Whether you like it or not, the fingerprint of God is imprinted on your soul.

Like countless other human beings who have come before you, you yearn for intimacy, for meaning, and for a sense of destiny. Consequently, your soul craves love and faith and hope.

In his newest book, Soul Cravings, Pastor Erwin McManus presents a delightfully accessible and warmly inspiring apologetic for the Christian faith. Rejecting the confrontational apologetics of street-corner preachers, the evidentialist apologetics of the Josh McDowell’s and Lee Strobel’s of the world, and the intellectual apologetics of William Lane Craig and (to some extent) C. S. Lewis, Pastor McManus offers a beautiful and captivating existential apologetic by appealing to our common human desires. It is obvious that most (if not all) human beings long for intimacy, meaning, and destiny. For McManus, these “soul cravings” are signs of God’s imprint in our lives.

Unlike many apologists who overstretch their reach, McManus is astute enough to recognize that he cannot “prove” God to anyone: “I don’t know how to prove God to you, I can only hope to guide you to a place where you and God might meet.”[1] He is, however, open enough to make himself vulnerable by sharing his own soul cravings. As a gift to those on a genuine search for God, McManus opens his soul in order that others may as well.

Our Search for Intimacy

We need love in order to survive. We thrive when we are loved by others. Without love, we fall apart, we lose our way, we enter despair. In the words of Robert Palmer, we are truly addicted to love:

We are addicted to love, and it’s out of control.

We would give anything and everything to find it.

Here is where I begin to hold to a conspiracy theory.

There’s more going on here than meets the eye.

It’s as if we’ve been purposefully designed with a factory defect that keeps us searching… for love.[2]

McManus argues that the pursuit of love plays more of a role in human history than the survival of the fittest: “We cannot live unaffected by love. We are most alive when we find it, most devastated when we lose it, most empty when we give up on it, most inhumane when we betray it, and most passionate when we pursue it. The human story seems more driven by the insanity of love than the survival of the fittest.”[3]

The metaphor of “home” best illustrates our soul’s yearning. We long to belong: “Home is ultimately not about a place to live but about the people with whom you are most fully alive. Home is about love, relationship, community, and belonging, and we are all searching for home.”[4]

We crave love. We look for it in others. We long for a place to call home.

What if our soul’s craving for love is an indication that we have been created by Love for Love. If, as the New Testament proclaims, God is love, than our search for love is, in actuality, a search for God. “If God is love, it is maddening when we are running from God and yet searching for love.”[5]

The truth that God is love – and consequently, that we have been made by Love for Love – is at the heart of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. McManus argues that the reason God came in the flesh was for this very purpose – to fully manifest his love to others, something that can only be done personally: “If the message that God wants to get across to us is just about getting our beliefs right, then he didn’t need to come himself… There is only reason for God to come himself, because in issues of love, you just can’t have someone else stand in for you.”[6]

Jesus not only revealed the love of God. He also taught that love is the most important thing to God: “Really, Jesus is saying that the most important thing to God is love. Love, it seems, has two arenas where it’s played out – in our relationship with God and in our relationship with people.”[7] Jesus’ teaching on the Greatest Commandment (“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Matthew 22:37-40) demonstrates that love for God and love for others are inextricably interlinked: “the order of the Great Commandment is not incidental but absolutely critical… When we are disconnected from God, we find ourselves increasingly empty of love. Jesus, it seems, is certain that the more you love God, the more you will love people.”[8]

The reason that love for God overflows into love for others is that love expands over time. It is not apportioned like pieces of a pie, but rather, like a muscle, grows with use: “Love can never be simply between you and God… Love is ever expanding. Love always grows, not just deeper, but wider. Love always loves people more and always loves more people. Love calls us to community; love calls us to humanity; love calls us to each other.”[9]

McManus’ final entry under “Intimacy” – “Entry #21” – is titled “Love is Not a Four-Letter Word.” The sole contents of this entry are the classic Beatles’ lyrics, “All you need is love” followed by the New Testament phrase, “God is Love.”

Our Desire for Destiny

We need the hope of a future in order to survive in the present. We thrive when we are optimistic about the future. We cannot simply exist. We long for a sense of destiny. “It is important to fully live each moment, but equally important to make sure that we do not live only for this moment… We have to believe in tomorrow to function well today. It will never be enough for us simply to exist… Without a future there is no hope, and hope is essential for our souls to thrive.”[10]

Why do we despair without hope? “There’s a simple reason for this. It’s exactly how God has designed you.”[11]

It is for this reason that insignificance is soul-destroying. We intuitively know that “it’s wrong to say to another human being that he or she is nothing.”[12] It does not matter who we are: “Atheist, agnostic, existentialist, humanist, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Christian – we all need to believe that somehow our lives matter.”[13] McManus makes his point powerfully by asking us to imagine what it would be like if our worst thoughts were true:

You know that moment when you felt insignificant, that moment when you wondered if you had any value at all, if your life really meant anything? That was the most honest moment you ever had, because you are insignificant. You’re just a speck of dust against the backdrop of the cosmos. You are an evolutionary tragedy, a gnat with self-awareness heading straight toward the windshield of inevitability. All your future holds for you is splat and then it’s over?[14]

We need to hope in the future in order to thrive in the present. We are hard-wired to crave a positive future. The virtue of hope is God’s answer to our soul’s craving.

Our Pursuit of Meaning

We need meaning in order to survive. The idea of meaningless – a life of vanity – haunts us. Simply put: “Why is the question that haunts us.”[15]

We search for truth, and we receive truth through faith. Whether we admit it or not, we all live by faith in something: “all human beings must live by faith, even if it’s faith in reason.”[16] McManus demonstrates that “faith and reason have a lot in common. Oh, they come to different conclusions, but they’re both trying to do the same thing. They’re trying to make sense of life. They’re trying to establish what is true, what is real.”[17]

“When we search for truth, we search for God.”[18]

Conclusion

We search for intimacy, meaning, and truth because our soul craves God. These longings cannot be fully and adequately explained by naturalistic philosophy. They send us in the direction of the Divine.

Our hearts are sending us a message – if we are willing to listen – that our deepest longings can only be met by God. When we are willing to admit this, we can begin our journey of faith, hope, and love.

This book is a helpful reminder that our deepest soul cravings consume and direct our lives more than we realize. McManus does a fine job of demonstrating that our soul cravings reveal the fingerprint of God in our lives. Furthermore, he proves that only faith and hope in divine love can satisfy our human longings.

Quotes excerpted from Soul Cravings by Erwin Raphael McManus
© Richard J. Vincent, 2006