How does Mark illustrate the importance of proper desires properly prioritized?

Throughout the book of Mark, Jesus continually rebukes the people, the Pharisees, and even his disciples for their wrong desires. He offers them eternal life, and they want party tricks. One desire that reoccurs a lot is a desire for physical healing. This is a good desire, but they focus on it to the exclusion of what else Jesus has to offer. They are so caught up in trying to be perfect on the outside that they completely miss the fact that they are rotting on the inside. The Pharisees focus so much on the law, trying to avoid even coming anywhere near to breaking it that they loose all sense of perspective. In the process of trying to be good, they become evil. They blew their desire for external goodness out of proportion, and their good desire made them bad. Similarly, the people desire healing for their bodies, but in the panic to get external deformities fixed, they miss their internal deformities and end up with whole bodies and lost souls.

Jesus is continually fighting this predisposition in those around him throughout the book of Mark. He points out that nothing is gained by getting the whole world if it costs you your life. He attacks the Pharisees as whitewashed sepulchers, pretty on the outside, and rotting on the inside. When the paralyzed man is lowered through the roof for him to heal, he starts out by forgiving the man’s sins. That was more important than solving his physical problems, although Jesus did that too. When the Pharisees are trying to get after Jesus for breaking the Sabbath when heals the man with the withered hand, he points out that it is more important to do good than to follow the minuscule bits and pieces of the rules that they have made up. Even though Jesus is trying to pound this point in, nobody seems to really get it until after his death and resurrection. They get that he is the Christ, but they have no idea what it would mean for him to save the world, or even the Jewish nation. They never seem to get past the physical realm to see into their spiritual brokenness that the Lamb came and was sacrificed to mend. It becomes clear through the epistles that they eventually do get it, and this becomes a major theme of the whole New Testament.