There is an old and unsettling theological idea about demons: they cannot truly be satisfied.
They don’t sleep. They don’t rest. They hunger but are never filled. They desire but are never content. Whatever they possess only produces the desire for something else.
Whether one accepts that as literal theology or simply considers it as a thought experiment, imagine how horrible such an existence would be.
You are starving, but eating never makes you full.
You are exhausted, but sleep never comes.
You desperately want something, finally possess it, enjoy it for a moment—and immediately begin wanting something else.
Forever.
Forget the cartoon version of hell with red devils, pitchforks, flames and boiling cauldrons.
What if hell is simply never being satisfied? //
C.S. Lewis famously made an observation that cuts directly into this problem. In Mere Christianity, he argued that when we discover within ourselves a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, perhaps the explanation is that we were made for something beyond this world.
People sometimes summarize that idea by saying there is a “God-shaped hole” inside the human heart. That isn’t actually Lewis’s phrase, but it captures something important.
We keep trying to fill an infinite longing with finite things.
And finite things eventually run out. //
Even good things—family, achievement, adventure and friendship—cannot bear the weight of becoming our ultimate purpose.
Christian theology has another word that appears surprisingly often when describing this problem:
Rest.
In Matthew 12, Jesus describes an unclean spirit wandering through dry places “seeking rest” and finding none.
That’s an interesting description of evil.
Restlessness.
Augustine famously approached the same idea from the opposite direction when he wrote that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.
Perhaps those ideas belong together.
Maybe separation from God isn’t merely punishment imposed upon a creature from the outside. Perhaps part of the punishment is what naturally happens when a creature separates itself from the only thing capable of ultimately satisfying it. //
If that’s even remotely accurate, perhaps we occasionally manufacture little pieces of hell right here on Earth.
Not because food, money, technology, possessions or pleasure are evil. They’re not.
The danger comes when we expect them to accomplish something they were never designed to accomplish.
That raises a question worth asking occasionally:
Am I enjoying the things in my life, or am I asking them to fill a hole they were never designed to fill?
Christianity offers a remarkable answer.
Jesus Christ did not enter history promising humanity a better shopping list, greater status, more possessions or another temporary distraction.
He offered something completely different.
Forgiveness.
Reconciliation with God.
Eternal life.
And something our perpetually hungry culture increasingly doesn’t know how to provide:
Rest.
“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden,” Jesus said, “and I will give you rest.”
Maybe that’s the Gospel hook we’ve overlooked.
Perhaps heaven isn’t getting everything we’ve ever wanted.
Perhaps heaven is finally discovering what we were created to want.
And perhaps salvation begins when a tired, hungry human being finally stops trying to fill an infinite hole with finite things, turns toward Jesus Christ, and discovers that the invitation has been there all along:
Come to Me.
I will give you rest.
