Every now and then I’m going to find myself short of inspiration and time, and still needing a weekly blog post. In these moments of emergency, I’m going to mine my previous blog for something suitable (you remember my previous blog – the one I wrote while in Australia? I mentioned it a few weeks back). Anyway, this is one of those times. Here’s some decade old musings on purpose and happiness. I was quite the deep thinker in those days…
So is the message of the gospel to find happiness by living out your God-given purpose, or to find happiness in denying your God-given purpose?
Or – I believe that God wants us to be happy, but is happiness caused by circumstances or character? When I put the question like that, the answer seems self-evident.
One of the reasons that we moved to Australia was because I believed that what Cornerstone was doing resonated with my God-fuelled desires in a way that church ministry did not. In what seems like an unapologetically selfish statement, we moved to Australia because we believed that it would make us happy. And it has, and I remain convinced that God was steering the whole ship.
However, if we are where God wants us to be, why do I still suffer from angst and discontentment? If I am living out my dream, why do I still occasionally long for something else? The answer is obvious to me – because there is something inside me (let’s call it ‘The Dead Man’ ala Romans 6) that is not content when God is calling the shots. The Dead Man is oblivious to his own state of non-vitality, and needs me to constantly club him over the head with a shovel and drag his carcass back to its burial spot at the foot of the cross. The Dead Man fills my head with phantasms about how things would be better if I were in charge. The Dead Man lies, yet sometimes I’m a willing audience.
In other words, my lack of happiness is a character issue and not a circumstance issue. But, this leads me full-circle to what, for me, is the real question.
When do you stop and say “Enough is enough”? At what point do you step away from a job worth doing because it, ultimately, is making you unhappy and clashes with what you believe God has called you to? If happiness is a character issue then surely I should be able to devote myself to thankless tasks that need doing and remain joyful. Yet within me stirs something that balks at the idea of a lifetime spent pushing paper and ticking boxes. That is not what God made me for. Yet (if you’ll forgive the torturous metaphor) if everyone is Indiana Jones then there are no stay-at-home curators who provide the museums for the archaeologist’s findings.
If God has placed something within me that longs to be an adventurer, but what the world really needs is a curator, how do I live out the gospel? Do I pursue the adventure for the sake of my happiness and fulfilment, or do I find some kind of topsy-turvey kingdom happiness in rejecting my dreams and becoming what the world needs me to be. What is the real call of God?
Again, when I put it like that, the answer becomes self-evident. The key is to become what the world needs you to be. The world doesn’t ask “How can I help you fulfil your dreams?” The world (being populated, as you would expect, by Dead Men and Women) asks “What can you do for me?”, and the only answer a follower of Christ can give is “Well, I can die – and I can die well”.
This post might be interpreted as rumblings of discontent with what we’re doing in Cornerstone. Not at all. This is where we should be, and we’re doing what we should be doing. But it is a question about whether or not I am willing to do what needs to be done even if it costs me a dream. There’s never a bad time to ask yourself that question.
