catapult magazine

As christians we exist for God’s purpose, so I gather. All things work together for the greater good and so on and so forth. Is it possible to not ever see the purpose for your existence? God may have one, but is it at all possible that one may never truly know their purpose? Yes, everyone is part of the body of Christ, can someone be say, the belly-button lint in the body of Christ? There, but for what reason we do not know. . .

Oh… No now your getting too silly. I mean it.

But more seriously though… Your analogy is wrong. Belly-button lint has no purpose, NONE! I think that you’re thinking of an Apendix (You see, they have ?some? purpose because God put them there, we just don’t know what it is yet.)

I am sure you have a perpose as well. (If you’re talking about yourself I mean.)

You even made me think right now. How’s that for purpose.

Alright, so the analogy is faulty, appendix we shall go with appendix. However, the question still stands, is it possible to never know God’s “plan for your life” ? I’d really like your imput on this.

There are a couple of assumptions here that we maybe ought to examine. The first is this idea (which I don’t think is really Biblical) that God has a single plan for your life. If you somehow miss that single plan, then your life, the assumption goes, is wasted. It seems to me that what is wondrous about God’s plan is that it works around us a bit. So there may be many plans you can tap into. I think back to some of the major decisions in my life, and it occurs to me that if I had made different decisions about what to do and where to go, God would have used me in some other capacity (there is certainly planty of work to do on this planet).

The second assumption is that we actually have a whole lot of control in the matter. I really like the story of Jonah when I think about big decisions. God called Jonah to preach to the people of Ninevah. Jonah figured he didn’t want to serve God in that way and so he fled to Tarshish. God turned him around and sent him back. We’ve got free will and all, but we also have to remember that we are up against the Creator of the universe. That said, I think God leaves up to us a great many things. Don’t sweat the important stuff. He’ll get you where he wants you to be.
Having said that, could someone be the appendix of the body of Christ? Hmmmmm. Maybe in the sense that we haven’t discovered the purpose of the appendix yet, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. I think there are some Christians for example whose purpose is to be helped by other Christians. Sometimes too, there are body parts that don’t work so well. I think, though, that the analogy to parts of the body is constructed specifically to clarify that every child of God does have a distinct and important purpose (which can be worked out in amny different ways).

Yes, God is in control of life, that is true, but isn’t it possible to willfully go against what He want’s for you? The free will thing comes into play again here how much do we really have to do with anything? We can sin and go against the will of God, can’t we? Thereby going against his purpose for us. Or does God just form His plan for us around our screw-ups? (That could also be stated “has God already planned for our screw ups in advance when he predestined us?” says the Calvinist in me).

ahh, yes. one of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith. how can we truly have free will if God already knows everything about what we’re going to do? i don’t think we as humans will ever be able to comprehend such paradoxes, so i decided a while ago to just yield this one to God and realize that he’s just a whole heck of a lot smarter than i.

perhaps God knows our destination but allows us a little leeway to figure out how to get there. after all, there’s always more than one way to get to the same place.

i don’t pretend to understand this all, either—the relationship between free will and election (which is tied somehow to foreknowledge)—but the other day i had a thought about it.

i was in church and there was this old man i’d never seen before in front of me, and he had hair that was mostly white but had traces of blond in it and a huge white beard, and i thought, ‘hey, i wonder if my hair will look like that when i’m old,’ and then i thought, ‘hey, what if this guy is me, travelled back in time to observe myself at an earlier point in my life?’

and then this is where the related point comes in because after he went away and i continued living and eventually travelled back in time to this event, everything that i (he) did would be essentially ‘predestined’—because it had already happened, though it hadn’t really happened yet. and even if i didn’t remember what he had done as he stood there in front of me in the service, i couldn’t help but do the same things, even though they were previously known, or ‘dictated.’ and everything that i did there would be free will because when he (i) went there, there was no script to tell him what to do.

is that clear?

lb

ps. i don’t think it WAS me. his nose was different.

There is that whole verse about how all things work together for good to them that love the Lord. I have always taken that to mean that God can take even our wilful disobedience, our most horrible screw ups, and providentially arrange things so that they work out. Of course, my statement assumes that God does more than just know what is going to happen, he also sometimes influences things. Does that further erode our ntion of free will.

p.s. I have never seen an older version of myself watching me, that i know of.

this goes back off of the free will debate and back to the original post—i heard a story that relates to the idea of people not knowing what their purpose was fulfilling:

a group of missionaries went somewhere (i forget where, but it’s not really critical to the main idea) and were sharing the gospel with a group of people who hadn’t ever heard it. some of the people in this group figured a good way to get rid of these christians was to poison them, and slowly the christians began to die slow painful deaths, one by one. and by the time the last one died, there had been no converts, but the spectacle of these people racked with pain and dying and singing praises to God was the means used to bring many of them to faith—after all the missionaries were dead.

so, yes, i’d say it’s possible not to know what your purpose is, or what positive effect you are having, or why you’re where you are. but i don’t think it’s possible not to have a purpose.

lb.

Laryn, your first old-guy-is-really-me response sorta threw me off but the second one seems to make sense to me.

Now I have a second follow-up question, if it is possible for you to not know why you exist (even if you do have a purpose) than is it reasonable to say you shouldn’t go about trying to figure out what your purpose in life is because it might be essentially futile?

well, i wasn’t sure if anyone would make the connection i intended with the old-man thing, but i still think it has interesting parallels with the free will/foreknowledge/election debate. :)

i didn’t say (or didn’t intend to say) that we might not know why we exist—at least in generalities (people were created to worship and enjoy God, enjoy and steward the creation, be active in culture and community, etc. But in the specifics of knowing exactly how your role plays out in that whole spectrum (in that sometimes it’s hard to see whether anything we’re doing is actually making any difference, or having any positive result), sometimes it is less clear. but to give up and say, “if it’s possible i might not see exactly how my actions are affecting the people, the world around me, i’m going to give up trying to see” would be a mistake. it’s also possible that i might starve to death one day if certain events and situations occur, but that doesn’t stop me from eating my meals today.

lb