Looking For Purpose in Life: Unity

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We've started to look at the idea of where we can find purpose in life and clearly one area we find purpose is love.  A second area where we find purpose is unity.

In the modern (perhaps post-modern) world, we have so many variegated aspects of our lives.  Many of us are spouses, parents, employees, friends, children, not to mention our hobbies - we are hikers, readers, joggers, knitters, and so forth.  Within our home lives we have to keep the house clean, pay the bills, cook meals, take care of the pets, fix the broken sink...I'm sure you get the idea.  The issue that arises for many of us is how we find purpose in 1.) the huge variety of activities in which we find ourselves involved, but also 2.) activities that seem necessary but also rather mundane sometimes.  We live in a world that tells us we are defined by what we do, but when I do so much, I start to wonder, "Who am I really?"  

I believe one of our desires in life is to find a unity that ties together all the diverse aspects of life.  Taking Christ as the model for our lives, we see that giving ourselves completely to God is His desire, and learning from the Cross we see that giving ourselves in this way means God becoming the savior of our souls and the one who directs our life.  It seems that with all the Jesus did in His life, He always came back to His known purpose which was, grandly speaking, to do the will of the Father.  The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Rome, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship."  Paul looks to Christ, sees all that He has given to us, and calls us to give all we have back to God, and he calls this our true and proper worship.

Worship is the means to unity in our lives.  Worship ties together all the aspects of what it means to be human.  The kind of driver I am should show that I understand the sacrifice of Christ and that I am living all of my life in response to Him.  The way I treat not only my family but strangers at the check-out counter should demonstrate that am living my life in response to God's goodness and grace toward me.  You see worship is a term that is often reserved for singing at our religious gatherings on Sunday, but it is so much more.

Worship  is living all of life in response to God's grace and holiness.  

Worship allows us to have unity in our lives because no matter what we are doing, it all falls under the umbrella of living life for God and in response to His grace and holiness.

Part of what it means to be human is to have various roles and diverse activities in life, and we find purpose in all of it as we unite it under the umbrella of worship.  

- tC   

How God Defines Love

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If we are created to first know the love of God and then this love leads us to a deeper understanding of what true love is and can be, we will likely then ask, "Well then how does God define love?"  Scripturally, we see that there are 4 different definitions of love in the Greek.  These words were, unfortunately, all translated in the modern English word "love", but when we look at the Greek, we see how vastly different these words truly are.  C.S. Lewis offers us a full treatment of this topic in his book The Four Loves, but as a quick summary here they are:

Storge - affection love, most often expressed in family; this is love connected to relationships that mostly happen by chance.

Phileo - friendship love, most often connected to a bond because of a shared interest.

Eros - this love is described by Lewis as an emotional love that is connected to the idea of 'being in love'; some people also understand this love as speaking about sexual desire (we see the word 'erotic' rooted in eros).

Agape - unconditional love; this is the love God shows to humanity.

While God offers us four different definitions of love, agape love is the love He offers us and the love He calls His people to live out.  The word charity is often used to describe this love and while today we think of charity as giving to those in need, it was originally understood as care, love, and compassion for a fellow human being, perhaps best summarizes as 'love in action'.  So we see that God's love for us is unconditional and is active.  The unconditional aspect of God's love is the kind of love that we never fully experience in a human-to-human relationship.  All relationships have a reciprocity in the love given and received (though there are different levels of expectation).

The other reality we must grasp is that we cannot love with agape love without God's help.  We can try, we can will ourselves into the actions that appear to be agape love, but aside from the grace of God working in our lives, agape love as a natural outflow of our life is impossible.

God offers to us a love that reshapes how to can love others.  When one knows him or herself to be fully loved in an unchangeable and unconditional way, there comes a freedom to truly love others.  When we search for purpose in life, we can find part of that purpose in agape love - being loved by God with this love and then offering it to others brings purpose.

- tC

Looking for Purpose in Life: Love

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One of the means for us finding purpose in life is connected to love.  I've heard it said that love is the ultimate value, it's the greatest common "good" upon which most of the world can agree.  Throughout history, the artist has been the one to advocate for this, and certainly the romantic poets brought to the forefront the idea that when all else in life is unclear, love is something to which we can cling.  More recently (a few decades back) Nat King Cole sang in his song "Nature Boy" that "...the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and to be loved in return."  Our existence confirms this on both an emotional and physical level.  We've all heard the annecdotes about a spouse who has been married and then lost that partner, resulting in a deep depression and even a change in the personality of the spouse who is left living.  And the research confirm that while it is hard to nail down what the term love means as far as social science is concerned, babies who are ignored, left untouched and more-or-less not cared for in a loving fashion are severely stunted in their growth both physically and mentally.

So where does this leave us?  We know that love is certainly connected to our purpose in some fashion.  I would offer that until we understand the love given to us from God and understand how His love actually plays out, we will search endlessly desiring to define and find love but not knowing it when our eyes finally locate it.  We must first grasp God's love for us, His definition of love, and then we can learn to love well.

God's love for us is often described in terms of John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.  While the notion of God giving His only Son to die for the sins of sinful and often ungrateful human race is enough to wrestle with for all eternity, God does more.  He shows us that the transformation He allows to occur in our lives is all rooted in this love.  When we are called to change or to use the theoligical term - to be 'sanctified' - God does not just say, "Try harder."  His call is to reflect on this love - His love shown to us through Christ - and by responding to that love, we will change.  We see this clearly in Paul's writing to the church in Corinth when he wants to encourage generosity.  He does not tell them to try harder, to learn to live on less because he realizes that at the heart of this needed change is a lack of understanding of how much was given by God for them.  In 2 Corinthians 8:8-9 Paul writes, "I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich."

God's love is so all encompassing, so divine, that it gives us new life and also gives us the focus and direction to love as He loved. 

Next, we will look at God's definition of love.

- tC

Looking For Something More

We've been talking about the idea of purpose - why are we here?  What's it really all about?  And why, when we know deep inside that we were meant for more than just getting by, do so many end up just settling in life?

Again, my friends from Switchfoot challenge us to think about what it means to burn out bright.



Next, we talk about one of our main purposes in life - learning to love well.
- tC

Clarity Through Pain

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If money has the ability to stupify us, to blind us from thinking about deeper more profound and lasting truths, pain has the opposite impact.  Pain has the ability to clarify our deepest values.  While few of us would actively choose to pursure a pain-inducing situation, most of us could probably agree that in hindsight, pain helps us to push the frivilous to the side.  Why is this?

First, I'd offer than pain is a powerful reminder of our frailty and our ultimate end.  I can recall years ago when I was visiting friends in Maine and I had what seemed like intense stomach cramps.  Eventually they passed and I thought that I was out of the woods.  A few months later, the pain came back and after a visit to the hostpital emergency room, the doctors discovered that I had an infected gall bladder.  While I would never estimate what it's like to give birth, some women have said that for men it's the closest experience to labor and delivery.  In that brief (a few days) of intense pain, I was reminded about how frail the human body is, and I was reminded that even when the doctors took out my gall bladder, one day my body would fail.  Pain has that unique ability to remind us that from the moment of our birth, we are all terminal.

Secondly, pain clarifies for us what we want our legacy to be.  When we think about the things in which we invest our time from day to day, we can be so consumed in producing and checking of items from our lists that we miss an opportunity to not just ask "Is it done" but instead "Should I even spend time doing this?"    In pain, we are often challenged to think about how we are using our time, talents, and treasure.

Thirdly, I find that pain has the ability to bring about a thankful heart.  While not always the case, pain allows us to reflect on how much we have or are blessed with.  Just yesterday after shoveling the driveway for the third time in less than a week, my knee was aching.  At first I was slightly concerned that I had done something serious to it, but even as I felt my body communicating to me "rest", I was thankful that I had the ability to shovel, to walk, to live such a normal and pain-free life for the vast majority of my waking hours.  Pain, if we let it, allows us to be thanksful.

Lastly, pain reminds us to Whom we belong.  On this very day, I sat through a funeral of a co-worker's daughter.  Not even 30, she died of complications from cystic fibrosis, but it was alone in a hospital room at sixteen that she opened up a Bible and read of God's love for her and how she was truly His.  Pain presses us toward the things that matter in this life, the things that will last beyond this life, and to the One who from Whom all of life flows.

As we think about the topic of life and deeper meaning, we will next look at what it is that gives life coherent meaning.

- tC

The Challenge of Money

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One of the challenges we face in the world today is our access to money, and for many, it is our access to a great deal of it.  I was just speaking with someone the other day who expressed his lack of need for much religion at all because he felt like he really had all that he needed.  This is a major challenge to us finding a deeper purpose in life and a challenge to believing that this place is not truly our home.

The danger of money is that it titillates.  When we have money, we have the ability to always look into or purchase the latest novelty, and thus we can distract ourselves from the deeper questions of life.  As I reflect back on my travels around the U.S., I'm struck by the relationship I've seen between those who are in great need financially and their understanding and thinking about the things of God.  While not a 1:1 correlation, my experience is that those who have little have little to be distracted with and in turn, they think of eternal and philosophical things more often.  Money gives us the ability to self-blind - we surround ourselves with so many toys that we can't see out to look at the real world.

Another danger for those of us who lives in more affluent countries or cultures is that money can give us the feeling of control.  When we have the resources, we can begin to believe that all we have to do when a crisis strikes is to spend.  A car breaks down - we purchase a new one.  A bill for college comes in - we send a check off in the mail.  But the danger of this money-shield (if you will) is the false sense of security it brings.  We are constantly in need of God's grace.  If you doubt this, face a life-threatening disease and see how little money can do for you.  Yes, having means is certainly correlated with better health care, but there is a point at which money can't stop a devastating cancer.

The challenge of money is that it can enrapture us with what it offers and then, on the last day of our lives, we look around to see that we've been playing with toys instead of considering why we are even here in the first place.  Secondly, money can make us feel like we don't need God, like we can make it on our own when in reality, we should acknowledge the common grace shed upon us all. 

In our next post, we will consider how pain gives us clarity on our purpose and home.

- tC

First World, Other World

With Christmas just recently past, I can't help but reflect on the consumerism that's really a central feature of what it means to be American.  I sometimes wonder about what it means to be a "third world" country, versus what it means to be in the United States, a (if not the) first world country.  Even as some read this, I know the reaction already - "Don't you appreciate all that America has to offer, all the freedoms you are given?"  Yes I do, but what I want to do is challenge is all to think about purpose and what our true home is.  Over the next several posts, we will look at what it means to live for something bigger than ourselves, something bigger than the American dream even.  To do so, let's start by watching this video from Switchfoot called "Company Car".  As noted in the song - what is it about being young that gives us the freedom to dream about something more than just "making it", and why do we choose to lose that dream?



-tC