23 Mar Christians Must Choose the Undesirable
Blog Series:
Renew Your Mind ~ Transform Your Life
As we’ve seen in the first 11 posts in this blog series if we don’t get the “eternal-perspective” issue right in the Christian life, there is much of the rest of the Christian life we won’t get right either.
If we think we are playing basketball, but the referee is calling a soccer game, we will be hopelessly confused, frustrated, and defeated. In the same way, if we’re playing the game of life for temporal purposes, but God is playing the game of life for eternal purposes, we will become hopelessly confused, frustrated and defeated.
We will never understand why God refuses to bless our lives and make them go the way we want them to.
So, one of the great challenges of the Christian life, is to be sure we are evaluating all that is happening to us with eternal values, not temporal values.
We’ve seen that the first step in this process of nurturing an eternal perspective is to believe the unbelievable.
We must believe the unbelievable
We saw that:
- We must believe that God exists, in spite of no scientific proof.
- We must believe that God is good, in spite of all the rampant evil in the world.
- We must believe that God loves me, in spite of the fact that He does not make my life go better.
We saw, however, that these things are not really unbelievable. They’re just unbelievable at first glance. But at second glance, they are the only things that can be believed if you take all evidence at face value and follow it to its logical conclusion.
Now, we turn to the second essential element in nurturing an eternal perspective: we must choose the undesirable.
We must choose the undesirable
Again, it is not really undesirable – it just appears undesirable at first glance. However, at second glance, it is the only reasonable choice if we take all the evidence at face value and follow it to its logical conclusion.
As with believing the unbelievable, there are three parts to choosing the undesirable:
- We must choose God over happiness
- We must choose others over self
- We must choose the eventual over the immediate.
This week, we will look at the first choice.
We must choose God over happiness
We must gain an accurate understanding of happiness, or we can waste our entire lives in fruitless pursuit of it.
1. Everyone naturally pursues happiness
In popular American culture, happiness is the highest good. One website on happiness says “happiness is really all there is and all there ever will be; all else is only a means to happiness.
“And, of what value is anything except for its utility in facilitating happiness. Careful reflection reveals that the only reason we do anything in life is to maintain or enhance our happiness.”
It is as Blaise Pascal once wrote:
All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employee, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attending with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this objective. This is the motive of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
On one level this seems right. On television or in movies, we often hear a mother telling her child, “I just want you to be happy.” And that is often accompanied by the comment, “just follow your heart.”
But on another level, it doesn’t seem to be working so well. This often leads people to make decisions based on shallow emotion rather than deep reflection, resulting in short-sighted decisions that turn out badly.
2. We do not achieve happiness by pursuing happiness
The problem is, we are confused as to what will give us happiness. We are naturally inclined to assume that health, wealth, and positive circumstances (getting what we want out of life) will give us happiness. Yet, there is little evidence to support that idea.
A casual look at the lives of professional athletes, movie stars, musicians and singers, and other famous and wealthy people teaches us that fame and fortune are not automatic avenues to happiness. It is not unusual for wealthy people to be unhappy.
Again, Blaise Pascal speaks to this:
There was once in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the dark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not find in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God himself.”
Or in other words, we’re looking for happiness in all the wrong places. As C.S. Lewis wrote: “God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself because it is not there. There is no such thing.”
3. We achieve happiness by pursuing God
Even something as staid as the Westminster Confession, written in 1646, agrees that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. John Piper, in his book Desiring God, however, goes one step further. He asserts that the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.
Many Scripture passages indicate that deep longings for happiness is not unspiritual, but rather, is a sign of God drawing us to himself. He gives us deep longings for happiness because He intends to be the one to fulfill those deep longings.
“As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1-2).
“O God, you are my God; I shall seek you earnestly; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1-2).
“In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.” (Psalm 16:11)
Our longings have been given to us by God. It is not wrong for us to long for meaning and purpose and significance and happiness. God has given us such longings. But He has done so because he wants to be the one to fulfill those longings. It is not wrong to long. It is, however, self-destructive to look outside of God for the fulfillment of the longing.
If we pursue God as the fulfillment of our longings, then our longings cannot be too strong and our pursuit of happiness too ambitious.
Conclusion
So, we started by saying that we had to choose the undesirable – that we had to choose God over happiness. But that only seems undesirable at first glance. On second glance, we see that choosing God is choosing happiness.
If we pursue happiness only, we will not find God. If we pursue God, we will find true happiness.
Next week we will look at the importance of choosing others over self.
In case you’re new here
This blog post is part of a series titled “Renew Your Mind, Transform Your Life”, introduced on January 5, 2021. As the series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives at www.maxanders.com.
If you know anyone who you think might enjoy joining us in this study, please forward this blog to them and encourage them to go to my web site (www.maxanders.com) and sign up for the free video, “Master the Bible So Well That the Bible Masters You”, available there on the home page. This will put them on my regular mailing list and they’ll receive my weekly blogs on this subject.
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I look forward to going through this life-changing journey with you.
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