Living your life according to design!
Part 7: The Problem Experienced and Resolved
In: Living your life according to design! Parts 1-6: The Problem defined and What is God like?, of which you can read Part 1 here:
I discussed that God does what he does because he is who he is. His very nature predetermines his behaviour. Because he is Creator, Love, Husband, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and Truth, he consistently behaves in a manner that befits those attributes. I mentioned that because we were originally created in his image, we too have been designed to have the same characteristics and are meant to behave like him, but unfortunately we have by and large failed to do this.
In this blog, I aim to discuss the reasons and consequences behind our failure to live according to God’s designed purpose for us. I would like to reveal how our failure to to live according to God’s design has impacted us; to show why there is so much pain and suffering and injustice in the world.
I have been arguing that we have been created by God to be exclusively for him. Just as we create things to meet specific needs in our lives, which function to fulfil their designed purpose, so in the same way he created us. We ought to belong to him and to have a relationship with him; to lovingly relate to him; to worship or serve him — only him! That is the reason why we were created.
In fact, as contingent relational beings, as I have discussed, the goal of our loving service is for his pleasure and for his glory. Our attitude ought to be like that which Ornan had toward his king and just like what king David said. It ought to cost us something; it ought to be sacrificial in nature, for it to be true God honouring worship/service:
Ornan said to David, “Take it for yourself; and let my lord the king do what is good in his sight. See, I will give the oxen for burnt offerings and the threshing sledges for wood and the wheat for the grain offering; I will give it all.” But King David said to Ornan, “No, but I will surely buy it for the full price; for I will not take what is yours for the LORD, or offer a burnt offering which costs me nothing” (1 Chronicles 21:23–24).
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship (Romans 12:1).
When we purposefully choose to live our lives in this way, we are living according to God’s design for us. I have argued that we are only truly living our lives to the full when we are lovingly relating to God first and then to other people; when we are lovingly serving God by serving others.
However, as I have already mentioned, we fail to do this. Very often our most philanthropic acts of charity are done with self-serving or self-exalting underlying motivations. We very often do it to feel good about ourselves or worse than that, in order to make our own name great, just like it was with the people of Babel. In other words, we want to look good in the eyes of others. We want others to say, “Wow!”, so that we can feel good about ourselves from the praise and recognition or attention or honour we receive:
“Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. 2 It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. 4 They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and LET US MAKE FOR OURSELVES A NAME…” (Genesis 11:1–4a — EMPHASIS MINE).
The point which I am wishing to make is this. God gave us a will and we can freely choose whether we will serve him or not for his own glory and not for anything we can gain out of it:
“Now, therefore, fear the Lord ( Or reverence)and serve Him in sincerity and truth ( Or faithfulness); and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River ( I.e. Euphrates) and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:14–15).
You see, we were created to serve, and so we will serve. The question is whom will we choose to serve? Are we going to be moved to serve God or are we going to be moved to be self-serving?
Unfortunately, like ancient Israel, we have all notoriously failed to do what Joshua was exhorting his people to do. We have ended up unwittingly serving some other god instead of our Creator, the one and only true God, and as a consequence, have become broken, damaged vessels. I will discuss this further later. But for now I will say that it has happened because the “master” who we unwittingly choose to serve, deceived us into serving him by tempting us to be self-serving. He does not have our best interests to heart; he does not use us according to God’s design and purpose. We were designed to serve God by serving others.
In fact, I contend, this master, the devil, wants to change God’s design and purpose that God had placed in us at the beginning and implement his own. His ways are destructive and self-serving and thereby contrarily antithetical to God’s loving and self-sacrificial ways.
What does the devil do?
The devil tried to tempt Jesus to become self-serving, promising to give him power and glory if he only bowed down and worship him instead of God. He wanted to receive that which is rightfully God’s alone. We ought to always respond to temptations just like Jesus did:
And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 And the devil said to Him, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. 7 Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.” 8 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only’” (Luke 4:5–8).
However, we have all to some degree or another failed to do what Jesus did there. Many of us, like for example those of us in the entertainment industry, have been and are likewise tempted by the devil to become rich, famous and powerful because we succumb to his empty lies and deceptions:
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? (Matthew 16:26a)
Should we believe what we are told about these secret societies? Or are they merely conspiracy theories being bantered around? However, whether or not we accept what we are told is neither here or there, for the truth that I wish to communicate is that because we fail to live up to God’s design for us, we become corrupted as a consequence. We become broken, damaged people because of the lies and deceptions we believe and pattern our lives after.
What the devil wants to do is to try to at the very least discourage us from desiring to pursue anything that will be according to God’s designed will, which is constructively positive and life giving for others, if he can’t so move us to do the opposite instead. If he can’t keep us from behaving according to God’s design then he will try to move us to do “the right thing”, but to do it for the wrong reason — i.e. with a self-serving motivation. By doing this, we do not end up giving glory to God.
Because we succumb to these temptations, we end up, though unknowingly, desiring to serve him instead. We end up serving someone despicable and evil instead of our loving Creator.
His aim, by lying to us, is to try to steal from God the glory due to him, by stealing from us all meaning in life, but that is not all he wants to do. Because of our many failures and/or disappointments that we experience, his goal is to completely kill our hopes and dreams that we will be able to live our lives to the full, making us feel that there is no way out of our self-caused negative predicaments that we instead fell into or which were caused by others and ultimately he will want to destroy our very lives.
Jesus said the following about him:
You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)
The thief comes only to steal, and kill and destroy; I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly. (John 10:10)
What do we experience?
When we are born, we are unaware of what is going on. We are unaware of what is planned for us by God or the devil. We are born into this world not knowing anything about God. Our parents didn’t either, so, like I have said earlier, unless someone cared enough to tell us about God and his ways, we would continue to remain ignorant and cut off from God, the source of all life.
Moreover, because this has been the case for many generations, the accrued effect of living apart from God will have increasingly negative repercussions on the well being of each ensuing generation. The cause being that damaged people, who hurt, end up hurting people even more, with the end result being that each ensuing generation is worse off than the preceding, unless the cycle is broken by learning what ought to be done and having the ability to do it, whilst rejecting what ought not to be done. The problem is this:
There is a way that seems right to a person, but eventually it ends in death. Even while laughing a heart can ache, and joy can end in grief. (Proverbs 14:12–13)
We are all born in a society where the prevailing mindset is naturalistic. A naturalistic mindset espouses to a world view which does not acknowledge God as being tangibly relevant, if he is even at all real. The world view states that people who believe in God are for all intents and purposes ignorantly deluded.
This mindset is so pervasive throughout the society in which we live in, due to the memes that we are bombarded with, which come from minds that have been darkened by sin’s deceitfulness and the hardness of our hearts(Ephesians 4:18; Romans 1:21), which comes about because we tend to believe the devil’s lies, who likewise doesn’t exist in such a world view.
I contend that this is the reason why many of us who manage to become successful and wealthy, like our so-called celebrities, still nevertheless feel empty inside and as a consequence of feeling extremely depressed, sometimes commit suicide:
They do this because like King Solomon, who was the richest person of his time, a man renowned for his wisdom, who would in our modern society be given a slot on TED Talks and would be regarded as a celebrity, nevertheless came to these conclusions:
I thought to myself, “I have become much wiser than any of my predecessors who ruled over Jerusalem; I have acquired much wisdom and knowledge." So I decided to discern the benefit of wisdom and knowledge over foolish behaviour and ideas; however, I concluded that even this endeavour is like trying to chase the wind! For with great wisdom comes great frustration; whoever increases his knowledge merely increases his heartache. I thought to myself, “Come now, I will try self-indulgent pleasure to see if it is worthwhile.” But I found that it also is futile. I said of partying, “It is folly,” and of self-indulgent pleasure, “It accomplishes nothing!” (Ecclesiastes 1:16–18; 2:1–2)
Why did he come to these conclusions? Because having been tempted, he tried to live his life apart from God, but found it wanting. Wisdom can be acquired by living a life filled with wrong decisions and learning the hard way from them or by living in close proximity with God. He started off on the right foot:
7 That night God appeared to Solomon and said to him, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
8 Solomon answered God, “You have shown great kindness to David my father and have made me king in his place. 9 Now, Lord God, let your promise to my father David be confirmed, for you have made me king over a people who are as numerous as the dust of the earth. 10 Give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
11 God said to Solomon, “Since this is your heart’s desire and you have not asked for wealth, possessions or honour, nor for the death of your enemies, and since you have not asked for a long life but for wisdom and knowledge to govern my people over whom I have made you king,12 therefore wisdom and knowledge will be given you. And I will also give you wealth, possessions and honour, such as no king who was before you ever had and none after you will have.” (2 Chronicles 1:7–12)
However, he did not manage to consistently maintain his relationship with God. He made a whole plethora of unwise alliances, marrying women who did not believe in God, who ended up being a snare to him, enticing him to become idolatrous:
Having done that, his concluding exhortation in the book of Ecclesiastes was this:
Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, “I have no delight in them.”… For man goes to his eternal home while mourners go about in the street. 6 Remember Him before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; 7 then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. 8 “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “all is vanity!” (Ecclesiastes 12:1; 5b-8)
What we learn from Solomon is that we can start up going the right way, but if we are not careful, the devil can put a snare in our paths to trip us up. We can, therefore, never disregard the plain instructions of Scripture. They are there for our own good.
We disregard God’s moral laws or spiritual laws to our peril, just as we disregard the physical laws, that God established for scientists to discover, to our peril.
Let me remind you that as his image-bearers, we are living souls in bodies; we are meant to be spiritual, holy and loving people. The identity crises that many of us have are symptomatic of not having carried out God’s intent for us when he first created the human race. This is because we break God’s moral laws.
It is a symptom derived from not having loved God as we ought to have done and as a by-product of it, it has led to us not being able to love one another in our families and then in our communities as we should. As a consequence of our failure to keep God’s moral law; since we do not live out our lives as holy spiritual people, many of us suffer in our identities and from all kinds of mental disorders and other psychological or emotional problems, something which is particularly high in the homosexual community:
Let me also remind you that God is not an insecure egotist who needs our love or worship. He didn’t create us because he needed anything, for he doesn’t need anything. He is perfect. He is Holy. He created us to lovingly serve him, to worship him because in this way it gets our eyes off of ourselves and our problems and onto him, in whom we ought to trustingly depend. Moreover, worship enables us to to remain humble. It is how we can get to know God who lovingly responds to our worship by drawing near to us by his Spirit.
He created us for the very same reason we ought to have children, though in many cases it happens to not be the case. Love was the motivation behind his creating of us, and so love ought to be our motivation as well for having children, and that the love would be expressed and demonstrated by nurturing heterosexual parents from within the safety of a stable family background, which God ordained to be his design from the very beginning.
The only reason why we are capable of loving is because God himself is love, but, if we do not know his love because we do not or choose not to have a relationship with him, and thereby love him back, then the likelihood of our becoming deficient in our ability to properly love one another in all of our relationships with one another increases as well because we cut ourselves off from the source of the very love that we need: God himself.
You see, our primary reason for existence is to please our creator by lovingly relating/serving him, and we do this when we do that to one another. It was always God’s intent that we would discover and understand what he is like through our own relationships with each other in our nuclear families as well as with our own personal relationship with him individually as children of God, which will place within us a good foundation to then be able to lovingly reveal him and his ways to others elsewhere as well.
However, we did not manage to live out God’s intent for us very long at all. We all know the story of Adam and Eve, which was revealed in the video above, who ate the forbidden fruit (Adam’s apple as it is commonly known) because Eve had been tempted by the serpent (the devil) to eat it.
In the story she was tempted to live a self-serving life; to use a created thing in a self-serving way. Soon after they had been disobedient to God, they found themselves pointing the finger and not admitting to having done wrong. Their relationship with God and with each other broke down, and pain and suffering became their lot as a consequence of their choice to disobey God. It has been that way for us humans ever since.
Since everyone of us is imperfect. Since we all do wrong or sin (Romans 3:23), we suffer the consequences or the effect derived from our wrongdoing. We experience spiritual death (Romans 6:23) because sin separates us from God, the author of all life, and it causes friction and stress in our friendships/relationships as well, which very often culminates in verbal (physical) fights and breaks in them.
What we need the most, and which we longingly crave for, when we feel like we lack it, is to be loved. We need to be in relationships. We cannot survive without them. Isolation is a killer. Our cities are plagued by people living in isolation. That is the reason why God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for (Lit corresponding to) him”(Genesis 2:18).
In fact, interestingly, the longing for an intimate relationship with a special someone, to be loved by and to love a soul mate, is clearly revealed as a common theme in movies. I believe it is so precisely because the writer knows that the theme is innately true of us, and as a consequence understands that people will identify with it, and will want to watch the movie.
Anyway, because of this longing, like the Minions I discussed in Part 1, we feel empty inside. The reason why we feel that way is because we did not bond properly with our significant others when we were young. Babies need more than food and nappy/diaper changes. They need to be held. They need to be loved / nurtured. Without it they are neglected and will invariably be developmentally and socially deficient and to be prone to psychological, emotional and a plethora of other problems.
Yes, without loving relationships we go crazy. The lack of healthy relationships is the direct cause of our many societal problems:
Like I said above, they stem from our failure to carry out God’s designed purpose for us. They stem from having separated ourselves from our Creator; from not knowing his love and his life deep within our hearts.
Yes, the thing that we most want, indeed need and longingly look to receive the most is love. That is the reason why we chase after all kinds of “pleasurable” things, which I discuss in greater detail in the above blog. We become addicted to alcohol and drugs and pornography; in our desire to find love, we chase after one another in bars and clubs (and other places) and have a multitude of sexual encounters with one another in a recreational fashion — one night stands — in order to feel loved.
We look for that “something” that will fill our void inside of us or to momentarily escape from reality and we become addicts — sex or “love”. Although it is not actually love but lust that we experience. Lust is antithetical to love because love has to do with giving for someone else’s benefit whilst lust has to do with taking for one’s own benefit.
You see, since God is holy and since we are created to only serve or worship God out of our relationship with him, but invariably fail to do so because we are not holy in our very natures, but sinful, we can only become holy if, once we commit ourselves to follow him as disciples, God graciously enables us to be. It is only possible if God changes us in the deepest part of our being or sanctifies us.
Therefore, God needed to implement a strategy to defeat the enemy and save humanity, and to restore order to our fallen planet. That was the reason why God took on human form and died in our place. He did it to break the power that sin, death and the devil had on our lives, and thereby restore to us all the life we were always meant to have:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he likewise shared in their humanity, so that through death he could destroy the one who holds the power of death (that is, the devil), and set free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14–15)
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (Romans 5:8–10)
So, God, among those whom he saves and transforms through his love and life that he graciously gives to them, hopes to then partner with in order to carry out his plan of restoration on Earth. He wants to reconcile the world to himself and to restore all things to the way they were before anything went wrong.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:17–21).
Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; 20 and that He may send Jesus, the Christ ( Or Anointed One; i.e. Messiah) appointed for you, 21 whom heaven must receive until the period (Literally: periods, times) of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time (Acts 3:19–21).
So, what do you think? Do you agree that there is a problem in our world that only God can rectify? If you recognise this about your own life, then please, if you do not yet know him, if you have not yet committed yourself to follow him as his disciple, or if you have decided that you wanted to follow him but you have not been consistent, then let me encourage you to do so now fully. He loves you and wants to be gracious toward you and to show you what a wonderful and adventurous life you could have in him.
So, how about it? Wont you join me in asking God to make us into conduits of his love and to commit ourselves to become ambassadors of his love for his name sake to others? Ask him to then enable you to influence them to become conduits of his love for yet others as well until this whole world is restored to God’s original intent for it upon Jesus’ return.
Following on from what I have written above, I hope to personalise this piece of writing in a future blog: First the natural, then the Spiritual. Restoration of all things. In it I will endeavour to tell my own journey thus far in this.
