Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Reflection: Made for this Very Purpose (June 17, 2012)

The 3rd Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 3:8-15;2 Cor. 4:13-15:1; Mark 3:20-35


As technology continues to advance, more and more of the devices that we use have moved from the specific purpose for which they were created to multiple purposes. The best example of this integration has to be mobile phones. Originally designed to bring portability to voice communication, they evolved to include text messaging and email and now have full internet connectivity with a host of applications. Today's smart phone has far more computing power than the PCs of a decade ago. It seems that among the features of a smart phone, voice communication ranks fairly low both in importance and use. Never mind that the mobile phone was originally created for this very purpose.

While we have gown comfortable with technology advancing to the point that devices lose their original purpose, losing sense of our purpose has proven to be disastrous to us as a people. While it has had a role in this problem, it's simplistic and naïve to blame technology for our lost sense of purpose. Despite the mind boggling changes in technology in our lifetime, it continues to be a tool subject to our use and under our control. Forces other than technology are behind our loss of identity and purpose.

If not technology, what's behind our loss of the purpose for which we've been created? The answer is found in our culture's ever increasing acceptance of the thinking that we have evolved from lower life forms and, along with it, our rejection of the idea that we were created by God for a purpose. We've embraced Darwinism as a world view because it frees us to do, think, and be whatever we desire, but it has stripped us of real and lasting purpose by insisting that we understand of ourselves as products of randomness rather than design and impressing upon us that our lives are governed by accidents instead of divine intent. We are, according to this view of man, simple and finite creatures. In its quest to understand what we cannot know, science has dismissed us as unique in God's creation and robbed us of the very purpose for which we were created: eternal life with Christ. But God insists on making His intent for us known. He will not sit idle while we perish. To this end He has given us His Son, who joyfully reveals the Kingdom and the very purpose for which we've been made.

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