Tools for Monday: What is the Ultimate Purpose in Life (Part 2)
In this current Monday blog series, we’re examining our goals. Goals give us something at which to aim and accomplish. God obviously does not intend for us to mosey through life without any apparent purpose. Jesus himself focused like a laser beam on the cross and resurrection (Luke 9:51). Yet, we often hit roadblocks when it comes to discerning life goals and purposes. The mishmash of so many contradictory voices make it daunting to hone into God’s voice.
Last Monday we mentioned some of these contradictory voices, known as speculative philosophy. Without getting too confusing or complicated, there are essentially two, conflicting branches of speculative philosophy. One is called naturalism, and the other is known as idealism. If you know more about these branches of speculative philosophy, the more equipped you will be to see through them from a biblical perspective.
On the one hand, naturalism assumes that human beings are really nothing more than animals, so the best we can do is either be happy or resign ourselves to the basic order of the universe over which we have utterly no control. On the other hand, idealism rejects the notion that people are children of nature since we are capable of such higher order thinking and skills. The chief end of idealism is for one to create a progressively more perfect state of being in which the main virtues of wisdom, courage, and prudence rule the day.
Naturalism and idealism frequently work against one another. Yet, they both have one major element in common: They reject the Christian doctrine of sin. For instance, naturalism mainly views sin as something which has gone amiss in nature. A naturalist philosopher named Friedrich Hegel even said that sin can be a good thing. For Hegel, sin consists of mistakes that ultimately lead us to a positive outcome. For the idealists, sin is viewed as some sort of imperfection that can be overcome through right thinking and virtuous behavior. Sin is something that you just overcome somehow.
The Apostle Paul clearly debunked the two main strands of speculative philosophy when he said that all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). In other words, there has to be more to life than either trying to be happy or using our reasoning skills to achieve some sort of idealistic utopia. Sin is always getting in the way. We therefore need a Savior who can transform our lives.
And with that, we come to one of the first ways of identifying God’s will for us. We begin by acknowledging our sinfulness before a holy God. We consequently repent, or turn from, doing our best to achieve some sort of happiness on our own, reigning to fate, or thinking our way to utopia. Knowing God’s will begins with our submitting to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let’s talk more next Monday about how we move forward in following Christ after we have repented of sin and received the free gift of God’s saving grace.