Pursue What Is Meaningful - Part 3

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos. Great Britain: Penguin Random House, 2018. Rule 7: Pursue What Is Meaningful [Not what is Expedient], pp. 174- 178

Opening Thought: If we wish to pursue what is meaningful, we must also be aware of what is not meaningful, and against meaning. For the Christian “meaning” is associated with truth, and the only thing that is ultimately true is the will of God. Anything that is against God, is against the truth, and ultimately would have no meaning. Evil is the antithesis to all meaning and truth. Thus, evil is meaningless and functions in falsehood. But God did not create evil in the sense that God did not create an elemental evil that pollutes the world. Rather evil is a deprivation of what God did create. When you twist the truth and meaning away from what God intended. The more meaning and truth are twisted the greater the evil becomes. The human being is supposed to be in communion with God, following God’s will to the letter. The more human being moves away from the ideal of God the more their actions and motivations will become skewed, and their productions as living beings will be corrupted. As Peterson notes, it is hard enough that humanity must face the harshness of the landscapes of reality and nature, but we must also contend with the fact that if we are not careful, we can become moral monsters.

Opening Prayer and Scripture: The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. Amen.

Reflection: In my limited exploration of Peterson written work and online presence, I find myself impressed by his dedication to the topic of human evil. For the most part, people shy away from this topic, and often when people don’t shy away from it, it is because they are wanting to point out the evil in others. Rarely are people lining up to review the evil in themselves. One of the things I find so fundamentally important about Christianity is the necessity and willingness Christians must have to both recognize and confront the evil within. This evil within causes us to sin, and sin drives a large wedge between us and God, making it easier for us to sin – and the cycle builds.

Peterson postulates that human evil comes about by our self-consciousness. As people become aware of their own vulnerabilities; they also become aware of other people’s vulnerabilities. And in a world where the terrain is difficult, your own limitations are challenging, plus there is competition and there is always the element of chaos and the unknown, evil can seem very tempting; as you can use it to try to satiate the sorrow, rage, and frustration you feel when trying to live out your existence. And, as we have already discussed, life required us to sacrifice for the future good. We often need to give up easement, comforts, and impulses to serve the greater good and ideals; but evil calls us to sacrifice the good and ideals for our easements, comforts, and impulses. People will go as far as causing pain in others to feed their impulses and desires. Now to add to Peterson I would say that the sin that propels evil the greatest is idolatry or its more self-indulgent form, pride. It is our pride that allows us to forgo what is right and expected by God and then fall to lower forms of behavior. Everyone is going to feel the pressures of existence, but it is only when we feel entitled by pride to dictate what we feel our existence should be at the expense of others that we place our corrupt selves on the throne of God.

If we ever want to pursue meaningfulness, we must take evil with great seriousness. We must never assume that we will not fall into the traps of both sin and evil.

Challenge for the Week: Think about a time you gave in to a temptation that could be understood as sinful, wicked, or evil. (If you’re unsure use the 10 commandments as a jumping point or ask yourself if you ever harmed anyone spiritually, mentally, emotionally, or physically.) Once you have something to reflect on, ask yourself what motivated you before you commit the act, and what would have God wanted you to do instead.

Prayer for your week: Lord, forgive us if we have trespassed against You or our neighbors. Help us to live humbly so that we can be mindful of the evils we could produce and help us to avoid that production. Amen.

Artistic Close:  Out of all the animals in the world, the snake is one of the most associated with evil. I don’t think this evil association has anything to do with its appearance. Many fear the appearance of a snake in association with what the animal carries with it, poison. Now not all snakes are poisonous, but many are. Poisonous creatures often hold places of fear in mythology because poison is not only deadly, in the time of ancient people, getting poison was a slow, painful death and there was little to do about it. Plus, poisonous snakes are often small, or stealthy; meaning, they could strike without you knowing what happened. When we fear this vulnerability, we can take drastic measures, we can become unhinged, and dangerous. But we cannot sacrifice morality, in the pursuit of security. Sometimes we need to just face the snake.