It's fascinating the large part that the concept of 'need' plays in the psychological world these days along with the accompanying concepts of 'addiction' and 'recovery'.
'Need' has got completely out of hand so that we have about as many needs as once was said we had instincts. In fact, 'instincts' and 'needs' seem to be similar explanatory ideas from different eras.
All persons are said nowadays to have a set of universal needs -- shared by everyone else -- but the needs' lists themselves vary among themselves.
One authority says, 'Needs are more than the things we can't live without. They represent our values, wants, desires and preferences for a happier and/or more meaningful experience as a human'. According to this view, all humans have a common core of needs: when these needs are met, then positive feelings follow; when these are unmet, then negative feelings are experienced.
This understanding does not seem to reckon with the fact that some people's needs are not proper or legitimate.
The 'need' for affluence is illegitimate because it fails to take account of the needs of others both present and in the future for a reasonable standard of living. However, over-riding even that consideration is the deeper religious issue that needs ideology seeks to find revelation for human living within the human person. Hence, in that respect it is humanistic and unchristian. Needs are important but they are not to be the drivers of human action, the oughts that push behaviour.
Christians find divine Revelation in the Word of God and as the community of Christ it positivises or gives concrete form to what it hears from the written, spoken and non-verbal Word (Ps 19.1-4).
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