D.C. Collier: Two Starkly Different Approaches to LIfe | Homes & Lifestyle

“‘I do know the plans that I’ve for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for prosperity and never for catastrophe, to offer you a future and a hope. Then you’ll name upon Me and are available and pray to Me, and I’ll take heed to you.’”
— Jeremiah 29:11-12

Within the span of a single day final week, I encountered two radically completely different approaches to the which means of life.

The primary outlook got here from a dismal guide evaluation in Tthe Wall Street Journal discussing well-known MIT thinker Kieran Setiya’s new guide, Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Assist Us Discover Our Means. The headline on reviewer Jennifer Frey’s piece was, “Suffering Gladly.”

The second outlook got here from a good friend of mine who’s staring into the fact of his mortality within the latter levels of Parkinson’s illness.

What a distinction between the 2 views …

1. Life Is Hopeless, and No One Is in Cost

In her Journal evaluation, Frey, a philosophy professor on the University of South Carolina, writes:

“A dedicated atheist, Mr. Setiya begins with a nod to the sad actuality of the human situation: We’re born to endure, in advanced and multiform methods. Not like Girl Philosophy, he affords his readers no treatment. There may be merely no solution to spin this straw into gold, no path to true happiness out of our sorrows.

“In truth, Mr. Setiya counsels, we should always reject happiness as a purpose altogether, and as an alternative take into consideration what it means to ‘dwell nicely’ in our struggling.”

Frey continues:

“Mr. Setiya’s path avoids the simple solutions. He doesn’t say that every part occurs for a motive (it doesn’t) or that advantage secures an excellent life (it won’t) and positively not that we are able to know the cosmos is guided by a loving, providential hand (we can not).

“Somewhat, the comfort he gives is ‘a handbook of hardships,’ a information to navigating via life’s challenges. His evaluation combines philosophical arguments and private reflections on his personal expertise. He affords this within the hope that it’ll assist readers higher perceive their very own struggling and maybe ease the burden of it.

“The result’s a deeply private exploration of six types of human struggling — infirmity, loneliness, grief, failure, injustice and absurdity …”

Christians aren’t blind to the truth that we dwell in a damaged, largely dysfunctional world because of the entrance of sin into God’s in any other case magnificent creation.

However — as famous in Romans 8:19-21 — that’s scheduled to vary sooner or later, “For the eagerly awaiting creation waits for the revealing of the little children of God … the creation itself additionally shall be let out from its slavery to corruption into the liberty of the glory of the youngsters of God.”

2. Life Is Infinitely Hopeful, and Within the Fingers of a Loving God

My good friend (referred to earlier as having late-stage Parkinson’s) is a outstanding retired lawyer who got here to religion in Christ midlife, and he has been a shining mild in our group ever since.

The next are his phrases to me in a private electronic mail. I’ve his permission to share them with you:

“As my years advance and my illnesses take their inevitable toll, I discover myself at a time and place proper now the place I’ve by no means been happier, or extra at peace, or nearer to God. For I’ve discovered, consider, and accepted joyfully that:

Every thing in life on this current Earth is non permanent, apart from the love of God.

It was by no means God’s plan for this current Earth to be our actual, closing residence. Our current earthly our bodies are perishable, non permanent and never designed to final eternally, so a bodily demise on this current earth is inevitable.

Because the Gospel teaches, the delivery, life, demise and resurrection of Jesus accomplishes God’s redemptive plan for all of His creation, and demise is defeated.

In heaven with God, we lastly develop into every part he supposed us to be.”

Dealing with one’s approaching demise has a method of focusing the thoughts. My good friend’s testimony will not be shot via with woeful melancholia and disconsolation, however sparkles with an irrepressible anticipation of glory — not loss however acquire forward.

The demise of a believer is one in all everlasting glory. The Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 1:21-22:

“For to me, to dwell is Christ, and to die is acquire. But when I’m to dwell on within the flesh, this can imply fruitful labor for me; and I have no idea which to decide on.”

How About You?

Our interior beliefs about our world and our place in it should not the mental playthings we expect they’re. Our true beliefs are actually the unconscious “rails” our lives run on — they’re what make us “tick” spiritually.

Beware what you admit into the interior sanctum of your coronary heart, the place your true beliefs reside. Your future is dependent upon it.

— D.C. Collier is a Bible trainer, discipleship mentor and author targeted on Christian apologetics. A mechanical engineer and web entrepreneur, he’s the writer of My Origin, My Destiny, a guide targeted on Christianity’s fundamental “worth proposition.” Click here for more information, or contact him at don@peervalue.com. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his personal.