The Goal
Posted by: forthrightmag <forthrightmag@...>
http://www.forthright.net
Straight to the Cross
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This week, we think about purpose. "The LORD has
made everything for its purpose, even the wicked
for the day of trouble" (Prov. 16:4).
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COLUMN: Final Phase
The Goal
by J. Randal Matheny
"It is that the process is more important
than the end result. It is what you learn
while you're dreaming or scheming or working
toward a goal that is essential and valuable,
not the achievement of the goal itself."
(Arthur C. Clarke & Gentry Lee, Cradle: A
Novel [New York, NY: Warner Books, 1988], p.
407)
In one form or another, in prose and poetry,
people are singing the virtues of the journey
above the destination. Better to smell the roses
along the road's edge than to rush toward one's
goal, goes the thought.
Though popular, the sentiment conflicts with
divine teaching because of certain assumptions it
contains.
First, process-over-results thinking emphasizes
the here-and-now. It's the old philosophy of eat,
drink, and be merry. We know where that got the
rich man; besides the title of "rich fool," he
lost it all in one whack, both goods and soul.
It's new clothes for the old hedonism. Enjoy the
journey! Don't worry so much about getting to
wherever it is you're going.
So the here-and-now undercuts the HOPE of future
joy.
What a contrast to the Good News of eternal
destination! Time and place are merely the proving
grounds for celestial bliss and perfection. "...
we will be like him, because we shall see him as
he is" (1 John 3:2 ESV). Why settle for admiring a
rose that withers tomorrow when we can have the
Son's perfection that lasts forever?!
Second, hidden deeply in the folds of the joys of
riding over arriving is evolutionary meaningless.
The beginning quote above comes from a science
fiction novel which invents millions of evolved
life forms and a superior race that would seed the
earth with perfected human beings. Why all the
interest, fictional and scientific, in postulating
and searching for life in the universe? Perhaps to
throw some meaningful rags over the naked futility
of evolutionary theory.
For evolutionists, there is no meaning, no purpose
to life. It's pointless, "no design, no purpose,
no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless
indifference."* History has no direction. There is
nothing to believe in. So why not invent ETs who
might have even started everything here on earth?
Besides that, let's just go with what we can see
right in front of us.
So the random process douses FAITH in the
invisible, purposeful God.
Man stopped talking about "creation" and
substituted "Nature." But all this had a starting
point, and it will have an end point. God embued
his creation with purpose and direction.
Beginning, middle, and conclusion. Planet Earth
will be destroyed, not by man's folly or through a
universal fluke, but by divine timing and reason.
From the degeneration of creation, God would pull
from the flames as many as possible to save them.
His purpose is "set forth in Christ" (Eph. 1:9).
Such a grand purpose is eternal (Eph. 3:11). All
this was set in motion even before the material
world was brought into existence (1 Pet. 1:19-20).
Man's internal yearning for meaning finds its
answer in the overarching plans of the Lord.
Third, the exhortations to stop and smell the
roses have only goals that are humanly derived and
human sized. There is no goal large enough to
capture the imagination and call for the
dedication of the entire being. That is why the
process becomes more important than the end
result, the journey more interesting than the
destination.
So that means that LOVE is diminished to whatever
catches the eye.
To a Christian, the one goal which overshadows all
else is to know God through Christ, to experience
fully his love and presence. All is done "to gain
Christ ... that [we] may know him and the power of
his resurrection ... that by any means possible
[we] may attain the resurrection from the dead"
(Phil. 3:8,10-11). The resurrection means we will
not longer see through a glass darkly, but will
know him as we are known, fully, free from earthly
limitations.
You and I have the wonderful opportunity to get
caught up in this divine goal, so much larger than
ourselves, so much more wonderful than any project
we could devise, beyond our imperfect moment and
painful present.
In hope. By faith. For love.
There is nothing else but the goal itself.
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*Quoted in "I Wish I Had a Belief System [Part
I}," by Bert Thompson. See the various quotes in
the article to this effect.
http://www.apologeticspress.org/rr/rr2003/r&r0309a.htm
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