The Chief End of Man (is not Man)

"In Thy presence is fullness of joy. At Thy right hand are pleasures forevermore." Ps. 16:11

"O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name forever.... O taste and see that the Lord is good." Ps. 34:3, 8

Q: What is the chief end of man?

A: Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

(Question 1, Westminster Shorter Catechism)

It ain't paint by numbers.

Nobody makes themselves, and nobody is meant for themselves. These are two truths that are continually forgotten.

Everybody believes that they must make themselves. We are all blank slates or empty vessels who must substance ourselves with identity and purpose, becoming "self-begot, self-raised" by the end of our lives. We see no essential quality or purpose for us, no created meaning or given identity. We do not see ourselves as becoming something specific (like a child growing into their clothes, or an acorn growing into an oak). Instead, we see ourselves as nothing until we make ourselves something, anything. All this and more are the assumptions of the average person, and it is a great lie. No one made themselves, and no one makes themselves, and any attempt to make ourselves will fall short of the glory we are called to.

Respect the 'stache.

People also assume that we are meant for ourselves. The Nietzschean dream has been watered-down, but it is still alive: our chief happiness is to be found in our own aggrandizement, realization, and fulfillment. We are self-centered beings to the core, even in our finer moments. Everything boils down to our own happiness, our own flourishing. All our deeds, good or bad or neutral, are built around and building towards our own fulfillment, towards the identity and meaning that we plan for ourselves. Even God Himself (if we believe in such a thing) becomes subordinate to our own ends: religion becomes a means of social grace and standing, and worship becomes a means of emotional satisfaction. How many churches are there whose congregants come together in the name of God to worship themselves?

We are not meant for ourselves. We are meant for God, to exalt Him and delight in Him. This is the identity in which we were created. This is the purpose for which God made us. We were made for God, and you ought to be instantly suspicious of any doctrines or philosophies or fashionable thoughts that make you the chief end. They are wide off the mark precisely because they are so close to it. To exalt and delight in God, to glorify and enjoy Him, is where we are fulfilled and where we flourish. He is the soil we were made to be planted in, and we will sprout in no other. This is another one of those balances that seems to prove the truth of the Christian Faith: our happiness and fulfillment are all part of the picture, but they are not the point. They are involved in the end, but they are not the end, not the "chief end". We were made for joy and pleasure, but joy and pleasure belong to God alone, for He is Good (Matt. 19:17) and His Goodness alone creates gladness (Ps. 4:6-7).

If you're happy and you know it...

This is why it is wrong not only to make our own happiness the chief end but also to banish happiness altogether as something immoral or irrelevant. God is wedded to our happiness. He is our happiness. That is the point. There is no happiness or fulfillment outside of God. To put it another way, we will never find happiness as long as we are obsessed with finding it. As soon as we fling that obsession overboard and make God our obsession, our center, our one and only love, we will find to our pleasant surprise that we are happy. Happy in Him. He who loses self-obsession will be fulfilled. He who loses his life will find it, but only if you lose it in God. All else is sinking sand. All else is nothing, for outside of God is nothingness, and everything that does not seek Him reeks of nothingness.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Deliberate (Isaiah's Doxology, Part III)

"He has clothed me...He has covered me...as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels." Is. 61:10-11

The source of Isaiah's joy is not just that God's deliverance is absolute and total but also that it is neither arbitrary nor random. This is the meaning behind the next set of metaphors. Isaiah says that God has completely covered His people in deliverance and justification just like "a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments" and "a bride adorns herself with her jewels." The Hebrew words here are very interesting. "Decks" does mean "to dress," but it has specific religious connotations. The word literally means "to meditate," and thus is often used to mean "to dress as a priest for a religious service." The image is of purpose and function: you do not dress this way for just any reason or any day. There is a specific reason: it's your wedding day, or it's your turn to fulfill the priestly office. This is why the word means "to meditate": you do not meditate on the air or nothingness or anything that you want. Rather, you become focused, amassing all of your concentration on one thing. There is a purpose and function to what you're doing. Likewise, there is a purpose and function to God's deliverance and justification.

It's a Jared.

A bride adorns herself with "jewels," which in Hebrew means "something prepared or prearranged." The idea is not just of jewels but jewelry, i.e., not separate gemstones placed anywhere in any which way, but rather arranged in a pattern that matches and sequences color and size and shape into a single item whose parts enhance the whole. It is rich with purpose. Finding a lone jewel on the ground somewhere suggest no purpose, but finding them prearranged into jewelry does. There is a purpose and function; the thing is meant for a specific reason. In fact, the Hebrew word for "jewels" literally means any prepared or prearranged thing---the armor and weapons of a soldier or the luggage and bags of a traveler. The idea is the same: the prearrangement is all part of a larger plan and purpose (whether to make the bride more beautiful, the soldier more dangerous, or the traveler more prepared). So too is the deliverance and justification of God's people.

"That was deliberate!"

God does not cloth His people in salvation and righteousness, does not envelope them and hide them in deliverance and justification, just because. Redemption is not random. The Messiah did not set captives free on a whim, abandoning them right after the rescue. It is all deliberate, with a two-fold reason given at the beginning of the chapter: (1) "that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified," and (2) "they shall build the wastes of old, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities" (vs. 3-4). Herein is the double-barreled purpose for those who belong to God: that God would be glorified in their redemption and that they would continue the work started by the Messiah. The first speaks to their identity and ultimate purpose. The second speaks to their activity and immediate purpose. Both are interconnected, one leading to the other.

The identity of one who belongs to God is one who has been swallowed up in deliverance and justification. Where once they were captives to sin, they now belong to God, and the transaction itself is glorious to God who wrought it. Now, our identity is the foundation of our activity. Who we are determines what we do. This is why identity is so vital to people (especially today when identity is a nebulous beast at best). Until we know who we are, our meaning is lost to us: we don't know why we're here or what we're meant to do. For most people, the best they can do is make a half-educated, half-guessed approximation and hope for the best. The identity of God's people, however, is not a guess on their part but a calling on His (Rom. 8:28-30). They are "called" the "trees" and "planting" of God, called to be absolutely God's---planted, watered, tended.

This identity is not something we make for ourselves. It is something we are made by God, and there is the ground for glorifying God: we are the work of His hands, not our own. Any strength we have, any good we do, any purpose we find all comes from the life we've been given by Him. That is our ultimate purpose, viz., to let all that we do be an act if worship to the one who made us His own. Worship is to be our life, because we are God's and God is ours.

What that life of worship looks like leads us to the activity of those who belong to God: praise is to be the permanent pulse of their existence. But there is more to praise than singing and music. It is not less than that, but it is more. The way they worship is to continue on the work of the Messiah, the work of redemption, the "ministry of reconciliation" begun by Him (II Cor. 5:18-19). It is what Jesus meant when He called His own "salt" and "light" (Matt. 5:13-16): they savor and preserve all things with goodness and beauty and truth, and bear bright witness to God's goodness and beauty and truth. Men will see their works and glorify their Father who is in heaven.

"It's simple, really."

This is the place of "good works" in the Christian Faith, and it is the solution to James' paradox (James 2:14-26). To say that "faith without works is dead" is to assume that activity springs from identity, and if your identity is one who belongs to God then your activity will necessarily be good works that glorify Him before men. If there is no activity, then there is no identity. If there are no works in any shape or form, then your faith is not real, i.e., it is "dead". Paul is saying the exact same thing when talks of the "fruits if the Spirit" (Gal. 5:16-25): if we belong to God, if we are now the people of the living God (II Cor. 6:16) wherein His Spirit dwells (I Cor. 6:19-20), then there will necessarily be certain results, certain quantifiable ways of worship. If there are none, then you do not belong to God. It is that simple, that practical.

Only star-gazers change the world.

Everybody seems to miss the practical side of our doctrines, which is not how it should be. Christianity is practical mysticism, i.e., its divine realities are meant to be practical realities. Its word is to be made flesh. To belong to God, to be wrapped up safe and snug inside of His deliverance and justification, is not to become some airy abstraction. On the contrary, it has purpose and function, identity and activity, just as a bride and groom prepare for their wedding day, or as a priest prepares for his duties. You would not see a groom in his glory, dressed in his finest and surrounded by his "best men," and accuse him of impractical abstractionism. You would not look upon the bride in her beauty, in shining white and sparkling jewels arranged in perfect accentuation, and dismiss her as a hopeless day-dreamer whose actions have no function. You would not (though some might dare) consider a priest, dressed in his robes and rushing towards the church with bible and books in hand and glasses tilted down his nose, and say that his garb and gestures served no purpose. There is a purpose, whether you like it or not.

It is the same with those who belong to God, who have been buried deep into salvation and righteousness. They have been bought with a price and decked out for a purpose so that they might glorify God in their body and in their spirit, which our God's.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Purpose-Driven Light (The Gospel According to Isaiah, Part 4)

"Then said I, 'Here am I! Send me.'" Is. 6:8

It is not that we are just saved from damnation, though God knows that would be bounty enough. We have not simply been granted a free pass on Hell. What has also happened is a transformation: we have been made new, refashioned into a completely new creature. That is why salvation has sometimes been called "conversion". We often think of conversion as an intellectual realignment, but (if you remember your science books) it is actually more like a fundamental realignment. The very substance of our being has changed, and subsequently our desires and direction change. We have been set on a new path, given a new journey and new destination. I say "new" journey and destination, but it is really the old journey and destination: the journey of mankind walking with God deeper and deeper into God. Communion with God was our original purpose, a purpose lost and refound. It is only "new" to those of us who happen to be walking around at the moment.

The point cannot be stressed enough: in Christ we new life, not just a spot in heaven. That is the great truth of salvation: If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. We are crucified with Christ, and yet we live; yet not us, but Christ who lives in us. And the life we now live in the body we live by faith in the Son of God. God has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son. Now we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that we should show forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light. In times past we were not a people, but we are now the people of God; and because He who called us is holy, so we ought to be holy in all manner of living. For He died for us all that we who live should not henceforth live unto ourselves but unto Him who died for us and rose again.

Now our life is hid with Christ in God, and we are the temple of the living God, as God has said, "I will dwell in them and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Therefore we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, being not conformed to this world but being transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we may discern what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might have life and life more abundantly. And herein is eternal life: that we might know Him, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (II Cor. 5:17; Gal. 2:20; Col. 1:13; I Pet. 1:15, 2:9-10; II Cor. 5:15; Col. 3:3; II Cor. 6:16; Rom. 12:1-2; Eph. 2:10; John 10:10, 17:3).

Christianity was never about fire escapes, and Jesus is so much more than a bus pass out of Hell. We have not just been called out of darkness, but also in to light. A living Light, full of purpose, and we are one with that purpose. We who are saved and being saved have a call, a commission, a meaning radically different from the ways of the world, for life ought not and cannot be the same once you are known of God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

"When you pray...." Homily on the Lord's Prayer, Part 2: Our Purpose (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"...Thy Kingdom come...." Luke 11:2a

"His kingdom is forever." -Martin Luther

Prayer is not simply words to the ceiling or words with our self. It is (amongst other things) an acknowledgement of a reality that is greater than us, a reality that is personal, who has a name, and has a purpose to work out. That purpose is not merely one plan out of many, a single option put forth on a cosmic menu. It is the only option, the only reality, the only plan that is unfolding and will be accomplished, rolling along like a great wave that is yet far off but whose coming is whispered by the lesser waves that caress and batter the shoreline. You have but two choices in regard to what is destined to come: learn to ride it or be swept away by it. The Kingdom of God takes no prisoners, and it will have no rivals.

There are no stock characters in the Kingdom of God, no generic cut-outs or plain cookie-cutter Christians. Every one of its citizens (who dwell in the light of its already-but-not-yet status) has been uniquely equipped to be a specific member in the body of Christ, which is the living inauguration of the coming Kingdom. C.S. Lewis called the unfolding, overarching purpose and plan of God "the Great Dance," whereby every point in the pattern, no matter its size, has its place and serves its purpose. The purpose that it was meant to have. When we pray, we acknowledge that purpose. Our purpose. We acknowledge that their is more to our lives and circumstances then ourselves and others. There is a larger picture, a greater vision, a consuming fire that swallows up all of our paltry preferences and dull desires into its brilliance. It is the Kingdom of God, the ripples and reechoings of redemption coming from the very heart of the Trinity itself. When you pray, remember that you are not simply speaking; rather, you are testifying that you belong, viz., to God and to His purposes. You are not some small speck alone in a meaningless void. You belong to a King, and His Kingdom is your Kingdom, and it is coming.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011