A sampling of quotes about life obtained from a Google search can be very instructive. Some are funny, but most are humanistic if the first 100 I looked at are good indicators. Why do so many leave God out of the picture of life’s purpose? Because most people do not believe in the God of the Bible. They see all of the heartache and misery in the world as a contradiction to the Bible’s claim that God is a God of love who truly cares. When bad things happen, especially to good people, many people now assume that this proves there is no loving God.

 

   After denying God, the only thing left to do is to try making sense out of the world. That too is futility (read the book of Ecclesiastes). But secularism has prepared a fertile seed bed for the lies of the humanist. We are reaping the fruit of years of brainwashing with the lie “life owes me”. Anything less than what we want or expect now means that we are being cheated either by life or by God. A Godless generation is addicted to the Kool Aid of humanism’s “give me” / “owe me” mind set. So, how can we overcome such an ingrained and appealing lie?

 

   The humanist says, “Build up self-esteem” and eliminate all religious ideas about sin and punishment. The materialist says the answer is money or “wealth redistribution”. The only way to  find the right answer is by looking carefully at God’s Word, the Bible.

   First, what all sane, accountable people deserve is death (Romans 3:23; 6:23). This sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. Death (separation from God) is exactly what our life’s choices have earned us. But who in their right mind wants that “pay check”?

 

   Second, there is an alternative to that death called eternal life. This is what our loving, caring God wants for us. But we don’t deserve it, not even if we think we do because of our goodness (Mat. 7:21-23). We can only gain this life on the basis of divine mercy. Because God loves us, He made it possible for all men to have this life in connection with His Son,  Jesus Christ (1 Jn. 5:11). However, contrary to the assertion of some, this life IS conditional. We must obey Him to have eternal salvation (Hebrews 5:8-9).

 

   Yet, obedience to the Lord earns us nothing (Luke 17:10). Even though God does not “owe us”, He still gives us the reality of true hope. Real hope has nothing to do with satisfying earthly desires and expectations based upon “pie in the sky” promises. It is about a “living hope” and a life for all of His followers which is reserved for them in heaven. (1 Pet. 1:3, 4).  This is what we are living for. Living with heaven as the object of our desire and expectation (hope) is the essence of “abundant” life (John 10:10). That’s why we must remove all the secular garbage about what we deserve from life and concentrate on laying hold of “the life which is life indeed” (1 Tim. 6:19).   KD