(Common sense that’s not too common)
There are some basic questions about life that everyone must wrestle with at some point. These questions will gnaw at the soul. People will try to ignore them, crowd them out with the business of life, joke about them in a flippant way, or just give up and say the questions can’t be answered. But they remain. They are hardwired into us. We need to ponder these things. People are so enslaved to their electronic devices it seems no one “ponders” anymore! Media has become a distraction to the point of absurdity making billions of people incapable of contemplative thought.
Sometimes people will look to philosophy or religion to answer these questions, or they will simply make up their own answers. Real questions require real answers, so the third option does not make much sense to me. If there are close to 8 billion people on this planet, and they are all making stuff up, things will get a bit confusing. Perhaps that is why society is such a mess. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that there are universal answers to these questions. Moral relativism maintains that there are no standards of absolute and universal application. If this is true, there is no point in even asking the questions. If you are comfortable with the idea that there is no such thing as objective reality, then you probably do not need to read any further. I am not comfortable with that notion. I do find some philosophy to be interesting reading, but I choose theology over philosophy.
- What is the meaning of life?
Many years ago, I saw a book that looked interesting to me, so I bought a copy. I still have it. The title of the book is The Meaning of Life: Wit, Wisdom and Wonder from 65 Extraordinary People. It was published by Esquire, October 1, 2004. Before you get too excited and rush to Amazon to buy your copy, take my advice and save your money for something more worthwhile than this pointless, narcissistic dribble. Most of the “extraordinary” people interviewed were not what I would classify as extraordinary at all, they were simply well known publicly for business, sports, entertainment and/or television. Being well known by the public does not make anyone “extraordinary”. Their mostly non-answers to the question, “What is the meaning of life?” prove my point entirely that when people start making up their own answers to life’s deep questions, mostly the end-product is a lot of subjective nonsense. Here is one example from this fine literary masterpiece:
Evel Knievel (Remember, the question is “What is the meaning of life?”:
“When you’re mad at someone, it’s probably best not to break his arm with a baseball bat. Heaven is a place you can go and drink a lot of draft beer and it don’t make you fat. You can cheat on your wife and she don’t get mad. You get a beautiful female chauffeur with nice, hard tits – real ones. There are motorcycle jumps you never miss. You don’t need a tee time”… He babbles on with a lot more nonsense, but you get the point…
Perhaps if my wife and I ever get birds, (which I never intend to do,) the pages of this book could be utilized to line the bottom of the cage.
We long for life to have meaning and purpose. When we don’t find the real meaning, we make stuff up to fill in the void. Is there a real, objective meaning, a meaning not based on our individual whims? If there is a universal meaning, it must apply to everyone. It cannot be something that originates in our own minds. The idea that we can all have our own individual truth is nonsense. This is not reality, it is fantasy. Fantasy can be entertaining, but it is a lie. It is not real. Fantasy reality is an oxymoron. I also do not like the term “virtual reality” implying almost real. That is nonsense. Either a thing is real, or it is imaginary. There is no such thing as something being “almost real”. It either is, or it isn’t. That is like saying a woman is “almost pregnant.” Either conception occurred, or it didn’t. Maybe you have not noticed this, we live reality, not fantasy. We entertain ourselves with fantasy, but we live reality. So objective meaning must be universal, based in reality. Individual truth is a nonsensical notion. If your truth contradicts my truth, we must either both be wrong, or one of us is right. Two contradictory things can’t both be true. If I say the board measures 6 inches long, and you say it measures 4 inches long, it is either 6 inches long or 4 inches long, or it is neither. Perhaps we are both wrong, and it is 5 inches long. It can’t be 6 inches long and be 4 inches long. That is nonsense.
If we make up our own meanings, we want our lives, and the world to line up with those meanings, so we work to make that happen. The problem is that our subjective (fantasy) meanings clash. That is why the world is and has always been in turmoil. Our meanings clash, so we fight and kill each other.
We live in a world where people mostly operate within a subjective mentality. This is foolish. Reality cannot be a matter of private interpretation, or it is not reality, it is opinion. One question I often hear people ask goes something like this: “What does this mean for you?” This seems to imply that if ten people were asked the same question about something, and they gave ten different, contradictory answers, all the answers are valid. This is not how reality works. The question should never be, “What does this mean for you?” but rather, “What does this mean?” Period.
I must contend that there is a real meaning to life. It is a universal meaning that applies to everyone. It is not contingent on time, place, or circumstance. It has its origination outside of us individually, and it can be tested and validated. This is found in the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”, however, I do not expect anyone who does not already know this to be able to understand it without reading further and allowing me to explore and explain some other things.
2. How did it all begin?
Generally speaking, there are two common answers to this question: That does not mean other answers do not exist, these two are just the most common. The first is the big bang theory coupled with the theory of evolution (or some other variation of that approach) as it is popularly taught in public school. The basis of this approach is the idea that you can determine the origin of a thing by studying the thing itself without knowing anything about the one who originated it. Try this approach with something other than the origins of life. It doesn’t work. You might be able, for example, to examine a work of art, and if you are familiar with the styles and techniques of many artists, make a pretty good guess as to who created this specific work. If, however, you have no working knowledge of the styles and techniques of any artists, you cannot determine who created it by simply looking at the work itself. These are theories, not proven facts, although they are often taught as if they were facts. These are referred to as “science” when in fact, they are not true science at all, they are simply theories. For anything to be rightly called science, it must be testable, provable, and repeatable. If you want to determine at what temperature water freezes, you monitor the temperature of water, and decrease its temperature until it freezes. It behaves the same way every time. That is provable and repeatable. The theories of origins are neither provable nor repeatable, so they are not science. The origin of mankind and the universe happened before recorded time, so no one was there. It simply cannot be proven. Much of what is popularly called “science”, is “scientism”, the belief, not in actual science, but science rhetoric.
The other answer is to accept one of the varied creation stories, of which there are many. Personally, I have read many of these, and the only one that makes sense to me is the account of Creation recorded in the Bible in the opening chapters of Genesis. If you wish to pursue reading other creation stories, please do so, and compare them. Because they are so varied, and quite frankly, some of them are just strange, I do not wish to delve into them individually.
The simple fact of the matter is that everybody believes something. Whether you say you trust (believe) “science” or you believe in creation, you have faith (belief) in something. I would venture to say that most, if not all the people who will ever read this, are not scientists. (Not that I would object to scientists reading it, that would be fantastic.) Since you are not a scientist, and more specifically, you are not a scientist who studies the origins of life, that means you trust what the scientists who study the origins of life, say, and/or write. I would also venture to say that most people who will ever read this have not really delved into the study of the origins of life with any veracity. To believe anything without seriously looking into it is simply intellectual laziness, especially as it pertains to the meaning of your own existence.
Admittedly, the Genesis account of Creation is not “science”, but it does not contradict science, it does, however, contradict science rhetoric such as is commonly promoted. As with other speculations about life’s origins, it simply cannot be proven. We were not there, we did not observe it, and we cannot test it. So, in the same sense that those who trust science rhetoric trust what scientists say or write, we can choose to trust what the Bible says about Creation. It is a matter of choice. You choose what you believe. At least be honest enough to admit that to yourself. You choose to “believe” something, plain and simple. Even if you say, “nothing can be believed”, that means that you “believe” that nothing can be believed. You cannot test and prove that “nothing can be believed”, so you contradict yourself by your very statement.
I choose to believe the Genesis account of Creation, because it is the only option that makes sense to me. Genesis starts off with the given that everything that exists, and is observable to us was intentionally created, it is not the result of random chance from the collision of molecules, or some other such nonsensical explanation. Where did the molecules come from? Where did the substance of the big bang come from? Why did it even exist at all? There are NO answers to those questions. If you choose to believe an explanation that does not acknowledge a Creator, you are still left with dilemma of starting with something that cannot be proven or tested. You are exercising faith, or belief. Just admit it and stop using linguistic gymnastics to avoid saying that you have chosen to believe a particular thing.
Think logically with me for a few minutes. Go to your driveway and look at your car. Does your car appear to be something that was intentionally designed and produced (created), or does it look like the random collision of metal? The obvious answer from any sane person is that it was designed and produced. The same logic can be applied to most things, your house, your computer, etc. Those things did not just “happen” for no reason or purpose. They originated first through a thought process in a mind, and then the process of their development. Now, go outside and look at the stars in the sky. Ponder the vastness of space, what we know about our own solar system, the galaxies, and ultimately the universe. The complexity and timing of the orbits of just the planets in our solar system around the sun, in addition to the orbits of the moon(s) around the individual planets. It staggers the mind. In addition to that, the solar systems are supposedly moving through the galaxies, and the galaxies are moving through the universe. How is it possible to conceive this happened without some grand design originating in a mind?
Walk into the forest and view the multitude and variations of the tree, plants and wildlife. Get a microscope and look at things in magnified detail. The magnitude of our world, the life forms on this planet, and the vast universe very much appear to me as something designed. I could go into great detail about many more things, but the point is that seeing things in this ordered universe can only lead me to the common-sense conclusion that it did not just happen, it was created. Any creation requires a Creator. Things do not just create themselves. The short answer to the question, “How did it all begin?” is that it was all created. A creation requires a “Creator”. That is just common sense.
3. Why do we exist?
Why do we exist at all? Why does anything exist? Why is there something instead of nothing? It should not take an observant person long to conclude that everything in this world is temporary- it does not last. People are born, people die. Animals die, plants grow, flowers bloom, then die. Shiny new material things wear out and become trash. Magnificent homes and buildings eventually become rubble. Without a deeper understanding of why, it all seems rather bleak. We long for permanence in this world, but it doesn’t seem to exist. There seems to be something in the temporary that is a shadow of the permanent. The “logos” is a principle originating in classical Greek thought which refers to a universal divine reason, immanent in nature, yet transcending all oppositions and imperfections in the cosmos and humanity. An eternal and unchanging truth present from the time of creation, available to every individual who seeks it. It seems that the temporary points to something permanent and greater and the temporary we experience in this life is merely a signpost to the permanent or eternal. There is something inside of all of us that yearns for that to be so. We long for safety, security and freedom, but this world often seems like a dangerous and hateful prison.
We cannot find the answers to the “why” questions within ourselves. The idea that we must look inside ourselves to find “our” meaning is a popular idea, but realistically it is utter nonsense. If there are answers to these questions, and I contend that there are, the answers must originate from some other, external source, something outside ourselves. Men have driven themselves insane looking within their own minds for the answers to these questions. The world’s asylums are populated with navel-gazers! Perhaps the Greek philosophers were onto something in their concept of the “logos”. The common-sense interpretation of all this for me very much points to an originator, or in other words, a “Creator”.
“Why did the Creator create? What is His reason?” Why does a musician write and/or play songs? Why does an artist sketch, paint, or make sculpture? Why does an inventor invent? Why does anyone do what they do? That is a question that no one can really answer with a definitive answer. That is a soul question that cannot be answered by science or logic. For the musician or the artist, there seems to be something hardwired into his being that propels him to create. An artist creates for the same reason that a flower blooms, “That is what they do. Period.” There is no answer to the question, “why?” That is just the nature of reality. A Creator creates.
Have you ever felt driven to do something without being able to answer the question “why”? You get an overpowering desire to do something, perhaps a new invention, or a new way of doing something. You can’t get away from the urge to bring it about. For a musician it is a song that seems to write itself. For the artist, it is a vision that appears in his mind that he must put on canvas or paper. It can’t be contained. It must be released. There is no logical reason as to why this is so, it just is.
Having said that, it is inevitable that the Creator creates. The Bible paints a picture for us of a God who is relational. It is an anthropomorphic picture. Because the Bible paints for us an anthropomorphic picture of God, some wrongly conclude that mankind has created, or imagined a God with human-like characteristics. In other words, we have created God in our image. This idea is the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches. The Bible says that God created man in His image, so naturally we are like God, not that God is like us. We did not create ourselves. No one ever willed themselves into existence. That is nonsense. It makes much more sense to believe that we were created in the image of God and that is the reason for our anthropomorphic understanding of God, not that we imagined a God in our image. Imagine a young man who did not know his father, but he has a picture of him. You can see from the picture that the young man looks very much like his father. Does it make more sense to say that the young man possesses a real picture of his actual father, or that the young man searched until he found a picture of a man that looks like himself, or better yet, he drew a picture of himself and concluded that the man in the picture would be who he decided to identify as his father? That makes no sense. The idea that mankind invented God to meet his own psychological needs, as is professed by some, is comparable to a lonely child inventing an imaginary friend. At the core of his being, the child knows the imaginary friend is not real. The imaginary friend is not going to take him to the doctor when he hurts himself. The imaginary friend is not going to feed him when he is hungry. His real parents, whom he did not imagine, and whom it might be added, are responsible for his very existence, are the ones who will take him to the doctor and feed him. If he depends on his imaginary friend for these things, he will remain injured and hungry. The imaginary friend is only good for play. I find no comfort in depending on an imaginary God to psychologically “play” with!
Although the “why do we exist?” question may not be answered in the sense that we can prove something, I “believe” we can infer from our understanding of God as Creator with anthropomorphic qualities, because of those qualities God desires to create other living beings, like Himself to be in a relationship with. We could also infer that God does not need humans. He wants them. That is the reason we exist. God desires relationship just as we desire relationship.
As relational beings, we want to share the good we experience with others. Don’t you find this to be true? You get a new recipe for some cake or other dish, and it turns out well. You want to share it with someone else. When you see the majesty of a glorious sunset, having your beloved by your side to share in the experience makes it that much more special. We are made to share. Perhaps you have a new grandchild. You can’t wait to get on social media to share the pictures of the new bundle of joy or show all the pictures to your friends at church, or some other social gathering. We want and need others to share in life’s joys. We also need others in our times of sorrow and pain.
Since we are this way, and we are made in God’s likeness, isn’t it reasonable to conclude that God, the masterful Creator, desires to be in relation with others, like Himself, to share in His handiwork?
If that sounds like too simplistic of an answer for you, and you honestly want to know why you exist, can you come up with a better answer? If you can, I would certainly like to hear it.
Life is a mystery. Without a “life-giver”, life makes no sense. You do not exist because you chose to. You exist because your biological mother and father met and mated. You were conceived and born, and here you are. You had no say so in the matter. In the purely biological sense, you exist because of the decision and action of someone else. Two people acted and produced you. In the same sense, the existence of the human race depended on a source outside the human race. If the reproduction of humans depends on a male and a female mating to produce a baby, it had to start somewhere. There had to be a man and a woman to start the whole process. That is exactly what the Bible tells us happened. The Creator God made a man in His own image, and then made the woman from the man. There is really no other explanation. There are a lot of convoluted theories men have devised over the years about how lifeless matter somehow produced life through some protein, RNA process, or whatever, somehow sparking the beginning of biological life on this planet. I have read a lot of this material, and to be honest with you, none of it makes any sense to me. It all seems very much like men, motivated by intellectual pride, who are unwilling to admit the existence of God, concocting complicated, and mostly un-understandable theories to confuse people. We are supposed to trust them and believe what they say because of their academic credentials. This is not real science, as I have stated previously, it is science rhetoric. It cannot be tested, proven or repeated. No one has ever produced life from lifeless matter in a laboratory. They have merely manipulated and genetically altered already existing life.
This convoluted, complicated theorizing for the sake of convincing people to not believe in God is similar to the process that is often used in government to get some bill passed. It is a common practice for many legislators to write some extremely long bill. The hope is that the ones who are responsible for voting on whether to pass the bill or not will grow impatient and bored and not actually read all of the bill, and consider what is being proposed, they will simply pass it. And often, that is exactly what happens. Our government is full of lazy people who will not simply take the time to do what they are getting paid to do. Our world is full of spiritually, and intellectually lazy people who will not take the time to think through the beliefs that they base their lives on and follow their beliefs out to their logical conclusions.
Lifeless matter cannot produce life. Suppose you pull an old car out of a junkyard that has not ran in decades. A car is a lifeless machine. It is a thing. Can this car be made to run again? The answer is, yes! With the right parts, and the right mechanical know-how, the car can run again. Now imaging going to a graveyard and digging up a body. Can you fix it and make it run again? Can you bring it back to life? Of course not! Newsflash: Frankenstein is fiction. The created life in the body is gone. There is something that was there before that is not there now, namely, the spirit. We instinctively know we are spirit, but sin causes to deny it. Because we were given life by a “life-giver” our life does not actually belong to us. Our life belongs to the One who made it.
4. Who is in charge?
Have you ever had a job and felt frustrated because you did not know who the final authority was? Who is the one you go to for clarification when you have ten different people telling you ten different, contradictory things? I have. One the first project I worked on with the company I currently work for, they started a new, large project, and needed to hire a lot of people quickly. Honestly, for the first year of my employment I did not know who my manager was. Things changed on a day to day basis. It was very chaotic and confusing. Operational procedures changed daily and weekly. Once I began to feel a little comfortable in my understanding of how things worked, the game, and the process changed. Everything needs a good leader who knows what he is doing, not just an arbitrary authority. We all want to know who is in charge? Where does the buck stop? Who has the final say so?
As much as we like to think of ourselves as independent, we aren’t. Total independence is a lie. It is not reality. We need some final authority. It is built into the very fabric of our being. When you can answer the “Who’s in charge” question, you find stability and security. The soldier can’t charge onto the battlefield without knowing who his commanding officer is.
The question, “Who’s in charge?” has already been answered for us. God created us. He gives us life, and He’s in charge of what He created and owns. He owns us and can do with us whatever He chooses. That should sober all of us. In one sense, that is a frightening thought, as it should be. The fear of the Lord is a theme that runs throughout the Bible. This thought frightens us because we fear losing control, but the truth is that we are not in control anyway. There are so many things in life, over which we have no control, that can either affect us positively or negatively. The idea that we are the captains of our own destinies is an illusion.
When you understand God is good, you realize that it is good that He is in control. Knowing that the One who is in control, and He is motivated by love, we are free from the fear of the unknown. We need not fear, unless we are living in defiance of our Creator, which most of the world is.
There are always two sides to every story. If we study history, it is easy to conclude that mankind is very wicked. It seems that human history is a repeating cycle of destruction and death, people killing each other, nations waging war against each other. Wars are usually the battle for power. Why do human beings love the feeling of power so much? There is something inside of us that wants control. No one likes chaos, so we battle for control. The irony is that our battles for control produce the very chaos we are trying to avoid. The need for control is motivated by fear. With all this in mind, if this is all we see, we have a very lop-sided, distorted view of life.
While, what I have just stated is true, the other side to the story is that, even though there is much evil in the world, there is also much good. It is both, not one or the other. History often does not record the incredible amount of good, because the evil is what gets our immediate attention. Our modern news media proves this to be true. If there is a mass shooting in a city, and a homeless shelter on the other side of the block where people sacrifice their time and money to feed, cloth and shelter the homeless, you are far more likely to hear about the shooting on the evening news. As the old news saying goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.” To see only the evil in the world, and be blinded to the good, distorts our view of reality. Satan wants us to only see the bad. This brings despair and hopelessness and blinds us to the goodness of God.
The Biblical Answers to our questions:
Science can’t answer the question of why we exist. This is not an easy question because in order to find the answer, you must first believe that there is a Creator, and you must seek to understand the Creator. This has become more difficult for people in this age, because, up until about 250 years ago, most everyone held to a theistic worldview. This does not mean that people were religions, but they at least acknowledged that the world was created. Without a Creator, the life-giver, there is really no point to anything. You are stuck with believing that you are born, you experience physical pleasure in some things, you experience pain, and then you cease to exist. For me, there could not be a more bleak and depressing way to look at life. The popularity of this nihilistic view of life is mind numbing. It would leave one without any hope.
In order to proceed any further, the question as to whether God exists or not must be settled in your mind. The real question is not, “Does God exist?” but, “Do you believe and acknowledge that God exists?” I can’t prove to you in the scientific sense that God exists. The flip side to that is that neither can you prove to me that He does not exist. Some people will acknowledge the possibility that there is a Creator. They will say, “Yes the beauty of the natural order looks created, not the result of chance”, but they go no further. Or they will say things like, “People have many concepts of God, and if they are sincere, their views are all valid.” Logically, this idea or belief makes no sense. We do not think about other things this way. This gets back to what I was saying earlier about the impossibility of two contradictory things both being true. If my concept of God is the exact opposite of what yours is, the can’t both be right. That is not how reality works. Sincerity of belief doesn’t make anything true automatically.
You can’t rightly know anyone or anything without the desire to know. You can’t escape the gnawing need to know. It seems to be hardwired into us. You can pretend to not need to know or drown the nagging questions out with a million other things. People spend their entire lives avoiding the question, and at the end of their lives, the question is still there. Then, all they have is the fear of death.
The world is full of countless ideas about God, or “gods”- supernatural powers. If a man concludes that there must be a Creator, the next logical questions should be, “Who it He? How can I know the Creator? How can I know which answers are the right ones?” It can seem overwhelming since there are so many options.
“Is this Creator good, or is He an evil tyrant? If He is good, how do you define good?” It might sound over-simplified, but the things that are true in life are simple. That does not mean they are easy. It all boils down to what we choose, and if we choose wrongly, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Let me give you an example:
Suppose you witness someone committing an act of cruelty to another person, or an animal. There are two possible responses: You can choose to ignore it and not get involved, thinking “This does not involve me, so I am going to stay out of it.” The irony is that it will affect you. Unless you are a true sociopath, your conscience will haunt you for not doing anything.
The other option is to get involved. Step in and do something, or at least, call the police and let them handle it. We inherently know what is happening is wrong, and our consciences will not us just erase it from our minds.
We long for good. It is what we are made for, because God is good, and we are made in His image. We know that God is good because the natural order shows us that He is good, and the Scripture tells us that He is good. What He creates is good, and it pleases Him because it is good. “How do you define good?” is a stupid question. We instinctively know. We shouldn’t have to ask, unless we are just intentionally being antagonistic. Chocolate cake taste “good”. Chocolate cake made with vinegar tastes bad (I would imagine, I have never actually tried it.) That is a silly example.
In the beginning chapter of the Bible, we find a God who is good. What He creates is good and it pleases Him. God brings life. Evil brings chaos, destruction and death. This seems simple enough, and it corresponds to what we witness in reality.
God has personhood. God is a person, unlike us, an Infinite person. This may be hard for us to comprehend, because we are finite beings, created by the Infinite. God has promised us eternal life, based on His terms, but He has not promised us Infinity. Our eternal life is dependent on Him, and His terms. God is the original, and originating person.
As a person, like any person, God’s desire is not to exist in an isolated vacuum. God, in His triune nature, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, lives in relationship. The essence of His being is a relationship. Again, as finite beings, this is hard for us to comprehend. It is, nevertheless, what Scripture reveals to us about God. Real personhood is always relational. Life’s joys are always better shared. If you are an artist, a musician, a writer, a chef, whatever, you desire for your work to be shared with others. Creation is relational.
All of this must be understood through faith. Some people will say they have no faith. That is simply not true. Everyone has faith (belief) in someone or something. Faith is trust in the person or thing you depend on. You have faith that your alarm is going to go off in the morning so you will not be late for work. You don’t drink coffee all night and try to stay up because you’re worried that it is not going to work, (unless you are truly neurotic.) I have faith in my wife. She is trustworthy and true. I do not worry about her running off to be with some other man every time I drive off! As much as I love and trust my wife, she is not God. She can’t save my eternal soul. I ultimately trust God, because He holds my very life in His hands. Since we all have faith or trust in something, why not choose to have faith in God? What is the better alternative?
Many people who choose to deny the existence of God will haphazardly say they “trust” science. The funny thing is, a lot of people who mouth these words do not even know what real science is, they just say nice sounding words. They want to sound intellectual, because they think belief in God somehow makes them intellectually inferior. They view people that believe in and trust God as ignorant. The ironic thing about this is, in having this opinion, they show their own ignorance. Some of the most brilliant people are, or were Christians, with deep faith in God. We hear a lot in our current age from lying political leaders who profess to “follow the science” who are not following science at all. They are just mouthing off nonsense that they do not even understand to promote a particular narrative to justify their totalitarian actions to control the masses.
Real science is beneficial and through it we can discover many amazing things. But a blind faith (belief) in what is called science is foolish. The idea of science has been perverted, politicized and ideologically abused to the point of absurdity. Some of what is called science in our modern jargon is merely science sounding rhetoric, nonsense and lies.
God’s purpose for creating mankind and the celestial beings is relationship. God’s nature is love, and He desires to be loved. Anyone who loves desires love. God created mankind with a free-will. We desire freedom. Freedom means the ability to choose. There is no such thing as coerced (forced) love. Love is not a feeling or emotion, although it can contain feelings and emotions. Love is a choice. That is why marriage is a commitment. Parenting is a commitment. This kind of love certainly involves both good and bad emotions, but the emotions are not love. The choice is love, whatever the outcome.
God desires for us to choose to love Him, and that involves obedience to Him. That is why He gives us free-will. The choice to love doesn’t mean anything, and, in reality is no choice at all, UNLESS the choice to NOT love is also an option.
Probably everyone, especially during the teen-age years, has had the experience of “falling in love”. This experience is very emotionally and psychologically powerful. A young boy or girl will get obsessed over someone of the opposite sex. That person will be all he can think about. I know I experienced this several times as a teen-age boy. The one who is “in love” will create a story in his own mind about what life would be like with that beautiful, perfect doll! Often the one who is being obsessed over will feel absolutely nothing for the one doing the obsessing or not even be aware of the obsession. It is a mental fairy tale. The one who is in love may create a version of the one over whom he is obsessing that is not an accurate portrayal of what that person is really like at all. When this is the case, the one who is “in love” doesn’t really love the actual person, he loves the version of her that he has created in his mind. He thinks that fantasy version of her can satisfy all the yearnings of his heart. He has turned his infatuation into an idol.
So, what does this have to do with the things I have been discussing? We foolishly think that another person can fulfill the yearning in our hearts that can only be filled by God. We were created to find our ultimate fulfillment in God, not another person. When we expect fulfillment from another person, we are expecting something from them that they will never be able to fulfill. We are setting our relationship up for failure. That in no way implies that there is not a great deal of satisfaction and fulfillment from a lifelong commitment to a good mate, which there certainly is, but relationship must be built and maintained over the long haul. That is what the marriage vows are all about, but so many people just give up and quit when they are not getting what they expect.
A strong, solid marriage, based on Biblical principles, is one of the most powerful forces for goodness and stability in out personal lives, and in society. Heterosexual marriage is the only legitimate form of marriage. What is called “marriage” in the gay community is not really marriage. It is a perversion of the God-instituted covenant of marriage.
Children who are brought up by heterosexual, married, God-honoring parents have been given a blessing many children are not afforded, and should be thankful. They will be spared many of the miseries that children from unstable homes endure. If they rebel against the truth and goodness that their parents have modeled for them, they are self-willed, arrogant fools. The scriptures are full of the accounts of godly people who had bad kids, and bad people who had godly kids. This just proves the doctrine of original sin. We are all born with the sin nature and need God for the remedy to that, and it is always an individual choice.
Many people come to “religion” with a false idea about what to expect of God. We create an “idol” god in our minds, just as the teen-age boy creates a fantasy version of that girl in his mind. These people do not take God’s Word as their guide to knowing God. They base their expectations on their own subjective opinions and what other ill-informed people say. They grow frustrated and angry when the real God does not meet their expectations.
One of the false ideas people use to construct their “god” goes something like this: “I am basically a good person. I don’t intentionally do bad things to people, and mostly tell the truth and behave. There are people more evil than me who don’t deserve God’s favor. God should be good to me because I deserve His blessing.” “Good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell.” “Your good should outweigh your bad.”
If you are going to build your understanding of God based on the Bible, which is really the only legitimate starting point, you can’t believe that God always prevents bad things from happening to good people. This is simply not reality, and it is not what is found in the Bible. As a matter of fact, living faith in God based on the Biblical understanding of Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world will, in many ways, make your life more circumstantially difficult at times.
The simple fact of the matter is that bad things and good things can happen to people that put their faith in God, and those who do not. This is reality. Faith in God does not exclude anyone from the possibility of bad things happening to them. The difference is the framework through which you deal with those bad things, and how you allow them to affect your perspective on life. The hope of God allows us to see any bad situation as always being temporary. It will pass, and there is hope on the other side. Without this, everything can only be seen through the lens of despair.
As to the “meaning of life” question, as I said earlier, this is found in the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”. Perhaps this makes a bit more sense now. If you are not familiar with the Catechisms, they are just concise statements of faith in question and answer form.
So, what does it mean to glorify God? To start with, you acknowledge Him as Creator and life giver. It insults the Creator for people to look at the beauty, complexity, order and magnitude of nature and conclude that it is a cosmic accident. What sane person would walk into an art gallery and say the works “just happened”?
To glorify God means to respect Him as the One who gave you your life, and that your life belongs to Him, not you. You seek to obey His commands. He is in charge, not you. He makes the rules, not you. You are not free to do whatever you choose. He is your ultimate judge. This automatically answers the “Who’s in charge?” question.
You acknowledge His goodness and undeserved mercy. You seek His forgiveness when you fail to choose to do what is right. You live with a thankful heart.
You love Him and those He has created (yourself, and every other human being) with your whole heart.
By doing this, you automatically enjoy Him forever, this is not two separate things.
Consider all of this. Learn for yourself, don’t just take my word for it. Read the Word of God and ask Him to help you to understand it. It might be hard at first, but everything that is worthwhile requires hard work and persistence.
Danny's Stump 