Pursue What Is Meaningful - Part 4

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. 178- 201

Opening Thought: For the sake of time, I will be limiting what I have pulled from Peterson in the last 23 pages. Peterson covers much history, philosophy, religious nuance, and more, all of which I highly recommend checking out for yourself. I will also note Peterson offers a nice summary of Christianity in history, offering an apologetic defense of Christianity's benefit to the whole of human history, as well as offering some insight into the struggles it faces from the modern (and eventual) post-modern groups, which developed from the very freedom Christian provided. This history, though briefly offered in Peterson’s work, would consume many hours to review in this format, so I will leave it to you again, to seek out in your own time.

Peterson boils down his review to what I would call the Nihilists Dilemma. Suffering is the Hell we all face in real-time. It doesn’t matter who we are we will find suffering. Even the most lavished person will find their psyche eroded by pleasures, making them miserable and longing for a mystery beyond their reach. The suffering causes the dilemma for the nihilist because you cannot claim suffering as wrong or evil unless you believe in an objective moral standard. The nihilist will try to argue against the existence of an objective moral standard, but the quickest solution to debunk their position is to key their car. (Don’t key anyone’s car or anything else of theirs for that matter, this is just a philosophical joke). If a nihilist got upset with you for doing so, you just say, “well, subjectively to me, it was morally right to key your car.” Joke aside, suffering is much worse than the inconvenience of car scratches, suffering is a reality that no one can hide from, though many people try.
Peterson says this about suffering,

What can I not doubt? The reality of suffering. It brooks no arguments. Nihilists cannot undermine it with skepticism. Totalitarians cannot banish it. Cynics cannot escape from its reality. Suffering is real, and the artful infliction of suffering on another, for its own sake, is wrong. [pp. 197]

Once we come to terms with the reality of suffering, with things that are evil, or maybe best put, not good. Then we must ask ourselves is there “good”? Well, most people who say they have experienced good in some form: charity, kindness, modesty, humility, etc., Peterson also offers the next step once you overcome the Nihilist Dilemma, which I call the Philosophical Christ Point.

And if there is something that is not good, then there is something that is good. If the worst sin is the torment of others, merely for the sake of the suffering produced – then the good is whatever is diametrically opposed to that. The good is whatever stops such things from happening. [pp. 198]

The greatest good that humanity can produce is an effort to eliminate suffering, which includes the opposition to those who would willingly cause suffering to others. Here we begin to see the language of what it means to follow Jesus. The Christian too is called to produce works that eliminate suffering from the world around us. Needless - suffering is diametrically opposed to goodness, and goodness is a standard derived from God’s very nature. In Jesus, we see even greater goodness. The ideal good that is the Christ, come to suffer with us, and ultimately, he would suffer because of us, and then for us. Christ suffers threefold to show us, offer us, and bring us the salvation which will help us overcome suffering in life, but ultimately bring us to peace in the new creation, which will be void of suffering.

Opening Prayer  Lord, we thank you for times like these, where we can learn to love. We give you thanks for times like these, where we can side a reflect with you as if we were listening to great music or the rhythm of our hearts. Amen.

Scripture: John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Reflection: Christian or not, I believe all of us will have to make the choice between the pursuit of what is meaningful, or what is destructive. We will all end up, whether it is conscious in us or in the whispers of our subconscious, must choose between a belief in something or a belief in nothing. The temptation of nothing is there is no personal responsibility in nothing. If everything is just a neutral black void, if all of reality is just a material mistake of the mindless cosmos, then anything and everything one does is meaningless, thus, no responsibility is needed. Choosing nothing, in my opinion, is the coward’s way out.

It is only when we choose something when we choose meaning, that we begin to live. When we begin to understand that there is truth, goodness, and meaning, we accept a burden of responsibility, that we are called to defend and affirm these ideals. And the first step, the very first step to properly defend goodness, is to defend it from yourself. You must be willing to see the sin you carry, otherwise, the works of your hands will be soiled by your vices towards sin, and darkness. When we willingly recognize our sinful disposition and still seek to serve the ultimate ideal of goodness – we begin to understand the Christian journey. And the best part of the Christian journey is we don’t do it alone. Jesus comes, bringing the Spirit, and His communion with God, inviting us to trust in the very source of goodness, to welcome God as our backbone in our quest to resist evil, and to serve goodness.

Challenge for the Week: Chose to serve what is meaningful and good. What can you do today to elevate suffering? This could be small scall, or big scale, personal or communal.

Be mindful to avoid false solutions, i.e., booze can elevate emotional suffering for a moment, but just masks one problem with another.

Prayer for your week: Lord, help us to lift others out of suffering, give us the strength and the courage we need to be liberators from the shackles of sin and evil. Let us be free to live a life that brings glory to your vision of creation, Amen.

Artistic Close: Peterson makes a reference to the choice between serving meaning of destruction and shows how this is often played out in our narrative world of comic books and movies. The most infamous being Superman, the good and meaningful servant; verse Lex Luther, the vain and arrogant destroyer.

https://www.supermanhomepage.com/august-2-2016-superman-vs-lex-luthor-premium-art-print/