ARE WE ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS?

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
2 Timothy 4:3 (NIV)

                You may have heard it said that the church is answering questions no one is asking. This is often said in a derisive manner, intending to point out how irrelevant the church is today. But I would like to turn that upside down. Maybe the world is asking the wrong questions.

                The number one question most people are asking today is, what will make me happy? Happiness has become the top priority of our society. If it makes me happy, then it is good. If it doesn’t make me happy, then it is bad. There are several problems with this philosophy of life. The first is that happiness is such a fleeting, transient thing. It evaporates almost as soon as we recognize it. In fact, if we make being happy our top priority, we will never achieve it. True happiness is a byproduct of life’s experiences, it is not an end in itself.

                There is another problem with making my happiness the ultimate goal. My happiness may, and often does, conflict with other people’s happiness. My happiness demands that other people conform to my wishes. If they view things differently than I do, then they threaten my happiness. This reveals a flaw in our quest for happiness. Happiness is not based on any standard of what is good and bad. It is based on my personal preferences; what makes me feel good for the moment. Ironically, what makes me feel good for the moment may have negative consequences in the near future.

                People have mocked the Bible as being irrelevant to where people are today. But the Bible was not written to answer our superficial, self-seeking questions. The Bible was written to reveal the truth about who we are. It was written to confront us with ultimate questions that matter far more than what makes me happy in the moment.

                Almost every appliance or gadget that we buy comes with an owner’s manual, or at least a link to a digital copy of an owner’s manual. I have to confess that I, like so many other men, am guilty of not reading the owner’s manual, but trying to figure it out on my own. After I have messed things up, then I turn to the owner’s manual to see where I went wrong.

                Our society has decided to disregard God’s owner’s manual for life and to figure it out on our own. We fumble around making a mess of our lives and wondering why things are not working out the way we want them to. Unfortunately, we often refuse to consult the owner’s manual. We would rather do-it-ourselves than readjust our life to conform to the way we were designed to live. Consequently, we are living with something far less than a truly satisfying life.

                Instead of asking the question, what will make me happy? We should be asking the question, what is my ultimate purpose in life and how do I achieve that. Many people seem to be asking that question, but in our relativistic society they are coming up empty. If there is no ultimate good and bad, if there is no ultimate authority, if there is no God, then there is no ultimate purpose in life. Life is a meaningless stretch of time that we must endure the best we can and then shuffle off into oblivion. Nothing we do during our life really matters. So eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Talk about a buzz killer on the quest for happiness.

                We were intentionally created to live in relationship with God. The purpose of our life is to bring Him glory by living according to His design. When we do this, we can find true happiness and fulfillment now and into eternity.

                It is true that the church is answering questions no one is asking. But maybe the problem is that people are asking the wrong questions. If we live our entire lives focused on just our happiness, we will never find it. If we raise our gaze to heaven, we will discover both true happiness and more; real life.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?
Matthew 16:24-26 (NIV)