If it takes our whole life long just to find God, and to give Him our heart, and to regain our soul, it will have been worth it.
A Worthy Life
Evidence in the Lack of Evidence
At key points in life, you must choose between that which is most beneficial to you and that which you know to be right. You will have to decide if you follow your conscience, even when there is no reason to assume a positive outcome for yourself.
It only stands to reason, however, that if you ever want to live in the hands of the supernatural, beyond the confines of mortal logic, that at some point you must make a choice just like this. Earthly outcomes follow choices based on earthly evidence. If you ever want a heavenly outcome, at some point you must leap with nothing earthly in view to catch you.
Thus, watch for these moments where there is no evidence that things will work out well, and in those moments take courage in the knowledge that the lack of evidence is the greatest evidence of all.
A Life That I’m Proud Of
There is no specific accolade or achievement in this life that the gospel of Jesus Christ guarantees for me. It does guarantee, however, that my life will be optimal. It will be the most fulfilling of all the possible lives that I might have led. Even if that means it was still fraught with hardship and pain, it will at least be a life that I will be proud to have lived.
That might not seem like much to the naive, but for those that have realized that the default life has no such assurances, that promise is everything.
No Purpose Without Striving
There are those who try to forever remain in their favorite period of life. Some look backwards, trying to recapture the glory days of High School. Some look forward, trying to hurry themselves into retirement and empty nesting. Their great goal is to reach the most comfortable or most exciting chapter of life and repeat it over and over.
Which means that their life is already over.
If you wish to freeze life at a specific point, then obviously there is nothing more to discover in that life. The story is done, the development is over, the new adventures are ended, and the meaning is already passed.
Life has no purpose without change. Far better that we look for fresh battles to fight, for new improvements to make, for novel achievements to accomplish, for unresolved wrongs to right, and for original healing to give. We should ever be striving to be better than what we are, so that our best self is not already behind us.
It is in striving that we keep our story moving forward, in trying that we find meaning.
Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 23:25-26
25 And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.
26 There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil.
In return for the Israelite’s faithfulness, God now makes some significant promises. He assures them of the basics, bread and water, and also that He will heal them of their diseases. He says that “the number of thy days I will fulfil,” meaning they will be a people that live full lives without meeting an early demise. Thus, God is ensuring the necessities for a full life. Not only this, but nature itself will be particularly blessed for them, their livestock giving birth to healthy young and the land yielding its fruit.
Notice in these promises that God is removing from the Israelites much of the curses He pronounced to Adam and Eve. He had told Eve that “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” Obviously the Israelite women would still face the pains of childbirth, but would not suffer the anguishes of infertility or maternal or infant death, given God’s promises that there would not be barrenness or shortened days. God had told Adam that “cursed is the ground for thy sake. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” Obviously the Israelites would still have to labor for their food, “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” but here He describes that the land would no longer be actively working against them.
What we read here is the first step in the Lord reclaiming His people from the fall. Humanity had been in an extremely dejected state, and now God’s people were half-exalted, living blessed lives. God had begun the work of taking the sting out of death and the victory out of the grave (1 Corinthians 15:55).
Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 23:20-23
20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.
21 Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.
22 But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries.
23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.
We have reached the end of these laws and now comes a grand promise to the Israelites, detailing all the great things that Gods will do for them if they obey Him. To start it off, God declares that there will be an angel sent down among them. Apparently that angel would speak to them at times, and also he would watch the people closely to see their behavior. If they broke their covenant, he would not be able to tolerate it. The angel carried the name of the Lord, and so he had to condemn everything that was unworthy of the Lord.
On the other hand, if the people were to obey every word, then the angel would set himself against their enemies. He would go before the Israelites, cutting off the pagan nations in Canaan before Israel even arrived in the land.
Thus, there was no neutral outcome. The angel’s strength would be against one side or the other, it was simply up to Israelites to steer that wrath according to their faithfulness. Even today we have this sense that obedience to the Lord will cause Him to be a champion in our cause, fighting our enemies for us and winning our battles. Even if we still experience trials after being faithful, we believe that we are fighting through those trials alongside God, as opposed to fighting against Him for having been unfaithful. Thus, everyone in life fights, the only question is against who and with who?
Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 23:14-16
14 Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.
15 Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty:)
16 And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.
God had already given instructions for the feast of unleavened bread (the Passover), which He reminded the people of here in verse 15, and He also told them of two more feasts to be observed throughout the year. Those two new feasts would be tied to the beginning and ending of the season.
The first feast wasn’t at the very start of the season, though, but rather when the crops had developed enough to give up their firstfruits. The second feast was after they had gathered in the last fruits at the end of the year. Thus they were feasts based on the bounty of nature, celebrating that God had given them some in the beginning, and in greater measure at the end.
Three feasts throughout the year. Converted to our current Gregorian calendar, the feast of unleavened bread would happen towards the end of April, when the firstfruits were well on their way, yet not quite ready to be plucked. The feast of harvest falls in May or June, when the first fruit is completely ripe, and the feast of ingathering comes around October, when the stalks are fully spent and give their last before perishing.
That is their sequential order in our Gregorian calendar, but recall that the Passover occurred at the very beginning of the ancient Israelite calendar. It marked the transformation from the old year to the new. With that in mind, it becomes clear that these feasts are symbols of our lives. The feast of harvest was the feast new birth, fresh life being brought forth anew, like the firstfruits that it celebrated. The feast of ingathering was the end of one’s work, the succumbing to death, and the long winter of the grave. The feast of unleavened bread was the state in between, the limbo betwixt death and rebirth. The bread was unleavened because it represents us still dead in the tomb, but it is looking forward to the fruit that is about to come forth, the life that is about to be restored when the cycle repeats.
The Air is Getting Thinner
Just Letting Go)
Sometimes I’m actively, vibrantly living with purpose. I’m trying to identify what my calling is, what God put me here for, what sort of person He wants me to be, and I’m trying to fill that measure day-by-day.
And then at other times, in many times, I just kind of give up on trying and coast. I fill my spare time with mindless media, ignore my personal health, let the house get messy, and don’t really contribute anything to the world.
I feel very disturbed by how low I can go when I just stop trying. I would have hoped that when I tried to coast I would still have a basically meaningful life, but I really don’t feel that way at all. When I stop striving I feel like I drop into a godless world, something vain and artificial and inconsequential. The only options seem to be constant striving or descending into absolute nihilism.
Worldly Decline)
And as I look around at the world, I don’t think I’m the only one this happens to. I think we are experiencing this sharp dichotomy as an entire society. Our world has become more godless and quality everywhere is in decline. Our stories are less creative, our vocabulary is diminishing, our aspirations are waning. We live for Netflix and food delivery and the latest iPhone, leaving behind community, achievement, and virtue.
I believe that we were once a more Godly, more purposeful sort of people. Even if someone tried to let go of God they would still find themselves living a relatively meaningful life because they lived in a cultural atmosphere that was richer and deeper, where the base expectations were higher. Now, though, there is so little standard left to hold you up once you let yourself go. In other words, the air is getting thinner, so you have got to have your own oxygen mask, you can’t rely on breathing what you get from the culture.
Perhaps Jesus saw this when he gave the parable of the 10 wise virgins. In the darkest part of the night we’re just not going to get by with coasting. We have to be intentional about living in connection to God and with purpose, or we will die.
The Basis for Following the Commandments: Part Four
Thus far we have discussed how accepting the traditional Western ethics requires us to both believe in the Judeo-Christian God, and that the words of the Bible contain His genuine commandments. There yet remains one core pillar for our testimony, though, which is a belief that God’s true commandments are absolute.
The fact is, there are many today that do believe in God and do believe that the Bible contains His commandments, however they are taken by a notion that these commandments are little more than paternal advice. They think it is ideal to follow the commandments, and that it would be good for other people to adhere to them, but that things won’t be so bad if they personally don’t. What they lack is a testimony that God’s laws are actually imperative.
Traditionally, the commandments have been presented to the Western world as having both a negative deterrent against breaking them, and a positive reinforcement for following them. The negative deterrent is the assertion that breaking the commandments brings suffering, either in the form of divine punishment or simply natural consequences. The positive reinforcement is the assertion that following the commandments brings joy, either in the form of divine blessing or simply natural consequences. The combination of these two is that following the commandments will lead to the most fulfilling, most joyful, most complete form of life that we can experience, whereas regularly breaking them will lead to the most heartbroken, the most painful, the most fractured form of life that we can experience.
So now the questions come to you. Do you believe that God’s commandments genuinely matter? Do you believe that the quality of your life will be always be affected by adherence or resistance to them?
If the answer to any of those is “no,” why is that? As with the other pillars, is there something in your life that prevents you from believing that the highest quality of life can only be achieved by adherence to the commandments? Is there some part of you that insists on finding another way? Would you be willing to experiment with the commandments, adhering to them as a matter of analysis, to see if your quality of life markedly improves?
If, on the other hand, your answer to all of those is “yes,” then you have established that God is real, that His commandments are taught in the Bible, and that following those commandments really matters for your personal happiness. There can be no logical reason not to abide by these principles of traditional, Western ethics. Only weakness of the flesh could cause you to set these principles aside.
Trending Towards Death
It is a terrible thing to be faithless, nihilistic, cynical, and depressed. There are many that find themselves in a state where effort seems ineffectual, the future appears bleak, and life itself feels meaningless. Too long in such a state can be a very dangerous thing, as the broken person may begin to consider ways to expedite the end of their miserable existence. Even if not, though, they will continue forward in a sort of waking death, unmotivated to do any of the things worth living for, isolating and numbing, and just letting themselves go. They may reach a “natural end,” but one that was premature and avoidable.
On the other hand, though, one might love life to the point of debauchery. They might become carnal, sensual, eagerly pursuing every pleasant, vibrant experience, trying to live as full and varied a life as possible. But gross hedonism is just as tended towards death as depression. Promiscuous sexuality, drunkenness, risk-taking, late-night parties, and gluttony do not prolong life, rather they burn it out faster, resulting in either an accidental death, or once again, a demise that might be considered natural, though premature and avoidable.
The soul cleaved from its purpose becomes depressed and gravitates towards death, but also the soul that makes its purpose the pleasures of life also gravitates to death. Survival itself is contingent upon finding the true life worth living, and committing ourselves wholeheartedly to it.
Spiritual Wanderings 