The Most Important Thing in Life

"The most important thing in life is knowing God better." So said theologian and author Dr. Selwyn Hughes in his daily devotional booklet "Every Day with Jesus:The Character of God." Dr. Hughes, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at his home in Farnham, England, does more than make the statement. He explains why it is true. "If God is not our primary focus, then everything else will soon get out of focus."

Does his response sound churchey? Something you'd expect a devotional writer to say? But wait! He gets to the heart of the issue in his booklet's Introduction. "When given permission to dominate our thoughts, our personal matters become impossible to satisfy. We could speak of them all day long and never tire of their finest details." We become man-centered and not God-centered.

Yet when you read the Bible, the first words are "In the beginning God ... " The Bible is HIStory. It's about God seeking man, not man seeking God. It's message is not how to get to God but how God came to us! When we put ourselves first and God second, we become entrenched in our own self-absorbed, self-referenced lifestyle. And we lose focus.

Today I was on an airplane. I saw the tiny dots on planet Earth that we call houses, inhabited by even smaller people. Above it all, I witnessed their scurrying about in miniscule cars like rats in a maze of interstates and highways. How could any of them think the world revolved around them, yet the moment I landed, I lost my heavenly perspective. Life once again was all about me. I lost focus.

Surely, God watches every sparrow fall and counts the number of our hairs. We are not unimportant, but we are not all-important. If we are to know God, we must study His character. I tried to strike this theme in my book, Living Between the Ditches: When God Doesn't Make Sense. We can know God. God is mystery. By embracing both truths, we keep from living in the ditches of a self-focused life.

Where Am I Going When I Die?

In the past few blogs, we've dealt with three of the major worldview questions: Where did I come from? What went wrong with the world? and Why am I here? The fourth question, Where am I going when I die? has poignant personal implications. This past weekend I watched the funeral of Elizabeth Edwards, who was buried next to her 16-year-old son, whom she had looked forward to seeing again in heaven. This weekend two friends of mine lost weeks-old babies. Most of us have someone who has gone before us with whom we want to reconnect in that life beyond our earthly dimension.

I had a vivid dream of heaven once. In fact, it was so vivid I swore it would change the way I lived my life, witnessed to others of God's love, and related to Him. And yet, when I hear of premature or untimely deaths, I forget the ecstasy of unconditional love in heaven and mourn with those who've experienced loss.

Layton Brooks was haunted by the specter of death. His father's untimely death had put the first chink in his relationship with God. Now the prospect of losing his mother gave him another stone to throw at his lop-sided view of a God who protects us from bad experiences. Losing Brianne would send him completely over the edge, lost in the morass faced by everyone who expects only good from God, never the bad. (See Job 2:10.)

If a person lives "right," Layton had concluded, God would come through for you. All of the points he'd earned through church services, Sunday School classes, and youth camps should count for something when God tallied the scorecard. "Stay out of trouble, and you'll be okay. Eat right, Exercise, floss. Be nice to people; they'll return the favor. That was the plan. When a person's faith is in a plan, it had better be a pretty good one because "the best laid plans of mice and men' ... well, they don't always work. Layton obviously placed faith in a plan that didn't work." (p. 92)

God's plan was to plant within us a longing for heaven—a deep knowing that this earth can't be all there is to life. The delights we experience here are brief foretastes of eternal delights that will fill all the voids, erase the pain, and heal the wounds of earth-bound living.

This life, while it has meaning and purpose, is preparation for life to come in heaven serving God without human limitations and completely free to worship Him in all His majesty and glory. PTL!

View from the Top

What do we really know about God? Presupposing, of course, that there is a God. We've really only got two choices: God exists. There is no God. A third stance, called agnosticism, tries to take a middle, noncommittal approach. On a recent trip to Germany, a tour guide answered my question, "Do you believe in God?" by saying, "God. I have no opinion." Since an individual's world view begins and ends with his or her answer to the God question, the third option is a cop-out. The way we live and think about life tells any objective bystander whether or not we believe in God.

For example, what is your moral code? Where does it come from? Do you desire justice? Why? What makes you think you should get justice? Is there a Judgment Day someday? If not, who judges right from wrong? Are there absolutes? Is there such a thing as sin? Sin against whom? The questions are endless, but your answers reveal what you believe about God.

I'll save my arguments against atheism and agnosticism for another post. Then, of course, we've still got to answer "whose God?" Which God or gods is the real deal? My conclusion, based on much study--including science--and a lot of living, is that the only reliable God is the God of the Bible. And we know a lot about Him.

"God created the heavens and the earth." So the Bible begins. That means God existed before our universes in a timeless place beyond them. Only then could He create (and the Big Bang theory supports a beginning of the universe). The verb form used in the original language, "to create," never is used with a human subject. The first chapter of the first book of the Bible affirms human life was created "in God's image" separate and apart from the plant or animal kingdoms. And God is male and female.

God is also plural. "Let us make man in our image." The entirety of the Bible reveals God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All were involved in creation, although the first chapter of John's gospel highlights Jesus' role in creation.

God as instigator of life must have had a reason for doing so. He wanted relationship with us modeled after the relationship He shared with His Son and Spirit. A solitary God without other Persons wouldn't be capable of demonstrating love. He would merely stand above us as Judge. But God is love (read 1 John). How do we know? Because He sent His Son to die for our sins in order that our relationship, broken by sin, might be restored and we might someday live with Him forever.

The view from the top? He wants a relationship with you!

What Went Wrong With the World?

In our last post, we mentioned several worldview questions that help us discover what we really believe. For example, the question, "Why am I here?" plays a key role in the marriage of Amy and Layton from my book, Living Between the Ditches: When God Makes No Sense. How Layton answers that question has a lot to do with whether or not God is knowable—someone with whom you can have a personal relationship—or whether God is far away, having distanced Himself from this planet long ago.

Layton also wrestles with a second worldview question: What went wrong with the world? And something is wrong here on earth or five major religions and countless other sects, cults, and traditions wouldn't all be telling us what to do about what's wrong!

As Layton suffers one setback after another, he looks for a source for all his troubles. Not so unusually, he finds a perfect scapegoat: God Himself! Layton concludes that God took from Him all that is valuable—his wife, his mom and dad, and now possibly his child. Lots of people blame God for their misfortunes. Layton is in good company. If God were truly on His throne, if He were in charge of the universe, and especially if He cared anything about me, He would have ... (fill in the blank).

Where did we get the idea that God owes us? Jeremiah compares this line of thinking with the pot telling the potter how to shape it. Job asked, "Shall we accept only good from God and not trouble?" Instead of asking for favors, Jesus said, "I do only what my Father tells me." Here was God's Son, without a permanent home and one tunic to His name, teaching people how to be happy (blessed) and telling them how much His Father loved Him! Obviously, Jesus' life doesn't support the contention that God owes us health, wealth, human companionship (His friends deserted Him), or long life.

So what is God's role, then, if not to please us? If God chose to reveal Himself to us (God seeking man rather than man seeking God), then God must have had something to tell us. Next post we'll talk about God's view of human life. Is life all about us or is it possibly all about Him?

Why Am I Here?

Layton Brooks, the main character in Living Between the Ditches: When God Makes No Sense, wrestles with one of the main worldview questions, Why am I here? You may be familiar with these worldview questions such as
1. Where did I come from?
2. Why am I here?
3. What went wrong with the world?
4. Where am I going when I die?

In Layton's pre-divorced world, his answer to question #2 was getting ahead in his career and thus providing for his family. He would have told you that his family came first; as events unfold, the reader and Layton are forced to conclude that his life was more about career than family. Amy didn't feel she and Brianne were in first place—quite the opposite. Her feelings of neglect, and later abandonment, played a huge role in the break-up of their relationship.

However, both Layton and Amy were off track. Putting each other first wouldn't have solved their personal problems. Finding meaning in life is only partially related to finding someone to share life with. Meaning for life derives from a more basic and instinctual need than human companionship.

In order to put their relationship back together, Layton and Amy first have to put God in first place. A meaningful married life starts with God at the apex of the triangle. As each spouse inches closer to God from the other two sides of the triangle, they grow closer to each other as well. One of the pair climbing toward God while the other hangs back doesn't produce closeness. This triangle looks more like a window blind pulled up on one side but not the other—out of kilter, lop-sided, angled.

Whether married or single, empty-nested or childless, or having a quiver full of children—our relationship status isn't the predictor of happiness or meaning. Layton had to deal with the paradoxes we all face: is God an essential component of life, unnecessary, or an add-on; is He knowable or unknowable; can we make sense of Him?

Read the book to see how Layton deals with these questions and what conclusions he reaches. Meanwhile, keep living between the ditches!

On Fish and Forgiveness

I have a book signing Friday night in a local mall bookstore. Copies of Living Between the Ditches: When God Makes No Sense will be stacked neatly on a table. I hope it goes better than my first signing (see “Signatures and Statues” from the June, 2009, archives). Like most authors on these occasions, I will smile when browsers look at me as though I were a fish in an aquarium and then walk away.

“Wait,” I will want to yell after them. “Do you know I spent three years of my life writing this book? Do you know how many edits each chapter went through? I’ve poured my life into this paperback you’ve so casually dismissed! Come back here!”

Disrespect. Don’t you just hate it when something you value gets “dissed?” We all have hot buttons that easily get pushed, whether it’s about politics, religion, vocations (Did you hear the one about the only lawyer in heaven …), race or ethnicity—the list goes on. There’s a saying, “The older you get, the fewer people you have to respect.”

Some of our touchiness can be blamed simply on pride. We hate to appear fallible or clumsy or uninformed. Layton, the main character in my book, doesn’t want to admit that his assumptions about his ex-wife might be flawed. Amy, for her part, can’t seem to find a way to ask for forgiveness.

Asking for forgiveness takes a certain amount of humility. But so does accepting someone’s apology. We must give up the right to hurt feelings, holding the matter over his or her head, using it for ammunition in future conflicts, or feeling sorry for ourselves. Layton is so accustomed to all of these devices and defenses, he hardly knows what he would do without them.

What about you? Do you easily forgive a sincere apology? Read about what it took to bring Layton to that point. And if you’re looking for my book, catch me in the mall. I’ll be the purple fish with yellow stripes smiling back at you.

Keep living between the ditches!

Living Between—NOT! Part 2

In part 1 of this post I explained that living between the ditches isn't some imaginary balance between the two paradoxes. Such a view would be luke-warm—and you know how God likes that (Rev. 3:16). We must embrace God as both knowable and mysterious. (If you're confused by that, read the book!)

A second misconception would be a middle-of-the road kind of get-along, go-along personality. But no! Living between the ditches is full of passion. Listen for the warmth and emotion in the tone of someone who has spent a great deal of time in God's presence. Observe the facial expressions of those lost in the wonder of creation. These are people for whom even the mention of God lights their faces.

Many of us who enjoy driving to work with Christian radios booming find ourselves singing—or at least humming—the great melodies of praise that are the bedrock of their business. "You are holy, God of wonder and majesty." Who could listen to that song with a humdrum ho-hum-ness? Praise songs are almost impossible to hear without moving some body part. They evoke passion.

Approach God with a holy awe and He'll wholly amaze you!