Today The Daily Post has asked this probing question:

Which do you find more dangerous: wanting nothing, or wanting everything?

You can discover how others have answered by going to:

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/all-or-nothing/

If there is one thing I have learned in all my years of pastoring it is that most extremes of anything are unhealthy and sometimes dangerous.

Wanting nothing  is a mindset I am all too familiar with. In my own case it has expressed itself in the thought process, “If I want nothing then I will not be disappointed when I receive it.”

On the surface it can look like a deep-seated contentment and peaceful acceptance of the world but underneath it is fueled by my own spirit of self-protectionism, which crowds out healthy relationships, and a lack of faith which cuts me off from God.

On the other hand is the mindset of wanting everything. Now if  the proviso “I want everything…that God wants me to have” is included then what you have is a lifestyle of positive forward-pressing faith. But wanting it all generally precludes any thought of whether or not God wants us to have it.  God generally doesn’t want us to have everything because He knows we cannot handle it; So wanting everything often leads us into places of dangerous disobedience to the Divine.

So let’s sum up here: Wanting nothing breeds unbelief. Wanting everything breeds disobedience to God. Both sound pretty dangerous to me. I think I am with Solomon on this one.

give me neither poverty nor riches,
    but give me only my daily bread.
⁹ Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
    and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
    and so dishonor the name of my God. Prov. 30:8,9