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Christian Network

All things of Heaven and Earth, even ostensibly good ones, are valueless if they are perceived as proceeding from anything or anyone other than God. No blessing is good apart from Him ultimately. It is in the recognition that they are from God that such gifts gain any meaning or worth and, even then, is must be recognized that having the Giver is always greater than having the gifts. Any other attitude can turn even the most wholesome thing into an idol.

Our Lord is not utilitarian. He does not give human beings the minimum that they need to live and nothing more. Our God is a God of abundance and He richly blesses all people with good things, even those living outside His will. As the Irish rock group U2 sings, "Blessings are not just for the ones who kneel". We call this blessing of those who do not know or love God "common grace" and we see it everyday in the pleasures, large and small, that he grants to us all. It is in God’s nature to give and to give generously. That said, while God’s gifts can bless all temporally they will only bless some eternally. The ones who will end up eternally blessed are those who both recognized and thanked the Giver and ultimately made the leap to accepting the greatest gift of all, His Son.

The built-in danger of any good thing is that, rather than reminding us of God’s generosity, the thing will become an end in itself. The deification of an object occurs when we look to it to fulfill the deep needs in us that can only be met by God Himself. The French Scientist and philosopher Pascal talked of a "God-shaped Hole", a space in our hearts that only the shape of our Creator can fill, and a place only He should be allowed to fill. Anytime something other than Him is placed in that hole it becomes an idol. This is because the object in question has usurped the role of God and He cannot and will not share the space in our hearts that He designed for Himself.

We Post-moderns, of course, do not worship idols of wood, clay and iron anymore. Our contemporary idols tend to be things like money, sex, drugs, power and possessions. Today all these things, and more, are frequently being forced into Pascal’s hole. But while some of these substitutes for God are inherently sinful not all are. Possessions, for example, are not evil in and of themselves, but they become evil when we attempt to find existential meaning in our lives and/or a sense of personal worth from owning ever more of them. Both of these basic human needs can only find their answer in God. Materialism, a misplaced faith in things, is a form of idolatry and it is one that affluent Westerners can easily fall into.

The truth is that common grace provides many morally neutral gifts. The ability to achieve is one; others include the capability to enjoy simple things like relationships, beauty, good food and laughter. All humankind potentially shares in these blessings that God has ordained for the entire race. Ultimately, though, they are all meaningless outside of a relationship with the One who gives them. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes learned this when he tried to find complete happiness solely through these and other pleasures. He came to realize that all were meaningless vanities when sought only for themselves. They were bankrupt when it came to meeting the real needs of his heart.

There is, however, a solution to the dilemma of how to find true joy in our lives. We must realize that the God of Jesus Christ is our answer and seek Him above all else. When this happens, when knowing God through Christ is recognized as the real solution for our deepest longings and we seek Him for Himself and not just for His gifts, two wonderful changes occur in us. First we come to enjoy God in a deeply fulfilling way with the result being that our existence itself becomes better than we could "ever ask or imagine." At the same time we find that the good things our Lord continues to give us become much more satisfying now that they are no longer usurping His rightful place in our lives. The result of these happenings is a deep and abiding joy. From this time forward we can begin to enjoy both God and His gifts in an eternal sense because the gifts we enjoy in our time on Earth become rightly related to the One with Whom we will spend our eternity.