We love them. We want them to be sucessful……and happy. It doesn’t matter if they are 6……or 60. And it breaks our hearts when they mess up……..when they do something that we know is self destructive. And they do it………over and over.

I used to tell my sons that I could predict the future…….that if they were late getting home on Friday night……..that they wouldn’t be going out on Saturday night. This was usually not well received.

The rules and restrictions that Cindy and I placed on our boys were set up primarily for their protection…….were set up primarily to lead them to success…….were set up to prevent them from doing something self destructive. The rules grew out of our love.

As our sons grew into manhood, they became more and more independent……..and our rules and restrictions gradually morphed into advice. But, the motivation behind them remained the same……..we still want them to be sucessful and happy…….and to avoid self destructive behaviour. The other thing that hasn’t changed……..is that much of this advice is ignored.

We see our adult children doing something. We look down the road and can see the inevitable bad outcome. We offer advice…..and often the advice is ignored…..or outright rejected. And this breaks our heart…….because, like it or not, we can still predict the future. Pretty obvious……..this is one of the inescapable realities of parenting.

Here’s the thing………God is my parent…….my creator. He gives me advice because he wants me to be successful and happy…….because he wants to spare me from a bad outcome. God’s advice…….God’s rules grow out of his love for us. And…….from time to time……….I ignore……..I reject his advice. And I break God’s heart……..because he too…..can see the future.

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!

Jesus, Luke 19:41, ESV

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

Jesus, Mathew 23:37, ESV

Politically, I am conservative……..you probably guessed. As for the major hot button issues: I oppose abortion, support the right to bear arms, and favor freedom over big government. I favor personal responsibility over entitlement. Of the major “news” outlets, Fox, more than any, other caters to my opinions. And yet, I rarely watch Fox. How can that be?

For what it’s worth, if you are a liberal, you can substitute CNN, MSNBC, or many of the other major media outlets. The problem is the same.

If you tune in Fox or CNN or MSNBC, there will be a “talking head” discussing the three or four topics that have him or her outraged today. Stay tuned for 5 hours and he or she will say the same thing over and over 50 different ways.

I can summarize the next 100 hours of broadcast journalism on all of the major networks in one sentence.

There are a lot of bad people doing bad things out there…….all day……every day.

I don’t watch Fox because when I do……I get mad. And that is the whole point. Fox, CNN, and the rest want you mad. They make their living by making you mad. They hope to advance their political agenda by getting you mad and keeping you mad.

Here’s the thing…….I don’t need the media to get mad. I am fully capable of getting mad………all on my own…….completely unsupervised.

And perhaps, that is the other face of the problem. We are all mad and we’re getting madder.

Mad is not what we were built for. God didn’t create Adam and Eve and put them in a garden so that they could fight. He put them there to love each other and to care for each other, and to love him. Instead, what he got was a “cage match” between 8 billion combatants.

Here is my suggestion.

Take the time every day that you spend watching the news……and getting mad…….or maybe scared. Set apart some of that time……maybe half of it……..and read a good book. Choose a book that will take you to the place that you were created for……..a place of love, charity, and, most of all, hope. Do this for a week or so. You couldn’t choose a better book than the Bible. A good place to start would be the book of John.

I bet you’ll feel better. In fact, you won’t just feel better…….you will be better. Because you will have taken a step closer to the place where you were meant to be………the place that you were created for…….and a step away from the “cage match”.

The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

James, 1:20, ESV

But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry…”

Jonah, 4:9, ESV

I was a physician for almost 40 years. In that time, I have seen a lot of pain……physical……and emotional. We all deal with it. We try to avoid it. But, we really don’t give it a lot of thought. We understand that pain is bad…….that there is mild pain……and severe pain. But there is an aspect of pain that we rarely consider…….the time course of pain. There is short term pain……..and there is chronic pain. In terms of misery, the duration of pain is a bigger contributor than the severity of the pain.

In my career……..and in my life…….the most miserable people I have met did not have the most severe pain. They were people whose pain was mild to moderate, but whose pain was long term. The most miserable of all had pain that was never going to go away.

This post is about the most extreme form of chronic pain……..eternal pain.

The Bible teaches many radical concepts. In terms of importance, the most important is the concept of a creator………a creator who loves us, who wants the best for us, and who has expectations of us. Arguably, the second most important concept in the Bible is the idea of eternity……..the idea of a place where time has no end…….where time, for all practical purposes, does not exist. This is closely tied to the concept of the soul…….that part of each of us that operates…….or will operate…… in eternity.

Pain……..joy…….eternity.

The Bible teaches that when we die, our soul will ultimately go to a place where time does not end. It also teaches that there is a division in eternity. There will be pain and there will be joy. And they will be permanently and completely separated, unlike our temporal world where we experience moments of joy and moments of pain. In eternity, there is a chasm separating joy and pain. In eternity, we will either experience constant joy……or constant pain……….paradise or hell.

We hear a lot about the severity of the pain in hell. But, I think that this misses the point. The worst part of hell will not be the severity of the pain……..it will be the fact that it has no end. There will be no hope for a better tomorrow.

Eternity + pain + lost hope = misery

This is a place that I really want to avoid. You may say that you don’t believe in eternity……..that you die and the lights just go out…….or that you go to a place that you have dreamed up on your own……..but you had better be right.

The threat of pain after death is real. Don’t focus on the details of the cause of the pain…….”will the coffee be cold”……..focus on the duration of the pain, which is ultimately the determinant of your misery.

‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’

A conversation between Abraham in paradise and a rich man in hell as told by Jesus, Luke 16:24-26

When I was a kid, my Mom rarely went to church…….and my Dad…….never. And yet they sent me and my sister with the neighbors to a local Baptist church. Later a church opened up near our house and Mom attended with us. In a word, I was raised as a Christian…….but a fairly lukewarm one. In college I walked away from my faith. I wasn’t a “bad” person…….but I wasn’t a practicing Christian either. I ran my life according to my rules……..I did as I pleased…….I executed my plans…….and I did well.

Later I was dating a girl who was a strong Christian, and she called me out. She said, “What are you afraid of?…..are you afraid that God will ask you to do something that you don’t want to do?” In so many words, she was saying, “Are you afraid that God will disrupt your plans?” I realized that I was standing on the brink……of a precipice. I realized that to return to Christianity could drastically change my path in life. And I blinked. I broke up with the girl and returned to my self-directed…….successful…….non-Christian life. Decades later I found my way back…….and here I am.

So…….what’s the point?

The point is…….the precipice…….the brink.

Intuitively, we know that stepping off of the brink……embracing Christianity……..will change things……will change us.

Making a serious commitment to Christianity will permanently and significantly alter the trajectory of the rest of your life. I knew that when she asked the question……..and I can see the results of it now.

Sooner or later, most of us find ourselves in the same spot I was in……..standing on the brink…….with a permanently life altering decision to make. Do I step off of the edge and give up control of my life……or do I turn away and resume a safe, fairly predictable life where I get to make the choices?

Ultimately, that is the decision we face…….at the brink.

“WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?”

Me……..or God.

For the first half of my life……I made the decisions…….based on what would get me ahead……socially, financially, and professionally…….over the next few decades. For the second half of my life…….I have tried to run my life on God’s rules…….love God/love man……..hoping to get ahead for eternity.

And I am happy……..and I am looking forward to a very bright future…….and not just for a decade or so…….but forever.

whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

Jesus, John 5: 24, ESV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Paul. 2 Corinthians 17, ESV