Isn’t that what most parents want? We want our children to grow, to succeed, to thrive. We want them to be happy……all day…..every day. We are proud of them when they succeed. We are proud of ourselves when they succeed. We brag about our children when they succeed. My father was proud of me and wanted me to take over the family business. My mother was proud of my achievements. She repeatedly asked me how much money I made. This was the metric she used to measure my success…….and, indirectly, her success. For most of my life I have used my mother’s success scale. I suspect that most parents do: a good high paying job, a stable career, recognition by our peers, a good wife, a suburban house with a white picket fence.

By my mother’s calculation, my children were abject failures. Two of my sons died in their 20’s. The third is in prison. Ask a hundred observers to score the sucess of my family and we would not do very well.

But, are we using the right metric? Was I using the correct yardstick to measure the success of my children?

I think not.

I’m not kidding myself. My sons took a long tortous route to get to where they are now. They did not score well on my mother’s scale. I remember sitting in my house one Christmas eve with a Boone County deputy discussing how to deal with a smashed mailbox. I remember posting bail on multiple occasions. I didn’t tell my mother. Only recently, have I realized that my mother was using the wrong scale. So was I.

The Bible offers us some guidance. You probably guessed that corporate position, community adulation, and net worth are not part of God’s metric for a successful life.

The Bible teaches that success is defined by spending eternity with our creator…….God…….who loves us and wants us to succeed even more than our parents. How do we go about acheiving that?

The guidance from the Old Testament:

“What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Micah 6:8, ESV

The guidance from the New Testament:

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Jesus explaining eternity, John, 3:36, ESV

This changes everything. My mother’s metric for success was worldly and temporal. It applies, but only to the brief period of our physical life. God’s metric, like God, is eternal. It applies to both our temporal physical life and to our eternal spiritual life.

My mother wasn’t wrong. But, neither is God.

Both metrics are valid. The key point is in understanding their period of validity. My mother’s metric works during our physical life; but, becomes completely irrelevant at death. God’s metric is eternal. You can follow or reject my mother’s metric. The consequences are extremely limited.

But, if you reject God’s metric, the consequences are eternal…….and they are catastrophic.

I have no doubt that my mother would have called my sons a disappointment. They did follow a pretty twisted path and to a degree still are. But, in the end, they recognized and accepted Jesus. By God’s metric, my sons were successful.

By God’s metric………I have been a successful parent.

And that is all that counts.

During the past few weeks, I have watched an extraordinary outpouring of hate. It began with a hate filled assassination. And then the talking heads in our media stirred the pot with comments, some true, others blatantly false. Their object was to grow the hate. Finally, the hate spread to the grass roots level on Facebook and other social media outlets. Millions of people were in pain over the death of Charlie Kirk. All the while, voices on the left denigrated him, his family, and his supporters. All the while, voices on the right attacked the left over their reaction to the assassination and over their reaction to the memorial service.

Here is the heart of it.

A very bad man did a very bad thing…….nothing new there. He caused an enormous amount of pain…….nothing new there.

And now we react.

But, how should we react? I can see only one response that lines up with Christianity. We should be sad. We should be sad because of the evil and because of the tidal wave of pain that radiates away from this evil act.

Anger will try to work its way into our reaction. But, here is the problem with anger. Anger is outwardly directed. Anger has, as its goal, the attempt to punish others, the attempt to change the behavior of others. And guess what……the people whom we are trying to punish and change are angry too. This will not work. Anger attacking anger cannot grow peace and love. Anger attacking anger can only grow more anger. Anger attacking anger can only grow hate. And there is no question that hate is growing in our culture.

I have always taught my children that, when faced with a problem, first, you must accurately identify the problem. Then, focus on the part of the problem that you can control.

So…….what is the problem?

Hate.

What is the part of the problem that I can control?

My hate.

And there it is. In order to get the hate out of our public conversation, I must first replace my hate with sadness and with love. So must you. We must stop trying to hate the other guy into submission……it has never worked before……there is no reason to expect that it will work now. Instead, I must respond to the haters around me with love. Let’s face it, we’ve given hate a fair shot……and hate has failed to fix the mess. Now, it’s time to try love.

That, my friends, is the heart of Christianity. We are clearly told to love the haters into submission. This will be hard, time consuming work. It will take the rest of my life.

But.

God expects nothing less.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Jesus teaching the sermon on the mount, Matthew 5: 44-48, ESV

Darkness cannot drive out darkness……only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate…….only love can do that.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am returning to a topic that I have addressed before.

I have been deeply saddened by the murder of Charlie Kirk. He was a great man. I am satisfied that he was spending his life doing God’s work. I am satisfied that he spent his life doing God’s work.

He was killed by a lesser man. The killer believed that he was silencing a fascist. He believed that he was performing a noble act. My first observation is that the killer was wrong on both counts. He did not silence Charlie, he amplified him. Going further, Charlie was not a fascist. I doubt that the killer could even define the word. But, the killer believed that Charlie was a fascist. And that was all it took. He believed that Charlie was a fascist because he had been told that Charlie was a fascist. Charlie was a pretty big deal. But, he was not big enough to be on the radar of the politicians and talking heads who casually throw the term fascist around. The killer thought that Charlie was a fascist because the people in his local social circle told him so. They, too, were wrong; but the killer believed them. And there is the problem. A group of people hate someone because he disagrees with them. They attach a hateful, untrue epithet to the guy they hate and then they spread the hate among their friends. A weak man, like the killer, absorbs the hate and then acts on it.

I am sure that the killer’s local social circle did not consider the low level hate that they were spreading to be important. But, it contributed to a murder. They were complicit. This problem is worse on the left than on the right….but it crosses the aisle. Donald Trump and Maxine Waters do it regularly.

Here’s the thing. There is no such thing as little, unimportant hate. Hate is like cancer. A cancer cell that is so small that your doctor cannot find it will grow into something that will kill you or someone you love.

There are way too many haters out there.

Are you one of them?

I know a lot of otherwise fine people who casually throw around hateful terms like fascist, Nazi, and Newscum. This low level hate is a cancer growing in our culture. Our leaders use hateful language in a crass attempt to increase their political power. And we believe them…….just like the killer believed his friends. So, we spread the hate. And one day, some weak man believes us and acts on it.

And we are complicit.

Were you outraged by the assassination attempt on Trump but silent about the assassination attempt on Gabby Giffords?

If so, you don’t hate the hate…….you hate the politician.

Were you silent when Letitia James was charged with mortgage fraud but happy when Donald Trump was charged with he same crime?

If so, you don’t hate the hate. You hate the politician.

By your low level hate, you fuel the fire. If you indulge in low level, conversational level, hate…….you are complicit. If you indulge in low level, conversational level, hate, you are a cancer cell trying to grow in our culture.

This is not what Christianity teaches.

Christianity teaches love.

Even harder…….it teaches us to love our enemies. It even teaches us to love the guy who killed Charlie. Not many of us can live up to that level of love. But, that is exactly what God does. That is exactly what God expects from us.

Not many of us are willing to let go of our hate.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Jesus, on how we should love, Matthew 5: 43-48, ESV

This week’s post is for “seekers”……people who are searching for truth, meaning, and direction.

One day, soon, you will die. You can quibble about how soon, but you and I cannot escape death. So, after you die, what comes next? This is the single greatest and most important question of your life. It is a question with extraordinary consequences. Many of us have given it little or no thought. This morning you got up and got dressed. At that point in your day, you had probably given more thought to your outfit than to your long term destination.

So, what are the possibilities for what comes next?

Nothing….dead black nothing……the lights just go out. The world goes on without you.

You go somewhere very nice. Everyone there is nice. All of the mean people (that is, the people meaner than you) are somewhere else.

You go somewhere that is not nice. All of the nice people are somewhere else.

Everyone (nice and not nice) goes to the same place. Your roommate could be Dolly Parton……or Adolph Hitler. It is a whole lot like our temporal world.

You go to a place where everything and everyone is just the way you want it……your own personal “designer paradise.” All of your dreams, no matter how nutty, come true. You may be alone. Everyone else will be in their own custom built eternity

You are returned to this temporal world in either a better form or a worse form……and the cycle repeats……forever…….until you get it right.

You go to a place filled with people just as broken as you are. But, they have been fixed. You have been fixed. This place is defined by love, justice, and mercy. It is defined by an intimate relationship with your creator.

There may be other possibilities, but these cover the main categories.

Now, look into your heart. Because the answer is there. The answer is there because it was put there…….by your creator. Remember, you are looking for the truth…….not what you want to be true. What you want to be true……your appetites…….is completely irrelevant.

I have found the last option to be the best.

If you agree, then you should study this option. Begin by getting a “red letter” edition of the Bible. This will have the teachings of Jesus in red ink. Take a few hours and read the red part. For now, that is what you need to know. The rest of the book is background information. You can dig into the rest of the book later.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Revelation 21:3-5, ESV

I had a son who graduated from Notre Dame with a degree in computer engineering. I read his CV one day and it included the line:

“I have cloned things”

He was one of the smartest guys I have known.

He once explained to me how integrated circuits operate. He said:

“It’s actually pretty simple. They all run on magic smoke and I can prove it. One day, I wired one up wrong. When I turned on the power, it went POOOF and all of the magic smoke got out. I never could get it to work after that.”

His assessment began with a simple solid observation of fact. And yet, the undeniable fact led to a conclusion that was ridiculous…..in this case, obviously, a joke. But there is a moral here.

Facts are facts. But, it is very easy to begin with a fact, analyse it, and come to a conclusion that is not true. Sometimes, this process is inadvertent. Unfortunately, sometimes, it is done intentionally. If you have ever listened to a politician, you know this is true. There is a politician in Kentucky who often tangles with president Trump. I know him to be a decent, honest, honorable man. His opponent in an upcoming election is running ads that make him out to be a minion of Satan. The ads are based on facts. But they are untrue.

So where is this going?

The most important ideas in our world are several steps removed from measurable fact. The most important decisions that we will ever make are several steps removed from measurable fact. It is those steps that we need to be careful with. We are remarkable skilled at taking a measurable physical fact, analyzing it, mixing in our appetites, and coming to a conclusion that is a spiritual untruth.

This is important because we are surrounded by measurable physical facts. Because they are tangible, they are extremely compelling. Physical facts tell us where we are. They can sometimes tell us where we have been. But, physical facts cannot tell us where we are going.

In the final accounting, spiritual truth is far more important than physical fact. The path from physical fact to spiritual truth is littered with our justifications, rationalizations, and our self serving appetites.

So, how do we make the journey from physical fact to spiritual truth?

To begin with, we must have a reference point. We must have a benchmark to compare with. In our current culture, we are told that that benchmark is our appetites. We use assumption, justification and rationalization in order to shape the facts before us into the conclusions that we desire. Ten different people apply ten different sets of appetites to the same set of facts and reach ten different conclusions. This alone should teach us that our appetites are not a reliable benchmark. We need an outside benchmark to compare against. I can find none better than the teachings of Jesus. They are simple. They are clear. They leave no room for justification and rationalization. They are based on a value that we all sense in our hearts.

Love.

Our appetites, applied to the measurable physical universe, lead us to the conclusion that we are in charge and can do as we please.

Love, applied to the measurable physical universe, tells us that we are the creation of a God who loves us and that we should love and care for each other.

One of these paths is wrong. One of these paths is true.

The love that Jesus teaches, applied to physical facts, will lead you to spiritual truth. It will lead you to an eternity in paradise…….the seat of love.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

1 John 4: 7-12, ESV

I seek God. Every day. Some days more than others. These are typically the very good days or the very bad days.

Why?

It’s a legitimate question. If you are a secular humanist, you probably think me a little quaint and naive. If you are a Christian, you seek him too. But, did you ever ask yourself, why? Seeking God is not looking for an answer to an immediate physical need like food, water, shelter, or security. God is not a physically obvious goal. God is a spiritual destination. The need for God is not physical; but, the need is compelling. With the exception of a few committed secular humanists (I have known 2 in my lifetime), that need is almost universal. You feel it too. Where does it come from?

The first answer is that I sense a deficiency in myself. There is clearly something missing in me. I wake up and walk out into a world that I did not create. Things happen to me that I did not cause. I interact with people in ways that I do not control. I sense that I am a tiny component of a giant ecosystem, an ecosystem that is beyond my control, an ecosystem that will easily go on after my physical death. I am not in charge. That leaves two possibilities: it’s all a giant cosmic accident or there is a creative intelligence behind it. I’ve seen enough accidents to know that this world is not an accident. So, I seek the creative intelligence behind this world.

Nothing new here.

But, why Christianity? There are hundreds of other options.

First, Christianity teaches that there is a part of me that will live on after my physical death. This is a truth that I sense in my heart. This truth too is almost universal. It is incredibly rare to meet someone who believes that death is the end. Most religions include an afterlife. But, Christianity stands alone in one regard. It is exclusive. Christianity teaches that there is a paradise and the only criteria for admission is belief in Christ. Even worse, Christianity teaches that there is a literal burning hell for those who deny Christ. This exclusivity offends a great many people. Fair enough. But is that the right question? Instead of asking, “do I approve of exclusivity?” We should be asking, “is exclusivity true?” The teaching of Christianity fills the intellectual void in my world. Furthermore, it is safe, in that, unlike any other religion, it immunizes me from eternity in hell.

Second, I seek God because I love his plan for me. I love his justice and mercy. I love the fact that he promises to make it all right……in the end. I love the fact that he has prepared a place for me……a wide, open, spacious place. I seek God out of love.

Third, I fear God. God is the creator. He created me. He created our incredibly complex, interconnected ecosystem. He created eternity. He created paradise. But, God also created hell. According to Jesus, hell is not some kind of metaphor. It is a literal pit of fire and it is eternal. And that is a bad thing. So, who decides where your soul will spend eternity? It is not Satan. If Satan were the gatekeeper of hell, we would all be doomed. No, the decision on your eternity rests with God. Fear is an entirely appropriate response to an entity who can and will send you to hell. Christians try to dance around this issue. Pastors avoid it like the plague. It is clearly not popular. But, is it true? Jesus endorses hell. That is good enough for me.

I seek God, primarily in the Bible. I seek him because I love him, his justice, his mercy, and his promise of paradise. But, in the background, I seek God because I fear his threat of hell. I seek him because he fills a gaping intellectual void in my physical and spiritual life.

God, paradise, and eternity complete me. In my heart, I know this.

Nothing else does.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus explaining the way to God, John 14:6,ESV

“In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

Jesus explaining paradise, John 14:2-3, ESV

‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’

Jesus describing the experience of a man in hell, Luke 16: 24-26, ESV

My Bible reading this morning includes 1 Corinthians 13. This has to be one of my favorite passages in the entire Bible. You’ve heard it many times. In it, Paul describes love in great detail and with great specificity. I’m not sure, but this passage was probably read when Cindy and I were being married.

Over the years, when I have read this passage, I have have always thought about Cindy and about our relationship. I have measured my performance as a husband and father against it. And I have often fallen short. No surprise there. But, this morning, I had an epiphany.

The overriding message of the Bible is that we are required to love. This passage tells us in detail how to go about it. So far, so good.

But, the greatest command in the Bible is not to love our spouse, though we must do that as well. The greatest command in the Bible is to love God.

Until this morning, I have never used 1 Corinthians 13 to measure my performance in loving God. And that is the challenge this week. I want us both to love God with a love that is consistent with Paul’s description.

Love is:

Patient
Kind
Not arrogant
Not rude
Doesn’t insist on having its own way
Not irritable
Not resentful
Doesn’t enjoy wrong
Seeks truth
Bears all misfortunes
Believes all things
Hopes
Endures
Never ends

I fear that I often fail to love God in the way Paul describes. No doubt you fail as well. So here is 1 Corinthians 13 as it applies to loving God:

I will be patient when I wait, perhaps for a lifetime, for God to answer a prayer.

I will be gentle and unassuming with God.

I will remember that I am the servant, not the sovereign.

I will treat God with respect…..and not misuse his name.

I will put God’s plan for me ahead of my plans.

I won’t gripe or be angry when God overrides my plan.

I will resist wrongdoing; mine, as well as others.

I will seek the truth, even when it is inconvenient

When things go wrong, I will trust God to make them right……in the end.

I will accept the word of God as truth, even when I don’t understand it.

I will live my life in the hope of seeing God, face to face, in paradise, no matter what goes wrong before l get there.

I will accept the reality of eternity as my true home.

It turns out that there is a lot more to loving God than I realized.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Paul, 1 Corinthians 13: 4-12, ESV

God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Angels, Cherubim, Seraphim, Satan.

You get the idea.

But, have you ever met an eternal being…….face to face? Have you ever had a conversation with an eternal being?

You’d be surprised.

The fact is that everyone you meet is an eternal being. Our bodies will age and ultimately fail. But, our spirit is eternal. Every one of us is both a physical being and a spiritual being. Every one of us has a spiritual nature that is eternal. We put a lot of effort into taking care of our bodies…….and our body will still die. But, how much of our effort and our resources do we spend on our spirit?

Eternity is huge, in fact, endless. But our temporal, physical life is very brief……..figuratively, the blink of an eye. What, then, should be the focus of our efforts? Philosophers talk about ” the urgency of the immediate”. This is a very real thing. It is normal. The joys and problems that are right in front of us draw a great deal of our attention and effort. For most of us, the immediate gets the vast majority of our effort. For some of us, it gets the entirety. This is human nature.

But, is that distribution of effort wise? Is it right?

If our physical life is extremely short and our spiritual life is eternal……endless, shouldn’t most of our effort go into supporting our spirit? Perhaps, the amount of time and effort that we actually spend planning our day, our week, our career, our retirement is out of proportion to the amount of time and effort we should spend planning our spirit for its eternity. So far……so good.

But, there is another side to this coin.

What about the time and effort that we spend on the eternal beings who surround us? Is it possible that our neglect of the thousands of eternal spirits around us is just as big of a problem as our neglect of our own spirit?

Every one of these spirits is important to God. Every one of these spirits is loved and valued by God equally. God loves and values the drug dealers and the human traffickers just as much as he loves and values me.

Let that sink in.

It sheds an entirely new light on the issue of evangelism.

I probably won’t bake up a batch of brownies and take it and a Bible to my local gang-banger. But, maybe I can spend a little more effort in praying for them…….in loving them.

Consider this:

A minute praying for and loving a gang-banger could do as much to promote God’s kingdom as a minute praying for your pastor.

Or

You could pray for and love someone in the periphery of your world who is a real, first class, gold plated jerk.

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Jesus explaining love in the sermon on the mount, Matthew 5:44-48, ESV

First, let me get one thing clear.

I am not a fan…….of New York City.

Sure, it has a lot of great theaters and museums. But, it is noisy, dirty, crime-ridden, and way too full of people, many of whom are just not nice. I’d rather spend a day in my backyard.

Now, imagine that you are sitting down to breakfast with your 12 year old son. Jesus appears to you. He tells you to take your son to Times Square……….and kill him.

That would never happen, you say. And yet, that is exactly what happened to Isaac. Isaac loved his son. He had plans for his son. He would do anything to protect his son. And then, God showed up with God’s plan for Isaac’s son.

Kill him.

Our plan……..God’s plan.

Things are just fine when the two plans agree. But, what about when they don’t agree? It all comes down to one simple question:”Who is in charge here?”

It all comes down to sovereignty, a word we don’t hear much in our modern society. Even worse, we don’t recognize its validity. We live in a secular humanist culture where we are at the top of the pyramid. We are sovereign. If someone tells us something. The very first thing that we ask ourselves is, “Do I agree with this…….. do I like this?”

What is the most hated thing that a child hears from his parent?

“Because I said so!”

What is a very common reply from the child?

“You are not the boss of me!”

Sovereignty…….who is in charge here.

Christianity says God is sovereign. Secular humanism says I am sovereign. We talk a good line about following God. But, what if God walked up to you and said, “Sell everything, go to Africa, and wait for further instructions.” What would you do? Your answer will define your understanding of sovereignty. Your answer will define your commitment to the sovereignty of God. Quite frankly, I find this terrifying. The “African scenario” drove me away from Christianity for decades. It drove me away from Jesus because I was not willing to relinquish my sovereignty to God. I was not willing to put God’s plan ahead of mine.

I still struggle with sovereignty. God is probably not going to ask you to kill your child. But, what if an illegal showed up at your door and asked for a place to stay for a night or two?

God is sovereign……..full stop…….end of conversation.

If…….when……he does something that we don’t like…..God is sovereign. If…….when……he asks us to do something that we don’t want to do……God is still sovereign. We need to get comfortable with this idea now.

We will spend eternity experiencing it.

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”

Daniel, 4:35, ESV

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Job, 1:21, ESV

Cindy and I are in our 70’s. It’s been a great ride. But, realistically, it is nearing the end. It seems like every joint aches. We both have multiple medical issues, any one of which could ultimately be our end. Welcome to senior living……just another phase of life in a temporal world: birth, a vital healthy youth, a fulfilling middle age when we build our “empire”, and then the physical decline to death. I’m not whining. This is simply the truth that we live in.

You too, are operating somewhere on the same continuum. When you are young, it seems that you have an endless amount of time. In your middle age you are distracted with your career and family. Then, when you are very old, you realize that there is not much time to work with. But, the cold hard truth is that the teenager, the middle-ager and the senior are all in the same, time limited, boat.

Depending on your belief system, the physical universe is either millions of years or thousands of years old. The spiritual universe is either eternal, or non-existent. Take your pick. In comparison to the 70 or 80 years of a human life, the difference is inconsequential. My physical life……your physical life……is the blink of an eye. If you don’t believe me, write this down in your journal and re-read it on your 70th birthday.

And there it is.

Either this incredibly brief temporal world is all there is…….or there is an eternal spiritual world…….a world that is ultimately far more important. Either we are a brief, inconsequential, puff of wind in a giant cosmic accident…….or we are important. Either we are doomed or we are a meaningful part of something huge…….something spiritual. And that is about as far as science and logic can take us.

If you restrict your search to science and logic……if you ignore or deny the spiritual…..you will miss the big picture. And that is exactly what our secular humanist society insists that you do. They have accepted their doom…….and they want you to join them. Misery loves company. They are not malicious. They are confident that they are right. You may be one of them.

But……what if there is something better than doom?

What then?

Look into your heart. Are you important…..or are you doomed? My heart screams the answer. I am important. I am loved. I am created. And so……..I reject doom. I reject secular humanism. And so……..I must seek my creator, my sovereign, my Lord. Because he is the only alternative to my doom.

Ignoring the spiritual is intellectually dishonest. Making up some eternity on your own is intellectually dishonest.

If you too reject doom. If you want to seek your creator, begin by talking…….and listening. Begin with a humble prayer. Then study. The best place to start is the Bible. Begin with John and Acts.

What comes next is hard……so hard that many of us don’t even start the journey. You are going to have to submit to the sovereignty of your creator.

This bears repeating.

You are going to have to submit to the sovereignty of your creator.

A famous rabbi once summed it up, “Father…..your will be done”.

Sounds like a real buzz-kill. But, here’s the thing about submission. Your creator loves you and he is better at running your life than you are.

Or, you could choose the path of secular humanism. Take charge. Assume the job of sovereign of your universe. It won’t work. Know this. You cannot create eternity. You cannot even fix this temporal world. You cannot sidestep your doom…..which is only a few breaths away. You cannot save yourself much less the planet. The evidence is crystal clear.

Consider the alternatives:

Secular Humanism…………and guaranteed doom.

Submission to your creator………..and guaranteed life.

he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Jesus submitting to his father, Mark 14:35-36, ESV