristotelian categories. So while Aristotle did not speak of Christ, he helps map something that must be charted if it is to tell the truth: the human heart is purposeful, and it reaches toward satisfaction repeatedly—through yearnings that seek completion.

The story continues in the book.