What Are You Passionate About?
By George “Chip” Hammond
“What are you passionate about?” If you go to a job interview, you’re likely to be asked that question. You’ll see the word “passion” in resumes or on-line bios. People are passionate about exercise, passionate about vitamins, passionate about music, passionate about political parties or persons.
Scan the bookstore and you’ll see it. One book predicts a new economy based on passion. Another is written to “sustain passion for public service.” Another book holds out the promise of being an effortless path to discovering your purpose in life by figuring out what your passion is. Passion is an unqualified good.
So it comes as a shocking surprise to modern people that in an earlier time “passion” was considered an unqualified evil. It didn’t matter what the passion was for passion considered by itself was malum in se (something bad in itself). The reason for this strange sounding conclusion is that in an earlier time the Bible held more influence on society in general (and, sadly, on the church in particular) than it does today.
Two related words in the New Testament are translated as “passion,” when they refer to desire: pathos and pathema. In every passage where these words refer to desire, they are not morally neutral. We might miss this when we read them because 1) we have a disposition to think that passion itself is good, and 2) we see “concomitants” in the passages (I’ll explain the word in a minute) with “passion” and we think that the concomitant is what is bad. Note the following examples:
“For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death.” (Romans 7:5)
“Each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God.” (1 Thessalonians 4:4-5)
Given our modern presuppositions, we assume that what Romans 7 is speaking of is, not all passion, but only sinful passion. We assume the evil of 1 Thessalonians 4 is not the passion, but the lust. It’s not passion, but the concomitants (words that appear with “passion”) “sinful’ and “lust” that indicate the evil.
However, given that the Bible never has anything good to say about passion, we’d be inclined to look a bit deeper and when we do, a different picture of passion emerges. Romans 7 speaks literally of “the passions of sin,” or to put it another way, “the passions, which arise from sin.”
Although the English word “lust” is unqualifiedly bad, the Greek word (epithumia) means only a strong desire. Whether that desire is good or bad depends on the object of the desire. When Jesus said to his disciples, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you” (Luke 22:15), the single word translated as “earnestly desired” is the word epithumia, the word often translated “lust.” What makes the word refer to something evil in 1 Thessalonians 4 is that it is modified by the word “passion.”
Once you realize this, you’ll begin to see throughout the New Testament that passion is presented as a bad thing. “Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry” (Colossians 3:5 NASB). The only word in this string that has a modifier is “desire” (epithumia); we have to be told that it is “evil desire.” All the other things mentioned – immorality, impurity, greed, and passion are understood to be bad in themselves.
What Makes Passion a Malum in Se?
The reason that Bible presents “passion” as bad is because it is an inordinate emphasis on something to the exclusion or harm of other things, and this includes passions about things that are in themselves good. In Mere Christianity and The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis notes that most sins are not unalloyed evil, but rather something good inordinately elevated and pursued.
Physical affection, for example, is a good given by God. But when it becomes a passion it will be pursued without regard or concern for the other person or the good and benefit of society. Mother-love (the strong inclination of a mother to care for and protect her children) is a good, but when it becomes a passion it will be pursued without regard to right or wrong, fairness to other children, or even the ultimate benefit of her own child. Patriotism (love of country) is a good, but when it becomes a passion it will be pursued at the expense of truth or justice. (As Lewis so profoundly said, “A man may be called upon to die for his country. No man can legitimately live for it.”) In some spheres we know that passion itself is bad. We know, for example, that justice in law enforcement and in courts of law should be pursued dispassionately, for passions allowed into the sphere of justice lead inevitably to injustice.
A Passion for God?
What about a “passion for God?” That couldn’t be bad, could it? You’ll find numerous books by that title. But what exactly is “a passion for God?” When people say they have (or should have) “a passion for God” what they mean is a passion for Bible study, or a passion for evangelism, or a passion for truth, or a passion for loving neighbor, all things good in themselves.
The problem should be apparent. Elevate any one of these to a passion, and it becomes an evil. The Pharisees had a passion for Bible study. Those who have “a passion for truth” are those who don’t care how their words affect others. (See Ephesians 4:15, Proverbs 25:11) – isn’t it so in your experience? Those who have a passion for evangelism will often be careless with the accuracy of the message. (Although I have some sympathy for the evangelist who said to a critic who complained of the way he went about it: “I like my way of doing evangelism better than your way of not doing it.” We could well surmise that the critic had “a passion for truth.”) A passion for loving neighbor means sacrificing truth when it needs to be spoken.
Understanding that passions are an unqualified evil in the Bible helps us to understand why the Westminster Divines told us that among the duties required by the Sixth Commandment (“You will not kill”) was “subduing all passions” (Larger Catechism 135), and why they said that God is “infinite in being and perfection . . . without body, parts, or passions” (Confession of Faith 2.1). Passion by definition entails imbalance and inordinate fixation exclusive of other goods.
How Passion Damages Witness
I suspect that sometimes when people say they have a passion for something, they are overstating the case to indicate that they have a serious like for something. I once had someone tell me that he had a “passion for music,” but when I questioned him on this, he said that he played or practiced five to ten hours a week, held a job, took his kids to their sporting events, was active in his church and attentive to his wife. I’ve seen interviews with professional musicians who had a true passion for music. They sacrificed marriages, children, friendships, health, and personal integrity for it.
But I have met Christian people with true passions. I knew one with a passion for the vitamins she sold. I knew another with a passion for exercise, and still another with a passion for firearms. I’ve known several with a passion for a political party or excessive devotion to a political personality.
Passions are an unqualified bad in the Bible, and this is so for all people, but it is especially so for Christians. For when Christians develop passions, they often try to justify them by linking them to their Christian faith. People come to know them as a Christian and a passionate person. They inadvertently bear false witness to the gospel because they convey implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) that to be a Christian you must share their devotion to an invention that did not exist until the nineteen or twentieth century, or an economic system that did not exist until the 1500s, a political system that did not exist until the eighteenth century, or a political party that did not exist until near the twentieth.
Putting Our Passion to Death
Colossians 3:5 tells us to put to death our passions. It would not be necessary to do this if passions were not a real temptation for all of us. It’s not that passion is a temptation for some, and others are naturally dispassionate. We all are inclined to passions, and with understandable reason. Passion “works,” in that if you pursue something devotedly to the exclusion and/or harm of every other thing, you are likely to be successful at it.
The antidote for passion is found in the New Testament word nepho, which is translated as either to be “sober” or “temperate.” The word means to be moderate, restrained, well-balanced, and self-controlled rather than driven by a passion.
There are a few good tests for temperance. Can you walk away from the object or activity, or do you suffer feelings of incompleteness without it? If the latter, you likely have a passion issue.
A second would be, can you admit to the limitation of the object or activity? The woman who was passionate about vitamins discounted any evidence that her product may not do the miraculous things she claimed they would. (This is an increasing danger of living in a “post-truth” age in which truth is secondary to, or determined by how people deeply feel about things, rather than by the canons of evidence and reason.) If you can’t abide the thought of something that would negate, limit, or impinge on the object or activity, you likely have a passion issue.
A third is, do people in general know you by a passion, or know you simply as a Christian? (I say “people in general” because the people you engage in an activity with will know you chiefly in association with that activity, particularly if you are accomplished at it.) Being generally known as an excessive devotee to anything indicates the possibility of a passion that needs to be subdued.
Reassessing Passion
It has been said that “When it rains in the world, it drips in the church.” Because passion is seen as an unqualified good in our society, Christians are in more danger than ever of succumbing to passion. As I said before, sometimes when people speak of their “passions” they overstate and case and simply refer to things that they really like and have some devotion to. I don’t want to be pedantic (being pedantic would indicate a passion for accuracy).
Knowing what the Bible says about passion, though, we can be more alert to passion in ourselves and put it to death by practicing sobriety and temperance in its place. In doing so, we will not only be more faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ, but will ourselves be growing in the renewal of the image of God, who is himself “without passions.”
