Jesus We Talk About The Good Life
Dear Thomas,
It is always a delight to hear that someone feels great about his or her life. In your ninth question, you stated, “I have a fantastic and loving wife, great kids, a we11-paying job with excellent benefits, friends, good health, a good retirement plan, a nice home, and other material comforts. How would being a Christian benefit me now in this life? What would I gain that I don’t already have access to?”
It is a delight to know that your life is running so smoothly that your goals are being met, and that you feel blessed with the way things are going. Likewise, I feel blessed in many of these ways. This is what Christians call common grace.
All good things come from God. He designed it that way and in many more ways that were lost as sin entered the world. I don’t think that we should ever underestimate how much a loving God wants to see us prosper in all the ways you mentioned.
But let us not put limitations on life. As good as all those things about your life are, there is much more. The very fact that you are asking these questions suggests to me that you also realize there just might be more. It is this more that is at the crux of our conversations.
It is this more that Jesus came to give as a free gift, for try as we might, even with hard work, good luck, and fortune, we cannot obtain or earn this more through our own efforts. It is not within our capacity.
Something about our natural-born state of being separates us from God and creates this limitation. But because of and through Jesus Christ, this separation and limitation do not have to remain.
This is the good news of the gospel. This is what the Bible is trying to communicate and what the Holy Spirit, working on your heart and mind, is trying to communicate.
There truly is more! This more is not just limited to this life but extends to life forevermore. It goes beyond our being physically, mentally, and emotionally alive. It is about becoming spiritually alive.
I will admit that sometimes life seems very good and can easily lull us into thinking that we have no need for this anymore. It is reflected in those moments when we say to ourselves, “Life is good.
It is very good!” Much like a puppy dog, we feel totally free and full of boundless energy. We have things to do and places to go. Healthy and happy, we trust everyone and everything.
Remember those feelings of being completely alive, aware, and alert, truly enjoying the moment? Your question seems to reflect those moments.
I am sure you can recall times, even if brief, when you knew you were truly cared about and loved by family and friends just because of who you are. You can probably also remember that sense of awe from the sight, sound, feel, or taste of something wonderful.
You most likely have experienced and gazed with wonder and vicarious pleasure at the joy of life as seen in your kids, your wife, and the lives of others. Life is good. It is very good! And you should desire it and enjoy it.
However, it is tempting to let this more, this spiritual dimension of life take a backseat to the temporal, especially when everything is going well, and we assume that all our desires and goals are being met. Yet as good as life can be at a given time, we all understand that life can also be a bit fickle.
It does not behave according to our expectations on any permanent basis. Consider these questions: Has your life always been running so smoothly? Will it continue to run smoothly and according to your plan?
And what happens to your current good life and your aspirations, hopes, and dreams if it does not? Do you find yourself searching for more because in fact there is something more, a spiritual more?
Within the temporal, do you have a sense of peace, of belonging beyond that established by your possessions, performance, and accomplishments? When asked the question, “Who are you?” what would you answer beyond providing name, family, social identification, work, politics, age, rank, and social security number? The final question is this: Who and what were you meant to be?
Can we have an identity that goes beyond the good of life? I suggest that the temporal, when it is good, is only part of the good available.
I suggest that there is a true and living identity beyond our temporal lives and relationships. It is the life of the Spirit, our spiritual connectedness and relationship to the One who created us for love.
Without that connectedness and relationship, there is a void in our lives. The spiritual more is missing. And whether identified or not, we want and need this spiritual more
This more is to know that we are loved by our Creator and that He wants to bring us into a special friendship and fellowship with Him. This is very, very good indeed.
And this is something we neither have to perform for nor work for. It is a free gift. It is an integral part of the really good life now and forever.
Life is also full of contrasts. Can we expect the temporal good life to continually remain so permanently? As I write this letter, I remember a time when I was sitting on our houseboat. The weather was warm and calm.
The blue sky, white cumulous clouds, and magnificent shoreline scenery reflecting on the water were nothing short of spectacular. I remember some music playing in the background.
The family was enjoying a variety of activities, and my own puppy dog was asleep near my feet. How could I not declare, “Life is good. It is very good!”
However, another time at the lake we had a very different experience. As we headed out to find a beach where we could anchor for the weekend, the weather was warm, calm, and partly cloudy.
A few miles out I heard a terrible noise in the engine compartment. I noticed from the tachometer that one engine had stopped running.
I went to see what had happened and noticed that the engine compartment smelled like metal grinding against metal. Knowing that there was nothing I could do at the moment, I proceeded toward a beach under the power of one engine.
Once anchored, I discovered that I could not shut off the remaining engine. The ignition switch had no effect. After a while, I decided to starve the engine of oxygen in order to stop it.
However, when I tried to restart it, I discovered that the ignition switch had no effect on this function either. So there we were, anchored and ready to enjoy the weekend but with no engine power.
Soon I noticed some very stormy clouds rolling in. I turned on the marine radio and heard this message: “Boaters warning! A strong storm front is moving into the area with potentially high winds and rain. Boaters are advised to take shelter in protected areas.” Great! We were somewhat exposed to open water and had no engine power.
The storm hit. At first, the winds were only twenty to thirty miles per hour, but they soon increased to more than forty. I frantically put out more ropes and more anchors.
The waves were getting bigger and bigger as they slammed against the houseboat. The winds picked up to fifty miles per hour with gusts to seventy. The temperature dropped from the high eighties to the low fifties in the span of three hours.
I moved all my ropes and anchors to the starboard side of the houseboat, which was facing the wind and waves, and I was sandblasted in the process.
Despite using everything I had, four ropes and seven anchors, I still wasn’t sure whether the houseboat would hold. Since we had no power, if we broke loose, we would likely drift into the rocks and be pounded by the waves to the point of sinking.
The winds shifted about seventy degrees, and waves began breaking over the swim platform and engine transom, hitting the sliding glass doors and splashing to the roof above.
If the waves broke the sliding glass door, we would take on enough water to sink in place. We put chairs, blankets, pillows, and anything we could find against the glass to help keep it from breaking.
After six hours of battering, listening to call after call of distress on the marine radio from other boaters on the lake, and trying to remain anchored to the beach ourselves, we were exhausted. But we held.
The next day we had to be towed off the beach because the waves and wind had essentially dry-docked our houseboat by driving it onto the beach. What a contrast from the previous idyllic weekend!
As far as the puppy dog at my feet goes, well, we discovered a lump in her throat. We took her to the veterinarian only to discover that she had a cancerous tumor on her thyroid gland that needed to be removed as soon as possible.
The surgery could extend her life a few months or maybe a year or so. Our beautiful and loving sheltie, so full of life, had her days numbered.
So much of our temporal life can be good, very good. But it never seems permanent and secure. Life has a way of turning itself upside down. We don’t plan on it, and we don’t expect it, but it happens.
As we look at the temporal world around us, we observe too much that is the opposite of the carefree, healthy-and-happy, trusting-in-everyone-and-everything, puppy-dog experiences of life.
We can probably recall our own moments of ouch when great distress, anxiety, or pain, whether mental, physical, or financial, invaded our world.
What are we to think of these events that shake our tranquility and affect our thoughts, emotions, and relationships? One day all is well, and the next day we are living with the effects of disaster.
The disaster may have been caused by something external to us or something we caused ourselves. Either way, how can we manage that sense of the loss of the good life?
None of us like the idea that life can be significantly altered by seemingly random happenings from the forces of nature or the ethical, moral, and political decisions and mistakes of others.
Nor do we like to think that our own mistakes can be so disruptive. We usually say to ourselves, “There must be something I can do about life’s disaffections.
How do I relate to them? How can I account for them? How do I avoid them? And when things are going very good, how can I keep them that way?”
Too often the sense of loss evokes feelings of anger and injustice as well as feelings of inadequacy since we were not able to prevent whatever happened.
These feelings of anger or inadequacy can bring further feelings of separation, loneliness, low self-worth, and even a sense of guilt. None of us like these feelings either. Thus, we quickly spiral out of the good life when trouble hits.
Full of frustration and despair, we think, Why don’t I, why shouldn’t continuously experience the joy, peace, fulfillment, and love that life seems to offer? So much of the time, though, life seems so random.
The short answer is that we all have free will for the sake of love. Because we are self-determined agents of that free will, the problems created by the number of people making decisions out of self-interest are immeasurable.
Additionally, we must contend with an outside agent called Satan, who seeks to destroy all the good possible. Thus, I describe this reality as living in a broken world with other broken people.
Many books about this issue have been written. Such books include When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner, Where Is God When It Hurts? by Philip Yancey, When God Doesn’t Make Sense by James Dobson, Searching for a God to Love by Chris Blake, Is God to Blame? by Gregory Boyd, and The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis.
We may feel that we are at this moment in our lives experiencing the good life. We may feel we deserve that. We may have exerted a great deal of effort to make it good.
And in some cases, depending on life’s damages perpetrated on us by others, we may feel that we don’t deserve to know and experience such goodness. That is very sad.
Either way, there comes a point of action, an inner drive for survival that says, “1 don’t like the current state of things, and I am going to do something about it.”
We may choose self-protection, denial, or methods of escape, but for survival’s sake, we consciously or subconsciously decide to do something. We carefully build our house of cards in a certain style, hoping it will never fail us.
We take hold of our bootstraps and try as hard as we can to lift ourselves out of life’s chaos, nonsense, and seeming randomness in the quest for love, health, happiness, and security. Some are more successful at it than others. Some give up easily, and some fight very hard.
And just how do we find ourselves and others doing this? In honest reflection, we can see three ways people try, though unsuccessfully, to deal with the issue.
People can attempt to deal with this issue (1) by striving to be better than others through job position, titles, and possessions; (2) by numbing senses through substance abuse or addictive distractions; or (3) by filling life so full that no margins remain that allow them to be concerned with the issue of life’s disaffection. They are just too busy—go, go, go!
Some of us would say, “Aha, I have made it. I have achieved love, health, happiness, and security. I’m self-made, and I can enjoy the fruit of my labor, the joy of my family, the richness of the environment that I have set up around myself.”
But somehow in spite of all our efforts to insulate ourselves from the disaffections of life, the truth about the nature of things invades our created tranquility. The nightly news is a constant reminder of the problems in the world.
The truth is that financial and real estate markets don’t always go up. the truth is that people of the world have power and control agendas. the truth is that locks and security systems are necessary.
Our insurance policies talk of life’s unutterable events, events like our houseboat catching fire and burning to the waterline while no one was there.
The world is full of fire stations, police stations, courts, judges, and jails. doctors, dentists, and holistic healers remind us of our physical fragility.
Ambulances, hospitals, operating rooms, and emergency clinics are necessary. and there are all the graveyards with all those tombstones.
Yes, we all know that we are going to die someday. Hut surely we won’t today or tomorrow or anytime in the near future, wc think. And surely the ones around us whom we love so dearly aren’t about to die.
We still have things to do, places to go, and a lot of life yet to live. The younger we arc, the more remote and unrealistic that graveyard is for us.
Oh, we know it happens, but wc arc in pursuit of life. Life is good. It is very good! And we are on a continual quest to make sure we experience it.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the weather was always to our liking? Couldn’t the earth be a little more stable and predictable? Wouldn’t it be nice if honesty, integrity, promise-keeping, fidelity, fairness, caring for others, respect for others, responsible citizenship, pursuit of excellence, and accountability were the character traits of everyone around us?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every relationship had evidence of appropriate touching versus the brokenness of character evidenced by physical or sexual abuse?
How about emotional support, economic cooperation, and respect for others’ property versus emotional abuse, threats, economic abuse, property violence, intimidation, and isolation?
Relationships between people are constantly being put under strain or being broken. Each one of us can get caught in the drive to have our needs met even if it is at the expense of others.
And none of us likes that either. Then there are all those health issues that can strike our bodies or the bodies of our loved ones. Sometimes we overcome them, but at other times they leave their scars or do us in altogether.
So now what? If the environmental world around us is broken and some people around us are broken and we ourselves, no matter how hard it is to admit, are broken, where do we go from here?
Is life just “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die?” (see Luke 12:18-21). Is life just survival of the fittest? Is life nothing more than a process where some get lucky and others run out of luck?
Many would answer these questions with, “Yes, you’ve got it! I’m going to build my house of cards, and woe to you if you get in my way and threaten my progress.
I’m going to do it my way. Out of sheer force of will, I am going to prove that I can build a life that is good, very good for me.”
That suggests the man is little more than a seeker of ease and profit who does not want to be molested. But as I pointed out earlier, much of life is beyond our control.
Two opposing forces truly seem to be at work in this life, which brings up all the questions about good and evil, pain and suffering, and all those why questions. Where is God in all of this?
What has He done about it? What will He continue to do about it? How does it affect my life? Do 1 have to go it alone, making my way the best I can, creating my own goodness in life?
I hope partial answers to these questions have already been addressed in my answers to your earlier questions. But I need to say unequivocally that there is indeed good news! No, you don’t have to go it alone.
Here again, I invite you to turn to Jesus Christ. Don’t let the goodness and riches of life you have experienced obscure your need to be in a relationship with the original source of all that richness and goodness.
Only when we are in a proper relationship with our Creator, the Lord, and Savior, Jesus Christ, does an internal state of harmony exist in our broken world.
As Jesus Himself said, “I came that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Living in relationship and harmony with Jesus brings a peace that transcends all efforts to understand the why of things that intrude into our lives.
This peace comes as a result of connectedness to the source of life, Jesus Christ, God with us and in us. The apostle Paul expresses this thought in Philippians 4:7, which says, “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Because of Jesus Christ and by being in Jesus Christ, we truly live, move, and have our being, as expressed in Acts 17:28. When, at least by our perception, unwarranted things happen unexpectedly and unpredictably, we must remember what Matthew 11:28-30 says.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” And in Romans 8:37-39, the apostle Paul assures us that nothing can separate us from the love of God.
It is God in Jesus Christ who wants to heal us from spiritual and physical brokenness and reconnect us to our life source in Him.
It is this God of love who wishes us freedom from the consequences of this broken world on a permanent basis someday in an earth created anew.
It is this God of justice and mercy who wants to be with us now in each moment within our broken world both in our highs when we say, “Life is good. It is very good,” and in our lows when we doubt it.
With our knowledge of the one we belong to Jesus Christ, Creator, and restorer ofall things— even when we experience life’s pain and suffering, we can say, “Life is good.
It is very good.” It is understanding what the apostle Paul meant when he said. “Be joyful always, pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16-18)
This wore that we’ve been talking about is the understanding as well as the experiencing of this love from the Creator of the universe. This more is experiencing the fruits of the Spirit expressed in.
These are free gifts that come from the spiritual relationship with a God, who truly and continually loves each of us. This is a real and experiential more that reaches the very soul of our being. This is permanent and forever and brings meaning and purpose to life itself.
This more is a gift-God’s gift, Jesus Christ’s gift, and the Holy Spirit’s gift. The gift of this more fully satisfies the deepest yearnings of our hearts.
And until that yearning is fulfilled, there will always be an empty part of our lives. It is this more of a living relationship with Jesus Christ that truly makes life exceptionally good!
Your friend,
Matt