Do all our desires need to be satisfied?

My daughter worked at a bagel shop in Oakland, Calif., and now and then a customer would walk in with a dog. She would explain to the human on the other end of the leash that dogs were not allowed in the restaurant. At that point, the human would flash a smile and an ID card indicating this was no ordinary quadruped but a “therapy dog.”

My daughter found this amusing. She had heard of therapy dogs assigned to people in hospitals, retirement homes, nursing homes, schools, and hospices. But the owners of the dogs she encountered at the eatery were hale and hearty, by all appearances. A cursory search of cyberspace reveals that the prescription for these therapeutic companions has expanded to include “stressful situations.” I have no problem at all with therapy dogs. But it has not escaped my notice that categories of urgent need tend to expand over time, whether it is the “need” for a therapy dog or the “need” for an abortion because of the mother’s “psychological health.”

In 1974 John Lennon wrote a wretched song titled “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” that may as well be the theme song of this generation. Here are some of the lyrics:

Whatever gets you through the night, ’salright ’salright. … Whatever gets you though your life, ’salrigh ’salright. …

Hold me darlin’ come on listen to me, I won’t do you no harm. Trust me darlin’ come on listen to me, Come on listen to me, Come on, listen, listen

I recall the early days of the homosexual movement. We were told it wasn’t fair to deny one’s fellow man whatever gets him or her through the night. Just because a girl needs a girl or a guy needs a guy, why should we withhold that necessary comfort?

This cruel societal withholding of same-sex love at first applied to a very small number of people. These days it is amazing to see how the numbers of those who absolutely cannot get by without same-sex love has expanded. There is now almost no one who doesn’t know someone who is homosexual, who needs a same-sex partner to get him or her “through the night” and “through life.”

Is it just possible that the definition of what is absolutely needful has morphed and expanded? It makes me a little suspicious. After all, I know a good number of godly women of a certain age who would dearly love to be married (to a man) and to whom the Lord has not given this opportunity. Yet somehow they make it through the night and they make it through life. They realize that life contains varieties of suffering for everyone and that they are not so unique in that sense. They are proof that it can be done—that it is possible to live and work and pay bills without having the satisfaction of every one of one’s desires.

Is it cruel for me to say this? I think not. Every human being has desires that are not satisfied in this life. These are the very things that God uses to develop in us the character He wants us to take into eternity with us. If an actively homosexual person tells you that he cannot make it through the night and through life without his homosexual lifestyle, it is his word against God’s. This life is brief, and the next one unending. That perspective alone empowers us to bear with any current lack. There is never an occasion in which we need to break God’s commandments in order to survive.