A life worth living

“Without Christ, just reading the stories shared on social media would make me commit suicide,” shared a friend.

Just reading the stories shared on social media, just hearing of young people die of careless accidents and children die of cancer, just seeing the pain that our loved ones experience, just facing our own struggles and insecurities… if left to our own faculties, we have every right to ask if this life is worth living.

What if we lived in utopia? Where there was no pain, no injustice, no struggle, and ultimately no death. Over history, man has tried to create utopian societies. One such society removed the restrictions of a monogamous marriage and child-rearing to a particular couple, creating a community where there were no clear couples and where all children born were brought up by the community, without a set couple of parents. As you would expect, things didn’t go very well, and this utopian experiment failed, along with many others which preceded and followed.

Why have they failed? Because you cannot create a perfect community with imperfect people. No matter how hard you try to have just the right laws, just the right rulers, just the right, just the right, just the right… Nothing just the right externally will suffice. For “a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things” (Matthew 12:35) and it is “from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mark 7:21-22).

The solution lies in having just the right heart, just the right thoughts, just the right emotions, just the right attitudes, just the right “you.” Is this possible?

Well, we’ve established that it isn’t possible in any man-made attempt at utopian perfection.

But has it ever existed since the creation of man?

Yes, for this was indeed the original design, God’s blueprint for humanity, which we foolishly refused. And the first murder in human history occurred shortly thereafter, and has been occurring ever since.

God could have left us to suffer the consequences of our foolishness forever, and rightly so. We deserve it.

But that would be inconsistent to the nature of the God I know. The God I know saw the dilemma that we got ourselves into and as a Loving Father with just the right heart, He offered us a way to be so united with Him that He would undergo in us the miracle of the transformation of the human heart! “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18). This is not an outward or in any way shallow transformation, dear friends! This is a miraculous transformation that transforms one who ordered the murder of Christians to one who expended his entire life to tell people about Christ and ultimately died for the sake of Christ. It is a journey of deep transformation from our hopelessly sinful state to His perfectly glorious state!

He does not just promise us a perfect utopia that begins in heaven, for He defines eternity as knowing the one true God and Jesus Christ His son (John 17:3).

Eternity begins here. Knowing Him transforms the impossible human heart. Knowing Him gives us a role in His grand story. Knowing Him enables us to overcome our worst fears, including death. Knowing Him gives us meaning.

Knowing Him makes life worth living.