My life is something I think about almost constantly.
What am I doing with my life?
What should I be doing for a better life?
What is the meaning of my life?
Why does my life produce inevitable failures?
Where is my life going?
My, my, my, my, my life.
To be told: "that's life" was not enough for me, those words did nothing to adequately quell my anxieties.
What started out as a simple conviction, perhaps even a defense mechanism from within me- to look at Jesus, something I had to remind myself of over and over without fully comprehending the conviction itself-sort of took my bumbling feet in the following direction.
Donald miller was interviewed on relevant q and a where he was asked to explain his reason for a recent blog post regarding his views for leaving his local church.
While I don't agree with everything he said, that's also not the point of this post.
He was asked about "storyline", his project to help people develop their "story" in life, and said it was modeled after the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's logotherapy. Frankl, a holocaust survivor, contended with Sigmund Freud's pleasure principle:
"The instinctual seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain in order to satisfy biological and psychological needs." (Wiki: pleasure principle-psychology)
Anyway, Miller said his project, "storyline", constructively resembled Frankl's rebuttal, logotherapy, to Freud's pleasure principle by basically saying that it was meaning, not pleasure, that drove the human's basic needs, and that pleasure-seeking was more like a last resort for where meaning could not be found. Thus, "Storyline" was a construct built on the 3 statutes for finding meaning in life:
The three different ways:
(1) by creating a work or doing a deed (Miller's translation: having a project to do that involves other people being affected if you don't do it --gets you out of bed)
(2) by experiencing something or encountering someone (Miller: healthy relationships)
(3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering" and that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances". (Miller: a redemptive perspective on trials in life)
I see the biblical pattern, but it's slightly different...
1. "Good works"-Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
2. "Fellowship"- 1 John 1:7
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
3. "Humility/repentance producing life"-
James 4:6
But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Acts 3:19
Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out
Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
This one is where things get a bit more descriptive, or for me the word is complicated. To repent has two parts, just like faith.
Faith is made up of belief and action (James 2:17- So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.)
Humbleness (not proud or arrogant) is the position of a repentant person (one who sees the error of their ways and is filled with remorse and a desire to change- that's the best definition I could sum up for now from what I've read in the bible, the dictionary, and my own experiences).
So for those like myself who have a hard time multitasking, it helps to say that sequentially we repent of sin (our humility), God gives us grace by forgiving us through Jesus who paid for all our sins and is the only way to God (John 14:6- Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.), meanwhile the Holy Spirit helps us change by the renewal of our minds (Ephesians 4:21-24; emphasis on verse 23- and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds), and thus we have: Life's PURPOSE. (Going back to the testing and approving of God's good and perfect will, emphasis on "God's" and "perfect".)
The "testing and approving" part are what I am kind of beginning to see as understanding, or more specifically understanding God via the only holy text we are given, the Holy Bible. If I understand that God is God (which sounds like belief) then I can see, nein! Taste! God's good grace! And my faith increases, and I cry: "I believe!"
However, it seems it is not sequential, for as I cry "I believe", I cry "help my unbelief!"
Here is where I see a narrow sliver, but which is still knotted in several areas-where it is no longer I but Christ who makes me to believe, I stop looking at myself and start looking at Jesus as though He were my contact lenses, and it's as though my mind and the physical body logically tell me I am a sinner by ongoing physical and mental evidence, but there is this very slim glint of light that when peered through is not me, myself, but accessible nonetheless to peer through--the lens for which I see through the eyes of my spirit, the life in Christ imputed (by sheer availability) on me--making me take on the righteousness of Jesus, not by any works but by the availability freely given me when I see it.
It's there one moment and then it's not. This sliver of glorious hope. But it is there. And faith, given by hearing the word of Christ (having the Word of God in you constantly resounding like a bell), seems to turn these glimpses into longer visions. But even if they remain glimpses more often than they do visions, they are enough to see and taste the goodness and mercy of God and what He has available to us who look at His righteousness rather than our own! The hope of eternity in Christ Jesus.
So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. (Romans 9:16 ESV)
You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? (I used to have this faulty theology)
What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness (their own) have attained it (God's righteousness), that is, a righteousness that is (available) by faith; -Romans 9:19-21, 30 ESV-- (parentheses are by me and could be wrong so please read with prayer and your own seeking of God in scripture.)
but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law (attaining righteousness). Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone (ignoring truth), as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” (Romans 9:31-33 ESV)
For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. (Romans 10:3-4 ESV)
***this was confusing until I read the YLT98 translation:
Brethren, the pleasure indeed of my heart, and my supplication that [is] to God for Israel, is--for salvation; for I bear them testimony that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge, for not knowing the righteousness of God, and their own righteousness seeking to establish, to the righteousness of God they did not submit. (Romans 10:1-3 YLT98)
So Paul is saying that the reason the Israelites had such a hard time believing in God/attaining righteousness was because they were trying to establish their own righteousness rather than acknowledging the impossibility of this, albeit given the law, which was given to show the righteousness of God, His perfection--which is impossible to attain as any man who has tried to keep the law of God can attest to, but made possible only in Christ, the "stumbling stone" and "rock of offense" to the Jews. It means righteousness can be attained only when we believe in faith that Christ died for our sins, making a way for us through Himself as in literally we are given the option of denying ourselves (spiritually killing our identity to take on the identity of perfection through Christ. We cannot then be perfect if we are not born again into Christ, and seeing as He sees, doing as He wills, and understanding that we are no longer ourselves responsible for righteousness! We are better than ourselves in the world! We are perfect in Christ, the perfect lamb of God.
Oh man. I am getting a little dizzy.
Let me try to wrap this up.
There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. (Ephesians 4:4-7 ESV)
Your call, your purpose, the meaning of life is grasping desperately onto the belief that Jesus is Lord because when you do you get clothed in God, you get perfection, and the gospel, like a beautiful bell, rings true again and again resounding what God said to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9: But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”
And Paul writes to us:
"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me."
Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
-1 Corinthians 11:1
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**sidenote- Sigmund Freud later revised his pleasure principle with "Beyond the pleasure principle". Where first pleasure-seeking was the ultimate basic need, Freud's continuing studies showed man's innate drive(s) to destructive behavior, penned as the "death drive". Of course there is an extensive amount of research to understanding this Freudian conclusion, but to those that have a basic understanding of sin and holiness it is the biblical representation of our need for Jesus. We have a "basic need" in life, according to Frankl that's "meaning" and according to Freud that's "pleasure--opposed by our natural inclination toward destruction". However, the bible addresses all 3 of those things--meaning, pleasure, and death-- resulting in our sole salvation. Pun intended.
The answer is and always will be: JESUS.
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