How far do you think your horse can take you?
All of us choose a way of making decisions in life and a way
of determining what we will say and do. For many of us a philosophy has
been built up by following a learned scholar or following the system used
by family or friends. For others of us, there is a religious system that
we have subscribed to that is the vehicle that we use to make our decisions
about life. Many people have a cause that they have come to believe in that
shapes every waking moment and consumes their very being--be it political,
religious, environmental, or social. There have been those who allowed
a fantasy to be the thing that drives everything that they say or do. All
of these things are vehicles that allow us to make decisions and function
in a way that we have deemed to be where we want to go. We make moral decisions,
invest our money, form friendships, and use our time in the ways that these
systems teach. It is important to be sure that whatever we have chosen to
guide our lives is right. For many of us there has been very little thought
about all of this. We have inherited a belief system from our parents,
or we have accepted the system of our peers and go on using that system without
ever really having thought through where it will lead us. In this article
we would like to suggest some thoughts about how we can be confident about
the basis of the decisions we make in life and what each of us needs to consider
about where the belief system we are using takes us, and how far it goes.
None of us really wants to try to go too far on something like what my granddaughter
is riding in the picture on the cover of this issue of our journal.
Your vehicle always has to be accessible.
Life has a way of putting you in situations where nothing that you have
experienced in the past will help solve the immediate crisis. I can remember
when the doctors first told us that our son Tim (picture at left, at two
years old) would be blind, mentally retarded, and have neuromuscular problems.
The emotions that charged through me were nothing like I had ever experienced
before. None of my peers could relate to what I was going through, because
none of them had ever been there. I can still remember the blank stares
of friends who were lost as to what to say to me when I told them what I
was facing. Philosophy 101 does not provide you with answers to this kind
of experience. Not even the rituals and platitudes of religion can help
with a new pain that is beyond anything you have ever had or thought of
before. You cling to your loved ones physically, unable really to deal with
your own pain, much less theirs.
Your vehicle has to deal with the real world.
In a very similar way, whatever belief system you have, has to be able to
deal with what really happens in life. As an atheist, I used to espouse
the teachings of a famous philosopher known as Ayn Rand, who wrote numerous
books promoting the new morality of the day in which I was a college student.
Ayn Rand's philosophy sounded good on paper, and her books made it look like
it would work. The problem with Ayn Rand's teachings were that they did
not deal with the real world. Ayn Rand herself was unable to deal with the
death of her husband. Problems like children born with multiple handicaps
did not fit realistically into a philosophy that assumed that if everyone
strives for what is best for them, everything will turn out all right. Children
born with disabilities due to the drug or alcohol use of their parents or
with AIDS, massive human loss in war, economic chaos produced by corporate
greed and mismanagement, inherited poverty--these things and dozens of others
like them are the real world. If your decision-making system does not allow
you to deal affectively with these, it is an inadequate system.
Your vehicle has to be flexible.
What happens when a person who has grown up in a middle-class white American
home with three cars in the family and all of the luxuries they can imagine
in life is suddenly thrust into a primitive native village in Africa? I
have taken students in my high school into an area of monstrous poverty and
had some of them just sit and cry, others cling to me as if this were a horror
movie that will go away soon, and others go into catatonic state and just
refuse to believe what they are seeing. Many of our belief systems can function
only in the environment in which we were raised, and if the environment is
changed then the belief system collapses. There have been missionaries who
have come back from the mission field with a completely different system
of beliefs than they had when they left because the belief system they left
home with simply could not handle what they saw happening in the mission
field.
Your vehicle has to have purpose. Why
are you alive? When I ask that question of my students, the first reaction
is usually total silence. This is followed by a uncomfortable smile in most
cases. For many of us, the question is either not answerable, or answered
by something we really do not believe or at least do not understand. "To
make this world a better place" is a stock answer, but my response to that
is "why?" What difference does it make whether the world is a better place
or not --especially if you are about to leave it? Religious people may answer
"to go to heaven." An atheist will correctly respond that such an answer
is a totally selfish answer and shows no love or appreciation beyond one's
own self. Our belief systems have to have a direction and a purpose, or
they really do not offer the kind of support we need to really live them
successfully.
I would like to suggest to the reader that the only totally workable
answer to what belief system will function totally and completely in all
these areas is a belief system that involves a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ and His will for our lives. I am not talking about Church here
as an institution, but the teachings and relationship that God calls us to
in Jesus Christ. This is a strong apologetic for the Christian system, and
it is based upon the criteria we have been looking at. Let's look at them
again from the Christian's perspective:
Your vehicle always has to be accessible. Jesus Christ made the
promise that "I will always be with you, even to the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20).
In the Christian system there is no human between man and God. There is
no place you have to go, no procedure you have to go through, and no conditions
you have to meet if you are a disciple of Jesus Christ. When Peter was walking
on the water and he started to sink, all he had to do was say "Lord, save
me" (Matthew 14:30) and his need was met. The Bible principle of "In Him
we live and move and have our being" guarantees us the accessibility of Christ
in all situations and without reservation. We are even told that when we
do not know what to ask for, the Holy Spirit will take over and do it for
us (see Romans 8:26-27).
Your vehicle has to deal with the real world. One of the impressive things
about the work of Jesus was that he dealt with all kinds of people in all
sorts of situations. He broke down the stereotypes of His day and of ours.
He went into Samaria, when the average person of His day avoided it due
to racial prejudice. He talked with and worked with women in real situations--a
woman taken in adultery, the woman at the well, and the widow who had only
a mite to throw into the temple offering--all of whom were outcasts in the
eyes of the religious leaders of Jesus' day. Jesus dealt with poverty and
fed 5,000 when they were hungry. He worked with lepers and blind people
without hesitation. Christians have the ability, if they will follow Jesus,
to adapt to all kinds of situations and to meet all kinds of needs. Jesus
did it and gave the promise to help His followers to do it.
Your vehicle has to be flexible. The followers of Jesus Christ were an incredibly
diverse group. Some were fishermen, and some were tax collectors--lowly
occupations in that day. Paul was from the educated elite, and Luke was
a medical doctor. Not only did the followers of Jesus deal with the real
world, but they themselves came from the real world, and were able to be
flexible enough to work with all kinds of situations. The Apostle Paul stated
it so clearly when he said "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.
I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether
well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything
through Him who gives me strength (Philippians 4:11-13).
Christians have the ability to adjust to all situations, and the lesson
of history is that Christians have done this in remarkable ways and changed
the face of history in good ways as they have done so. We are not talking
about the perversions of Christianity that the media like to point to like
the crusades or the Ku Klux Klan--but the massive amount of medical educational
and benevolent help that has been given by people in the name of Christ through
the centuries.
Your vehicle has to have purpose. One of the reasons
that most decision-making vehicles do not work, is that they do not understand
the basic purposes of our existence--individually and collectively. One
of the oldest, if not the oldest, book of the Bible is the book of Job.
In this book we are given a glimpse of the reality of our existence. The
struggle between good and evil and man's role in that struggle is laid out
in clear terms. Throughout the New Testament we see continual references
in passages like Ephesians 3:9-11 and Ephesians 6:12.
("For ours is not a struggle against flesh and blood, but against all the
forces of evil that hold sway in the darkness around us, against the spirited
host of evil arrayed against us in the heavenly warfare.") Any life-decision
system that is based solely upon achieving something in this life is going
to be disappointed, because an indisputable fact is that death awaits us
all. If your decision-making system is based solely upon this life, than
it is doomed to failure because of the fact of death.
Followers
of Jesus Christ develop a relationship with God that really is a father-child
relationship. In Galatians we are told that Christians are the adopted children
of God and that Jesus is our brother (Galatians 4:4-7).
Our relationship with the father is a love relationship. It is something
that grows throughout our lives and brings us stability to do all of the
things we have discussed previously in this article. Heaven is heaven because
it brings that ultimate purpose to a culmination--a total unity and complete
oneness with God that is like the one Jesus talked about in His prayer for
unity. "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast
sent me.." (John 17:21-23).
It is only when we have that kind of unity with something greater than ourselves
that we can face all that happens in life, and deal with all the circumstances
that life brings our way. What horse are you riding? What is the vehicle
that guides and controls your behavior and your life in a positive way that
both now and in the future will give you happiness and productivity? I would
urge you to consider the system of Jesus Christ, and begin that walk that
brings the oneness that Jesus prayed for.
--John
N. Clayton
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Does God Exist?, MarApr03.