Some Thoughts on the Things that Really Matter in Life

This is far from my usual stuff, but I thought it was important enough to share with everybody.

It started with a question that I was trying to answer.   I don’t remember the circumstances, but I wasn’t happy with the typical answers.  I’ll mention the question a little later.  You’ll understand why when I do.

A long time ago when I used to give sermons regularly and teach classes, I often said that there are only two things in life that are permanent.  Everything else is just temporary.

The first thing is God.  God is the only thing in life that cannot be destroyed, will not break, grow old, die, wear out, go out of date, lose its shape, cannot be lost, and will not leave.  This is why knowing God is the number one thing in life.

The second is like it in a way but different.  And that is you.  Outwardly it’s constantly changing.  We get older, get wrinkles, fat, lose our muscles, our build, our flexibility, our zip.  We can lose our skills and our strength.  Even if we keep practicing and working out, our performance diminishes with age.  And if we don’t keep things up, our performance diminishes even if we are young.

But who and what we are is always progressing one way or the other, like a sculpture chiseling an image out of a rock.  Everyday we make myriads of decisions that shape our character, making us who we are.  We are either becoming more loving, kind, patient, good, and beautiful, or we are getting more angry, bitter, and selfish.  It may go back and forth, adjusting when we see ourselves becoming too much of one thing.  It’s all gradual.  But we don’t just lose it, though, because we are getting older or as time passes.  Everyday we are either adding or subtracting who we are through all the choices we constantly make.

A few years ago, my older son had a baby girl.  Sure, we had kids of our own, but it caused me to marvel again at the ‘miracle’, no, just the astonishing thing that two human beings can create another human being.  It started me thinking about this thing called life.

Oh, the question.  It had to do with the idea of hell.  If there is one, why is there one?  Does God really send people to hell?  How does that fit with everything we think we know about God?

And I got an answer which at least makes sense to me.

The Bible talks about God creating the world and all the animals, and then He creates human beings.  Unlike the animals, God breathes on the body He formed out of the chemicals in the ground, and man becomes a living being.  The word ‘breath’ in both original languages of the Bible is the same word as the word ‘spirit.’ 

Humans, it says, are created in God’s image.  That’s generally understood as meaning that we have an intellect, emotions, and a will.  Humans create civilizations and the arts.  Humans make moral choices and can subject our physical wants to higher purposes.

But humans also contain a bit of God.  Our spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it, is divine, if you will.  (Don’t lose me yet.)

In the Garden of Eden, man could walk with God.  When they gained the knowledge of good and evil, something died in them.  They could no longer look on God.  And it wasn’t just guilt.  God later told Moses that man cannot look on the face of God and live.  Something changed inside of them such that they could not coexist with pure God.

God is holy, whatever that means.  Man is not, and man cannot endure being in the presence of holiness without cringing in fear or suffering in a way.  Like getting too close to the sun.  The same sun that warms our toes can incinerate us if we get too close to it.

I’ll just jump ahead here. 

The Bible says that we need a new birth in order to see the Kingdom of God to replace the part of us that died.

So at the end of days when we stand before God, those who have had this new birth can look at God and be happy in His presence. 

Now this is the tricky part.  People who don’t know God, love God, etc. will want to run away from Him but have nowhere to go.  Now humans are not merely animals that can just die and be gone. 

Part of being made in God’s image means that they cannot just cease to exist.  They cannot just disappear, and they cannot remain in the presence of God.  So God prepared a place where He is not. 

And, no, it’s not a happy place, not because God might intend for people to be unhappy, but because the absence of God necessarily makes it so.  We live in a world unaware of the countless ways God acts to sustain our lives.  A world without God is unimaginable.  Hell exists, because God created human beings to be so much more than we are, and there is no Plan B.

I thought this was important to share for several reasons. 

I think people don’t fully appreciate what it means to be human.  We are used to this evolution story where life is an accident of nature, and we are really just animals who wear clothes and can talk rather than beings created by God and who are meant to have a relationship with Him.

We talk about choice and people having a right to do what they want with their own bodies.  That’s a new idea in history.  Woman have the privilege of bringing new human beings created in the image of God into the world.  These are little bodies inside of bigger bodies, but they are not part of the bigger body.  These are new people. 

Throughout human history, people understood that sex is not merely or even primarily recreation but potentially an act of creation.  This is why we used to teach our children about not having it until they were married.  They are on holy ground here.  People are co-creators with God, creating eternal beings who will live forever. 

And, lastly, life is short.  And people need to think from time to time what this whole venture is really all about.