Purpose Driven Life

God made each person for a reason. How can an individual use this knowledge to better live his purpose?

Even just knowing that there is a reason for something is cause to struggle through hardship to discover the truth. I know people who, just because they wanted to understand a few phrases in Latin, took an entire course in Latin in college. At first they said they regretted it, the class not adding to their degree and increasing their workload, but they learned an entirely new thought process. They gained a new perspective on everything they work on, they learned to work harder, and yes, they learned how to translate those phrases they were curious about. They improved themselves in ways they may not have been able to imagine because they knew that there was a reason.

He decided when we would be born...

We can look back at previous eras and say, “Things were so much better then, people were more civilized or disciplined.” Wanting to go back is impossible, but that history remains. Maybe our preference for another age can be the motivation for us to create a good habit “from then” and apply it to now, teaching others to do so as well.

...and how long you would live.

The perception that we have ‘all the time in the world’ prevents us from living life with focus. Why fold laundry today when we can do it tomorrow? Why smell that flower now when we can do it tomorrow? What happens when we forget whether that laundry is clean or dirty? What about how bad that pile makes the room look until it’s put away? What do we do when that flower we hadn’t taken the time to admire is whithered the next time we see it? A limited time on earth isn’t a hunter pursuing us, it’s a friend walking alongside us, reminding us to use and cherish every moment, to learn every lesson we can pull from life.

God planned where you were born...

Constantly ‘looking over the hill’ distracts us from the ehre and now. The ‘when’ of our life is not an accident, and neither is the ‘where’. We may not like where we are now, but there is still something to appreciate, even if our “where’s” only purpose is to teach us what not to do or be.

...and where you’d live.

Most of us have opportunities to travel, but most often we stay because we don’t want to leave our comfort zones. This fearful complacency holds us back from growing to our full potential, from fully serving God’s plan. When the opportunity to travel comes, it’s often a good idea to take it, both for ourselves and for God.

Nothing in life is arbitrary, it’s all for a greater purpose.

If only it was so easy to see that greater good in the valleys of our lives. We say “life has twenty-twenty hindsight”, avoiding saying that we are blind in the here and now, blind to the future, and more often than not we’re also looking back on a distorted past (as David wrote in Psalms, “I see, but through a lens, darkly.”) Mountain tops make valleys in between, but a tree will grow more quickly in the valley than on the peak of a mountain, and that is very much like us as well.

There are illegitimate parents, but not illegitimate children.

This is a concept I have mulled around for decades, but never before has it been put so succinctly. Promiscuity has been a problem for a long time, but when things go wrong, society tends to blame the product which had no control instead of the guilty parties.

(I claim no ownership to Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven Life, this is only an analyzation of it from my perspective, taking exerpts that I thought in some way particularly important or poignant and adding my thoughts and comments.)

A while ago, I wrote about the meaning of "love", because that is a highly abused word in the English language.

Another abused word is "life".

There are several definitions to life, many meanings to that word. One textbook definition is "the period of animate existence, state or principal of existence."

What a cold way to attempt to explain the state of our lives. To Exist. To me, "to exist" and "to live" mean completely different things. A rock exists. The decrepit-looking tree that you see at the top of this entry exists. But what does it do? It is much the same as a human that merely "exists". Essentially, it is in a slow state of dying.

Though often used as an oversimplification, what is not growing is dying. We have to remain active, not just physically moving - repetitive motions can be made by gears and wheels, which are no more alive than unmoving rock. Maintaining the exact same pattern in daily life is probably also not living.

So what is "life"? Life is growing beyond the tiny shell that we find ourselves born into. Life is about learning to speak and read so that we can apply those skills to furthering life, to teaching ourselves and those around us - for one cannot teach without also learning.

Look at the universe. Astronomers and astrophysics tell us that the universe is moving farther apart, our sun is losing its heat, material, and intensity, our planet is growing stale. What is left in an untended state decays. Our lives are, in a cosmic sense, the blink of an eye.

So what's the point?

To live for ourselves is to live from moment to moment. How does that impact those around us? It is not a directed, controlled life. It is chaos, slowly decaying, slowly dying. Only we can lie to ourselves and say that "this is the life".

So that is one thing that life is not, which brings this back to the question of what is it? Life is what we do to our surroundings, how we treat our neighbors. Only the constructive things that we do really last. To build up others at the same time builds up ourselves, that is living. That is working against the universe's progressive chaos and death. Every action should impact others, and every action should be constructive, or should we really be living and acting that way at all?

There is truth to the saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  Each of us perceives the world around us through the lens of the experiences in our life, how we have chosen to incorporate those experiences into who we are.  There is also truth (though often painful) that life is not so much what happens to us as how we react to life.

There are many things that are baffling to us, that appear completely impossible.  Sometimes we discover the "perfect perspective" that reveals "the great truth" about this object.  Sometimes we never find it, but that doens't mean we give up the pursuit.  An African proverb goes, "Not all who pursue the zebra catch it, but he who caught the zebra chased it." We find an oddity and seek to explore it - that's what we call human nature.

Now think for a moment about how that "instinct" became a part of us.  If we follow the Darwinian idea of evolution, we wouldn't have it.  Boldly striking out isn't as staying safe in the safe zone you know and slowly outstripping your opposition.  Humans don't have centimeter-thick craniums, yet we love sticking our heads where they "don't belong" to learn what's there (Surprisingly, spelunking is rather fun).  We don't have efficient lungs or a comparatively large esophagus (when compared to other mammals, from dolphins to gazelle), yet we train ourselves to run.  In many cultures, those who can run well are held in high exteem.

We don't have wings and light bones, yet we gaze longingly at the birds and build heavier-than-air flying machines instead of utilizing our capabilities of climbing.  We lack claws or sharp teeth, but instead of wasting away we sharpen sticks, stone, and metal and can cleave mountains.  We lack webbing or fins, yet we build great ships driven by turbine-propelled propellers (technology still hasn't caught up to God's Design for undulating fin-motion in any commercial scale).

Though we as humans seem to lack so much that nature has in abundance, those lackings have forced us to adapt by creating tools. If there is a river, we build a bridge. If there is an forest, we cut a road. God intentionally gave us these blunt fingers, feeble muscles, and a powerful mind so we could overcome, meet challenge and rise above, it, becoming far stronger than we would have been with "just enough".

The problem is being able to see things properly.  Perception can be a great ally or a drastic weakness, depending on the circumstances.  Earlier I mentioned that a common post signature of mine is "Just because it can be explained doesn't mean it isn't the will of God."  Another one is "Every stepping stone in life was once an obstacle before you saw it in the right way."

Life is more what we do that what happens to us. Will we see the hardships facing us as a millstone grinding us down, and send out all that negativity on other people?  Or will we use that grinding stone like a swordsman uses a whetting wheel to sharpen his blade?

Once we discover a new way to view one aspect of life, it makes it easier to review the next object and conquer that as well.  But even this isn't enough, because what good is something that is never shared?  As I mentioned in "The Responsibility of Power", it is the duty of people who have to provide for those who don't have, and this goes as much for knowledge as material goods.  Certainly, there is only so much we can do without infringing on the free will of others, but this deals with personal responsibility.  Criticism is supposed to be constructive, each event in life is supposed to help build us up as much because we will force it to help us as much as we have a responsibiility to help others.

That simple goal of growth is why God put us here.  In our beginning we are dull, wrapped up in ourselves, and useless.  Forcing those challenges, that fire of the silver furnace, is what turns us into something greater. A tool, sharp and ready, brandished to face tribulation and appreciate joy.

No mountain comes without a valley, and no visage is ever just what it first appears.

Earlier, I mentioned briefly that there are flaws in life that remind us that earth is not our home.  This is a major theme in Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life, where again and again examples and details are given underscoring that our time here on earth is short, it's not all there is.  Earth is just a proving ground.

We all have many aspects of life that we wish were different.  Maybe we wish the weather were warmer (or colder), that it rained more (or less), that people would stop acting immature, or...

Some of these things are "just there", others are a direct result of our decisions in how to interact with the world.  We can blame God, or we can decide to use that trial and grow because of it. We can be bitter, or choose to grow in spite of the trials.

One day, a Christian reporter was interviewing a silver smith at work one day.  As the silver smith put a new block into the flames, the reporter asked, "The things you make are so beautiful, so pure.  How do you know when the silver is ready to come out of the fire?"

The silver smith smiled and answered, "When I can see my face in it."