Resolutions for 2018: Pursuing God --On Purpose

The New Year 2018 has seen the launching of many New Year’s resolutions.  But many well intended resolutions are already falling like leaky balloons.  A sense of failure is enough to keep many of us from ever trying again.   Maybe you can relate to this from your experience.

I’ve been there myself.  But, on this New Year, I’m thinking less about making resolutions and more about my life purpose.   A resolution may express a good intention or aim.  But it seems to me that my resolutions, good intentions, and aims must be based upon my sense of purpose.  I must first define and become committed to my purpose based on what I really value in life.  Then, my resolutions will be "on purpose" and I will become more resolute in my commitment to keep them.

My most recent focus on purpose began on January 1 while I was watching the film, Hugo, with our granddaughter, Della Rose.  This movie, directed by Martin Scorsese, features an orphan named Hugo Cabret who maintains the clocks in a 1931 Paris train station.  The colorful and creatively filmed movie tells the story of Hugo and his friend, Isabelle, who team up to solve the mystery of an automaton.  While attempting to learn more about Hugo’s deceased father, they also discover a mysterious filmmaker who had years before become so discouraged that he stopped applying his great gifts of magic and movie-making.  Hugo’s hideaway in the walls of the train station surrounds him with machines and their gears, springs, and pendulums.  Even the station inspector who seeks to capture Hugo must use a mechanical leg brace to walk.

As Della Rose and I watched Hugo, I began to see an interesting tension emerge—a tension between two contrasting worldviews.  On the one hand, Scorsese could have used his portrayal of early 20^th century machines to underscore a naturalistic philosophy.  Naturalism views the world as if it were a giant machine with interacting parts, all functioning according to laws of physics and chemistry.  Human beings in this world are simply another kind of machine operating predictably according to these same laws.  Accordingly, our behavior is determined by interactions of this evolved anatomical, physiological, and molecular machine we call the human body.  Naturalistic evolution claims that humans and all forms of life were “created” by time and chance collisions of atoms and molecules.  According to the naturalistic worldview, there can be no free will or purpose.

But while Scorsese’s movie has busy machines, unwanted orphans, and an old man who had given up on his purpose for living, it deliberately avoids presenting a purposeless view of life.  Just as the movie appears headed toward endorsing naturalism, a beautiful dialog between Hugo and Isabelle reveals their individual need to know their respective purposes for living.  Let’s pick up the dialog as Hugo tells Isabella about the kindness of a librarian named Monsieur Labisse who has just given him a book to keep.  Isabella replies,

ISABELLE:  He’s always doing that—“sending books to a good home.”  That’s what he calls it.
HUGO [reflecting on what Isabelle has just said]:   He’s got real [pausing again]…purpose.
ISABELLE:  What do you mean? 
HUGO:  Everything has a purpose—even machines.  Clocks tell the time, trains take you places.  They do what they’re meant to do.
ISABELLE:  Like Monsieur Labisse.
HUGO:   [pausing thoughtfully] Maybe that’s why broken machines make me so sad.  They can’t do what they’re meant to do.  Maybe it’s the same with people.  If you lose your purpose, it’s like you’re broken.
ISABELLE:  Is that your purpose, fixing things?
HUGO:  I don’t know.   It’s what my father did.
ISABELLE:  I wonder what my purpose is.
HUGO:  I don’t know.
ISABELLE:   Maybe if I’d known my parents, I would know.

Upon hearing Isabelle’s sad reflection, Hugo pauses to think.  Then he invites her to follow him into the clock tower to look across the grand lighted city of Paris at night through the face of the clock.  After gazing for awhile in silence, Hugo speaks:

Right after my father died, I would come up here a lot. I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured if the entire world was one big machine... I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason.    And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.

Hugo, Isabella, and automaton

Here, in a tender, thoughtful dialog between two orphans we learn that, while humans are machine-like, they are much more than machines.   Granted, both humans and machines are intelligently designed—“for a purpose.”  But each human being is much more.  Each person is marvelously formed in a mother’s womb and born into a parental relationship.  Seemingly engrained within the DNA and expressed in the soul of everyone is the need to discover and pursue purpose in life.  Isabella wonders if she would already know her purpose if she had known her parents.

After Della Rose and I had finished listening to Isabella’s sobering words, I stopped the movie and replayed the dialog.  Then, I asked,
“Della, can you understand how much Hugo and Isabella wanted to know their purpose for living?”  
She nodded, and I followed with,
“Do you think you will learn what your purpose is as you grow older?” 
She thought awhile and then shared some things she likes to do now as if she already understood how she might learn her purpose from experiences she has enjoyed. 
I continued,
“When you were a little baby, your home and your family was your whole world.  Then, you began to make friends in church, and then in pre-school and kindergarten.  As you continue to grow, learn to love God more, He will help you understand your purpose in life.  For now, God wants you to love Him, obey His commandment to Honor your father and your mother (Exodus 20: 12), and obey your teachers so that you can learn from them.

I thanked God for the opportunity to have this special conversation with our granddaughter.  Then, I realized that she and I had introduced the most important element in any pursuit of meaning and purpose in life—the life and teachings of our Creator.  Martin Scorsese had infused the otherwise cold, purposeless, machine-world of naturalistic philosophy with the warmth and human kindness of a librarian who had given a book to an orphan boy.  Then, God had used the movie to inspire a grandpa and his granddaughter to consider how their Creator is helping them learn who they are and what their purpose is as part of His plan for their lives—through parents, family, church, teachers, and community.

As Della Rose and I watched the rest of Hugo, we saw how two orphans in search of purpose found joy in helping a discouraged film-maker rediscover meaning and purpose.  As I now reflect on our New Year’s Day “movie experience,” I realize that God is our wonderful Counselor and Friend regardless of age.  For both a pre-adolescent girl and her retired grandfather, a sense of purpose in life is important—God desires to be a guide to both the young and old.  If this notion is true, then it is also true that we must subject our search of purpose in life to a much grander pursuit—an all-out pursuit of an intimate relationship with God. 

What does it mean to have an “all-out pursuit of God?”  The daily devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest offers words of wisdom and inspiration from its author, Oswald Chambers.  For January 1, Chambers refers to the Apostle Paul’s writing in Philippians 1: 20 and exclaims:

“My determination is to be my utmost for His Highest.” To get there is a question of will, not of debate nor of reasoning, but a surrender of will, an absolute and irrevocable surrender on that point.  Shut out every other consideration and keep yourself before God for this one thing only — “My Utmost for His Highest.”  I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and for Him alone.

In today’s world, it seems that relatively few people make the pursuit of God their primary purpose. Instead, we seek meaning and purpose in human philosophy, material possessions, prestige, and power.  But, the prophet Jeremiah challenges us,

Thus says the LORD, "Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things…" – Jeremiah 9: 23-24

This God, Who wants us to understand and know Him in an intimate way, came seeking us when the Word [Jesus Christ] became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw His glory (John 1: 14).  By reading the Gospel accounts, we can “see” the love of God poured out through the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Jesus modeled a life marked by an “all-out pursuit of God”—a life that is rich in meaning and purpose.  John 17: 3 records Jesus praying to His Father in Heaven, stating the essence of Life:  This is Eternal Life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 

Here, we have literally the essence and meaning of life spoken by our Creator, Jesus Christ. The commentator in The Reformation Study Bible (Reformation Trust Publ. 2015) expands upon this truth:

The meaning of our lives is at stake.  Our dignity is on the line. If human beings are considered alone, apart from relationship to God, then they remain alone and insignificant.  Our origin and our destiny are tied to God.  The only ultimate meaning we can have must be theological.

All our vows and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to carry them out. When we have come to the end of ourselves, not in imagination but really, we are able to receive the Holy Spirit. “Receive ye the Holy Ghost” — the idea is that of invasion. prayer of Jesus recorded in John 17: 3-4, we can see how closely Jesus’ ties His definition of “Eternal Life” to His sense of purpose in coming to Earth as Savior of mankind:

This is Eternal Life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.  I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.

All---Of course, Jesus continually realized that He could do nothing on His own initiative (John 8: 28).  Oswald Chambers reminds us that we must follow the example of Jesus in our dependence upon God for meaning and purpose:

All our vows and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to carry them out.,  When we have come to the end of ourselves, not in imagination but in reality, we are able to receive the Holy Spirit.  "Receive ye the Holy Ghost" -- the idea is that of invasion.  

Maybe you are still holding forth and determined to keep your New Year’s resolution.  More power to you.  As for me, I am learning that it helps if my resolutions are first grounded upon a clear sense of purpose in my life.  And my effort to be “on purpose” is helped as I pursue the joy of the gift of Eternal Life—walking and working daily in the power of God’s Holy Spirit living in me, fed by the “bread” of His Word.