The Essay Question

The essence of an essay test is that you write everything you know about the subject at hand.  This is true of our lives as well.  We live out a way of life that represents everything we know about doing life well.  That's why life has no multiple choice.  Because the way we live is our best answer to life.

Recently, I tried to Google "how many self help books are there?," and I couldn't really get a solid number after looking for about 5 minutes (which is all the time I care to spend on trying to find out how many self help books there are out there).  Regardless, there are many.  It seems we are culturally obsessed with becoming better than we currently are.

I have read none of these books, so writing a blog post on this subject is probably a bad idea.

The first few days of a new year probably means thinking of how to better answer life's essay question.  We all want to make our lives better.  The problem is that whatever your idea of better is, it wasn't your idea.  The idea of a "good life" is just the general consensus of what a "good life" is.  Self help books will help you become the self that someone else thinks is best.

Throughout history, many people have said that being "good" is what God wants you to be.  But this idea of good didn't necessarily come from God.  It came from people's ideas of the best way to answer life's essay question.

In the book of Habakkuk, the prophet asks God why He is acting against His own people.  God responds by saying that His people are acting in ways that are unjust, or unrighteous.  Since this is the case, God is going to make things right, or just again.

It has nothing to do with who is "good" or who is "bad."  All people seem to have a tendency to make things wrong.  We live in a world full of injustice; a world of unrighteousness.  The Psalms say that God's hands are full of justice.  So when God acts, things become right.  Things become just.  It only makes sense that those who are called God's people would be made right by Him.  To be made just, God needs to take away the parts of people that were steeped in injustice.  That's a pretty painful process.

In 2012, lots of people will try to write a good answer to life's question.  Maybe a better idea is to resolve to answer the question rightly.  Maybe a better idea than living well in 2012 is dying well.