62 Sermon Illustrations on Fulfillment

Problems with timetables:

1. It is misguided to expect a sharp distinction between the immediate and ultimate fulfillment of prophecies.

2. Real fulfillment does not always equal total fulfillment. (Final fulfillment may be spiritualized.)

3. Ethics is always closely tied with prophecy. The future is not necessarily fixed. God can change his plans.

The April 1980 FORTUNE magazine carried an article called "On a Fast Track to the Good Life." In it they described the goals, motives and objectives of these young people. Their research described them as:

1. Believing that success in life means financial independence

and the best way to gain it is to be at the top of a major

corporation.

2. Believing in themselves. There is no "Humble talk" among

them.

3. Believing that any relationship that slows down their climb

up the corporate ladder as expendable.

Citing why marriages and family life are of minimal

importance to them.

4. Loyalty is not of high importance on their list of values.

They move about with resume in hand prepared to move on if

things don't move up.

5. They are convinced that they are more creative and

imaginative then those "Old Geesers" now holding positions of

top corporate offices.

These kinds of attitudes don't fit in very well scripturally.

Jesus would surely say to them "For what does it profit a man, if he

should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

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Bertrand Russell's description of inner longing:

"The center of me is always and eternally a terrible pain - a curious, wild pain - a searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfigured and infinite, the beatific vision - God. I do not find it, I do not think it is to be found, but the love of it is my life; it's like passionate love for a ghost. At time it fills me with rage, at times with wild despair; it is the source of gentleness and cruelty and work; it fills every passion I have. It is the actual spring of life in me."

Debate between Christians and Jews over whether Jesus is actually the Messiah. Summary of Christian argument (full outline below):

1. Blood atonement is necessary and only Jesus can fulfill it.

2. The genealogy of Jesus.

3. The fulfillment of Messianic prophecies.

Jewish participants:

Rabbi Steven Baer

Mickey Miller (anti-missionary society)

Christian participants:

Dr. Mike Brown (Stony Brook)

Dan Juster (Messianic congregation president)

[debate is summarized and categorized]

CAN JESUS BE THE MESSIAH?

I. The necessity of blood atonement.

A. In the OT, blood was required for atonement.

1) Even willful sin had a sacrifice (asham - guilt offering).

a) But blood not enough for "asham" - restitution required

an extra (20%?) amount.

2) Scapegoat.

a) But scapegoat sent out live, and not killed.

3) Passover, lamb's blood on door. Exod 12

a) But not considered a sacrifice of atonement.

4) Sacrifice even when Torah given. Exod 24:8

5) But all sacrifices must be on altar. Lev 17

a) Jesus wasn't sacrificed on an altar.

b) But blood sacrifice went beyond the altar.

1> Rabbis saw Abraham's circumcision as a sacrifice.

2> God passed between animal pieces, pledging his

life. Gen 15:9,10,17

A> But this is not referred to as a sacrifice.

B. Principle of blood sacrifice is substitution.

1) Rabbis - when God looks at blood of animals, He sees blood of

Isaac.

2) Priest Phineas brought atonement by spearing 2 people. Num 25

3) If ox kills man, its life must be taken. Exod 21:30

a) Forgiveness of sins not in view, but substitution.

4) Rabbi Rashi - life atones for life. Must be substitution.

5) The Messiah must be our "asham" (guilt offering) for sin.

a) But Resurrection disqualifies ransom motif of atonement.

b) But why does Ezekiel reinstitute blood sacrifice, if Jesus

fulfilled it? Ezek 43:23-27; 46:2

C. Atonement by other (non-blood) means?

1) Prayer or charity (instituted after fall of Temple).

Prov 16:6, Hos 6:6 (mercy), Hos 14 (prayer), Ps 78 (weak-

ness), Ps 8,10 (seekers), Isa 27 (destroy idolaters)

a) If no atonement without blood, then generation of 70 year

Exile not saved.

b) Blood not needed. Only prayer. 2 Chron 7:14

1> But Temple is described as "house of sacrifice" in

previous verses. 2 Chron 7:12

2) Prophets extolled obedience to God. 1 Sam 15:22

a) But they did not reject sacrifice.

b) Hosea told Northern Israel that prayer and repentance

were sufficient.

3) Flour offering instead of goat. Lev 5:10

a) But flour had to be mixed with blood on altar.

1> But flour alone was sufficient for worshipper.

4) Censor used in worship brought atonement. Num 16:47

a) But censor also mixed with blood.

5) Nathan forgave David without sacrifice.

a) But in Psalm 51 David offers a sacrifice.

6) No atonement for murder.

a) But King David committed murder and was forgiven.

b) Psalm 51 refers to his sacrifice.

7) David and census. Atonement - lose your kingdom.

a) But David concluded with a sacrifice.

8) Miriam healed.

9) Abimelech atoned by Abraham's prayer after potential sin with

Sarah.

10) Samuel and Saul.

11) Ezra - no blood or other action required, except to get rid

of foreign wives.

D. Contradictions in NT view of sacrifice.

1) Hebrews says sacrifices don't atone for sin. Did they in OT?

2) Judaism teaches no sacrifice for future sin, only past sin.

3) Humans aren't valid as sacrifices.

a) Sacrifice had to be partially eaten by the worshippers.

b) The blood had to be smeared.

c) Animal had to be 3 years old.

d) Animal had to be female.

e) Animal had to be clean. (Jesus was dirty?)

f) Humans are never sacrificed for atonement.

II. Genealogy of Jesus.

A. Genealogy cannot be adopted.

1) Jesus' genealogy is through Joseph, but Joseph wasn't his

real father.

a) Adoption is valid for genealogy.

b) But texts say it is not.

2) If at least one of the genealogies is actually Mary's line,

women cannot pass on inheritance of kingship.

a) If they could, then Athaliah would have had her son take

throne.

b) Athaliah killed the male heirs, but not the female.

c) But in special case in OT, widowed women passed on land

rights. Num ??

d) And note that the first messianic prophecy (Gen 3:15)

speaks of the woman's seed defeating Satan, not Adam's.

1> But doesn't apply for this argument. (Jewish)

B. Kingly line must be through David by way of Solomon.

1) Luke traces descent through Nathan, David's brother rather

than son. Therefore, Jesus is not of kingly line.

2) Promises descend through only one male line.

a) Abraham's promise only goes through Isaac.

b) Aaron's promise only goes through Phineas.

c) David's promise only goes through Solomon.

C. The curse of Jeconiah [Jehoiachin] (no descendant would be on

throne).

1) Matthew has Jeconiah in genealogy.

2) But Jeconiah's descendants had a legal right to rule.

a) Curse may apply only to immediate family. (Jer 22:30)

b) Promise was renewed for Zerubbabel.

1> But Zerubbabel didn't become king. Curse still valid?

2> Yet Zerubbabel is extolled on Hanukkah.

A> The Davidic covenant was renewed for him.

3) Biblical authors didn't deal with curse, but rabbis did.

a) Other heirs besides son could be king.

(Jeconiah's uncle followed him.)

4) And if Messiah must come through kingly line, and Jeconiah

is cursed, then Messiah must have non-human descent.

a) If curse is on father's line, then Jesus avoided this.

b) Testimony of genetics: males have mixed chromosomes

(x & y). Jesus' male chromosome must come from God.

III. The fulfillment of Messianic promises and prophecies.

A. Messiah brings worldwide peace. Hasn't happened yet.

1) Even Second Coming won't fulfill it.

2) But first he is a "light to the Gentiles," which Jesus is.

a) But "Gentiles" really means "nations."

B. Holistic reading of Bible fits Jesus.

1) Supernatural vs. suffering Messiah.

2) Rabbinic problem of 2 (3?) Messiahs: ben Joseph, ben David.

C. Messiah called names that don't fit humans.

1) "Mighty God." Child identified with God. Isa 9:6

a) But all throne names contained God's name.

1> The altar was even called "God of Israel."

b) Yet they didn't refer to person directly as God.

1> Compare Psalm 45: "Your throne, O God, is forever."

2) King David's lord. Psalm 110

a) Messiah greater than greatest human king.

b) (not necessarily divine, since "lord" can mean "sir")

D. Isaiah 42.

1) Messiah cuts a covenant for the people.

2) But kings don't represent covenant of sacrifice, high priests

did.

E. Isaiah 53.

1) Israel considered Messiah stricken for his own sins.

2) Corporate solidarity for Israel.

3) Death, burial fits Jesus.

a) Rabbis - the leper Messiah.

F. Problems with interpreting prophecies.

1) Scholars disagree on application.

a) Mowinkel (not a Jew) thought Isa 9:6 was not messianic.

b) "Suffering servant" doesn't have to be Messiah.

IV. Argument from experience.

A. Jesus continues to heal people.

#1546

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God sees our job as an important part of His work on earth.

1. God is a worker.

2. God created people to be his coworkers.

a. Through work we love people by serving them.

b. Through work we meet our own needs and those of our family.

c. Through work we earn money to give to others.

d. Through work we love God.

Three new books look at Jesus through the Old Testament.

John’s gospel tells us that the Pharisee Nicodemus once stood up for Jesus by reminding a group of his colleagues that they could not arrest the Galilean rabbi without giving him a hearing. They were not pleased with this reminder. “Search the scriptures,” they retorted, “and observe that no prophet comes from Galilee” (John 7:52).

That was one of the earliest recorded salvos in a battle that has continued for many centuries over precisely how, if at all, Jesus fulfills the Old Testament. Today most Jews do not believe that Jesus fulfilled their Scriptures in any sense, and many view Christian claims that Jesus fulfilled this or that verse in the “Old” Testament as attempts to wrest Jewish traditions from their rightful owners. Christians, on the other hand, agree that Jesus and the church represent God’s faithfulness to his promises in the Old Testament, but they often disagree on the specifics.

Have God’s promises to Israel in the Old Testament been fulfilled in Jesus and the church in some way not immediately obvious to the authors of the Old Testament themselves? Or do some promises concerning Israel still await precisely the fulfillment that the authors of the Old Testament seem to have intended?

Three recently published books address these important issues. In “Jesus and Israel: One Covenant or Two?” David Holwerda tackles both Jewish concerns about Christian “plundering” of Jewish tradition and the debate among Christians over the relationship between Israel in the Old Testament and the church in the New Testament.

In the first chapter, Holwerda surveys recent assessments of Christian fulfillment theology and expresses dissatisfaction with each assessment; but here he only hints at his own understanding. Other issues demand discussion before he can describe his own provocative perspective in detail.

Holwerda begins discussion of these issues with the critical question, “Who is Israel?” and claims that the New Testament, Matthew in particular, has a ready answer. Israel is Jesus. Jesus broadened God’s redemptive work to include all ethnic groups, not simply physical descendants of Abraham. In doing this, he fulfilled the promise to Abraham that through him all nations of the earth would be blessed and so became Abraham’s true son, the true “Israel.” Matthew’s subtle identification of Jesus himself with Israel confirms this understanding: both came out of Egypt, both were God’s servant and son, and both were tested in the wilderness.

Other parts of the New Testament extend Jesus’ work of fulfillment to the prophetic visions of a restored temple in Israel’s future. Jesus becomes this temple as he forgives sins, purifies the unclean with his touch, and heals the sick, all functions of the temple’s sacrifices and priests. In addition, the New Testament teaches that the followers of Jesus have taken over the role of the glorious temple of prophetic prediction by showing that Jesus’ followers in some sense take their master’s place (John 17:22) and by explicitly identifying the local expression of the church with the temple (1 Cor. 3:16).

Holwerda then turns to the Old Testament promises that one day God would give back to scattered and exiled Israel the land that they had once won from the Canaanites and occupied during the monarchy. The New Testament, he says, does not spiritualize these promises so that they become mere allegories of some “higher” reality but instead universalizes them so that they apply to more than a single ethnic group. Thus Paul calls Abraham the inheritor not simply of Judea and Samaria, but of the world (Rom. 4:13); and when he quotes the promise section of the commandment to honor father and mother, he transforms it from a promise that all might go well in the land that God was giving to Israel (Deut. 5:16) into a simple promise that the believer might live long upon the earth (Eph. 6:2-3).

The church is also the recipient of the Old Testament law, although in a new form that removes its ethnic distinctiveness and makes it valid for all who believe the gospel, regardless of national affiliation. In addition, believers follow this new form of the Old Testament law by imitating Christ. This less specific ethical demand provides a helpful safeguard against legalism.

Does all this mean that unbelieving Jews have no place in the gracious plan of God? Holwerda, surprisingly, argues that despite the identification of Israel in the Old Testament with the church in the New, and despite the “universalizing” in the New Testament of many Old Testament promises to ancient Israel, unbelieving Jews continue to hold a special place in God’s saving work. “Disobedience,” he says, “need not cancel future hope rooted in God’s electing grace.” And so in Paul, he finds hope extended to unbelieving Jews that God, in faithfulness to his Old Testament commitment to his people, will extend mercy to many by opening their hearts to Messiah Jesus (Rom. 11:25-27).

Although the purpose of Christopher Wright’s “Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament” is different, his own approach to the Old Testament frequently coincides with Holwerda’s. Wright hopes to explain Jesus’ person, mission, and theology in terms of the Old Testament, for “without the Old Testament,” he says, “Jesus quickly loses reality and either becomes a stained-glass window figure colourful but static and undemanding, or a tailor’s dummy that can be twisted and dressed to suit the current fashion.” Like Holwerda, Wright believes that Jesus viewed himself as the inheritor of Israel’s sonship, and that where Israel failed in its mission to be the vehicle of blessing to the Gentiles, Jesus succeeded.

Also like Holwerda, Wright is not happy with the notion that every prophecy about the future restoration of Israel must be literally fulfilled in national Israel. The Old Testament is more a book of promise than of prediction, he argues, and, unlike predictions, promises can be fulfilled in ways that people alive at the time of the promise may never have imagined. Thus the promise to Abraham was fulfilled provisionally in the Exodus and at Mount Sinai when God constituted the nation of Israel and declared them to be his special people. The promise was reissued at Sinai in terms of settlement in the land, and fulfilled provisionally again in the next generation’s conquest of Canaan. It was reissued again at the time of David with the promise that David’s son would reign on the throne eternally, and that promise received fulfillment in the coming of the Messiah Jesus. Thus, the promises of the Old Testament have a “transformable quality” that allows them to be fulfilled in ways different from those in which they were originally understood.

If Wright is correct about this, he provides some basis for Holwerda’s approach. Holwerda’s claim that the New Testament “universalizes” the prophetic promises of a geographically restored Israel and a gloriously restored temple may be examples of how the Old Testament promises could be fulfilled in ways that were not readily understood at the time they were given.

Wright’s book is much more than a discussion of how the New Testament uses the Old, however. It is a brief theology of Jesus and his teaching in light of the Old Testament. It begins with a survey of the prominent theological themes of the Old Testament and includes, along with a discussion of the theoretical relationship between the Old Testament and the New, chapters on Jesus’ “identity,” “mission,” and “values.”

Jesus is God’s Son in the Gospels in the same way that Israel is God’s son in the Old Testament, with the crucial difference that whereas Israel rebelled against its Father, Jesus was obedient. Jesus’ mission is best comprehended under the Old Testament categories of Son of Man and Suffering Servant, again titles applied to Israel in the Old Testament, but melded together in Jesus’ mind so that Jesus as the Son of Man is not only the victorious Savior and coming Judge, but one who suffers in place of others and in obedience to God.

Jesus’ “values,” by which Wright seems to mean his ethical teaching, are also drawn from the Old Testament, whose emphases can be summarized in three statements: “God comes first,” “persons matter more than things,” and “needs matter more than rights.” Far from abrogating the Jewish law, Jesus emphasized precisely these issues and so brought “into full clarity the inherent values and priorities of the Torah.”

Walter Kaiser’s “The Messiah in the Old Testament” focuses upon every passage in the Old Testament that Kaiser considers a “direct prophecy” of the messianic age. Kaiser’s interpretive perspective stands in contrast to that of Holwerda and Wright. He believes that each of the passages he considers was intended to refer to the Messiah by the author who penned it and could have been understood as messianic by those who first read it. Modern readers of the Old Testament who fail to see how the original authors and readers of such texts could have understood them to be messianic are, like the two on the Emmaus road, “ignorant and slow in heart to believe everything the prophets spoke” (Luke 24:25).

After explaining this approach, Kaiser’s book engages in a thorough, and often technical, commentary on each direct messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. He proceeds chronologically through the Pentateuch, to passages written before and during the Davidic monarchy, to the rest of the Psalter, and finally to the Prophets.

Many readers will remain unconvinced that every passage in Kaiser’s volume was understood to be messianic by its original author and readers. It is particularly hard to see how the enmity between serpent and woman in Genesis 3:15 could have been understood this way by its author, or how David’s imprecations upon an enemy in Psalm 109:6-19 could have originally referred to the opponent of the last of David’s line (Judas). The difficulty in seeing such texts as references in their original contexts to the Messiah and the circumstances of his life seems to demand some other approach, and the perspective of Holwerda and Wright fits the exegetical facts without sacrificing Scripture’s trustworthiness. Their perspective will probably prove more satisfactory to most readers.

All three books, however, make a significant contribution to the evangelical debate over how best to understand Jesus’ fulfillment of the Old Testament. Each comes from a senior evangelical biblical scholar whose experience in the classroom and years of learning lend maturity to his work. There is no youthful extravagance here, no experimentation, simply the fruit of years of thinking about a critical theological issue. Students, pastors, and laypeople interested in the relationship between Old and New Testaments will benefit from thinking through Kaiser’s perspective and learning from his detailed analysis of the relevant passages, from Wright’s illuminating examination of Jesus’ person and teaching in light of their Old Testament background, and from Holwerda’s fresh perspective on the age-old problem of Jesus and Israel. All three books illuminate Jesus’ person and identity. All three are worth buying, reading, and keeping handy for future reference.

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“Jesus and Israel: One Covenant or Two?” by David E. Holwerda (Eerdmans, 193 pp.; $12.99, paper)

“Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament,” by Christopher J. H. Wright (InterVarsity, 256 pp.; $14.99, paper)

“The Messiah in the Old Testament,” by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. (Zondervan, 235 pp.; $17.99, paper).

Reviewed by Frank Thielman, associate professor of divinity, Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, Alabama.

Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine ctmar96mrj6T30586222

#3661

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Benjamin Franklin, with his sagacity and wit, was a man who thoroughly enjoyed trimming hecklers down to size. During the early days of the American Republic, he spoke many times on that great document, the Constitution of the United States.

After one such stirring speech, an uncouth fellow rose and boldly walked a few paces toward the platform. "Aw, them words don't mean nothin' a-tall!" he shouted at Franklin. "Where's all that happiness you say it guarantees us?"

Franklin smiled benevolently at the questioner, and quickly, blandly, Old Ben replied, "My friend, the Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it for yourself!"

__________

The Sword of the Lord, Mar 1984

Professor Dale Kuehne is a professor of politics at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. At least once a semester, Kuehne can count on a certain question always being asked when he teaches a class called “The Politics of Diversity.”

“Professor Kuehne,” a student will say, “are you seriously going to try to persuade us that if we forgo [sex] outside of marriage we can have a fulfilling life, even if that means we never have a sexual relationship?”

Well, that’s a pretty tough sell these days.

Kuehne is the author of a new book, Sex and the iWorld. He says that the traditional world, or tWorld, as he calls it, has been largely supplanted by the iWorld, in which “the immediate desires of the individual have been deemed paramount.” In the iWorld, complete sexual freedom is a given, as long as all parties consent. Sexuality is considered essential to human happiness.

This is why iWorlders are scornful of the biblical view that sex should be reserved for marriage between one man and one woman. What about single people? What about gays in a committed relationship? they ask. Are they to be condemned to lifelong misery?

Even churches have bought into the iWorld belief that sex is essential to happiness. The idea that one cannot have relational fulfillment without sex “has been a largely unquestioned assumption of evangelical psychology, if not theology, for decades,” Kuehne writes.

That’s why many Christians now accept the iWorld teaching that anything that stands in the way of sexual fulfillment must be wrong. God wants us to be fulfilled, they reason; sex is an essential component of relational fulfillment, thus the Bible can’t really mean what it says about restricting sex to marriage.

Well, Christians who accept this idea need to open their eyes — and dig a little deeper in the Word. Scripture teaches that humans are made for relationships, and that we crave intimacy and love more than anything else, Kuehne writes.

For instance, in his teachings about sex and marriage in 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul makes clear that we can have deeply fulfilling lives without sexual relationships. And some of the richest relationships in the Scriptures are non-sexual ones. David and Jonathan. Jesus and the disciples. Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Moreover, where biblical writers viewed sexual relations within marriage as a wonderful good, they considered sex itself to be an appetite — something that was potentially enslaving. Tragically, many iWorlders have become enslaved by their appetites.

True intimacy and happiness are found in loving God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. The greater our intimacy with God, Kuehne writes, the greater our ability to share that love with others.

For those who think that sex is essential to their happiness, Kuehne has a question: Does the iWorld view of sex and relationship make them happy? The sad truth is that promiscuity inhibits our ability to cultivate the love and intimacy God designed us to enjoy.

Read Sex and the iWorld to learn how to make the case that the happiest people are those who make relationships — not sex — their highest goal. Visit our website, BreakPoint.org, and we’ll show you how to get a copy.

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Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was moved to HolwickID #16234]

Larry Walters was just tired of sitting in his backyard, watching the same old folks in the same old neighborhood do the same old thing. He was ready for a change. So he decided to do something different. He went out and bought 45 six-foot helium balloons and attached them to his lawn chair, which was tethered to a car to keep it from taking off. Then, he donned a parachute, packed a bottle of soda pop, a CB radio, and a BB gun to shoot out balloons so he could come down. He thought he'd get a great view of his neighborhood. He got a little more than that. When his friends cut his lawn chair loose, he shot a thousand feet into the air in a minute. Before long, Larry and his flying lawn chair were 16,000 feet over the Los Angeles area. That's like three miles up! A TWA pilot radioed the tower and said, “We've spotted a man in a lawn chair at 16,000 feet.” I can't even guess what the tower must have said back to the pilot. Meanwhile, Larry is yelling into his CB radio, “Mayday! Mayday!” He eventually managed to shoot out enough balloons to come down, where he landed in some wires and caused a power outage in Long Beach, California. He got down OK, he got some TV appearances, and an FAA fine. Not bad for an ordinary guy in a lawn chair.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “When You're Ready for a Change.”

Here was a man who was tired of same old, same old - and willing to take a risk to go where he'd never been able to go before. In a way, that's what I'm asking you to consider today, because like many people, you may be ready for a change. Because life is lonely the way it is now. Because life seems pretty meaningless. The question, “Why am I here?” still doesn't have a satisfactory answer after all these years. You're ready for a change.

Maybe life hurts, too. There's been a lot of pain and not much healing. And life's not safe either - terror alerts, bad news from the doctor that can change everything, losing people you counted on and those unsettling thoughts whenever you go to a funeral, reminding you of the day it will be you there. You're tired of same old, same old. You're ready for a change.

Into that restlessness for something better comes these hope-giving words of Jesus Christ that are recorded in our word for today from the Word of God in John 10:10. He said: “The thief (that's the devil) comes only to steal and kill and destroy; but I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.” Contrary to the misconception some people have, Jesus doesn't put a lid on your life. He blows the lid off your life by doing something about the loneliness, the meaninglessness, the pain, the danger of our future.

How? He came here to fix what makes life so lonely and meaningless and hurtful and dangerous. And that's the Grand Canyon between us and God, created by a lifetime of you and me doing things our way instead of God's way. Sin, the Bible calls it. The one whose love we were made for - that we're lonely for - is on the other side of the canyon. The one who put us here and knows why we're here is on the other side. We're separated from the one who can heal our pain, who can replace an uncertain future with a guaranteed place in heaven. It took Jesus putting a cross over that canyon to get us to the God we need so desperately. It took His dying to pay the death penalty for what you and I have done.

And now Jesus has come to where you are this very day to offer you the life He died and then rose again to give you. But like any gift, you have to reach out and take it. You have to tell Him in faith, “Jesus, I'm tired of running my own life. I'm yours now.” The moment you do that, you've crossed that canyon into the arms of the God you were made by and made for.

There really is so much more to life. Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life to the full.” He's come to you today so you can belong to Him. Don't waste one more day without Him.

________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #21983]

"One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community."

-- Albert Einstein

The assurance that God will give the land to Israel - Gen. 15:18

The Dimensions of the land - Num. 34:1-15

FACTS:

1. The land belongs to God -

Lev. 25:23

2. The land is given to the descendents of Abraham -

Gen. 12:7; 13:15; 15:18

3. This is an unconditional covenant -

Gen. 17:7-8; Ps. 89:30-37; Deut. 7:7-9

4. The land was not given to Ishmael -

Gen. 17:18-19

5. The land was not given to Keturah -

Gen. 25:5-6; 26:3

6. The land was not given to Esau -

Rom. 9:10-13; Gen. 28:3-4,10-17; 35:9-15; 36:6-9; 48:3-4; 50:24

7. Promises or reminders during times of bondage and wilderness -

Ex. 2:24; 3:8,15-17; 6:1-8; 13:5-11; 15:17; 32:13; Lev. 20:24; 25:38

8. Conquer -

Deut. 1:8; 3:27-28; 9:3-5

9. Sin does not change the results of the promise -

Lev. 24:40-45; Deut. 30:3-5; Jer. 16:15; 31:10; Isaiah 43:5-7; Amos 9:14-15

10. The promise is as certain as the universe -

Jer. 31:35-37

11. The name is Israel not Palestine -

Ez. 37:11-12

12. The full restoration will be when Messiah comes -

Jer. 31:31-34; Is. 59:20-21; Ez. 39:25-29

13. From all four directions -

Is. 43:5-6

14. Our commitment -

Ps. 122:6-9

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Contrary to what we might expect, the Bible addresses pleasure possibly far more than it does the issue of pain. Solomon’s wrestling with the futility of pleasure is recorded in Ecclesiastes. He lamented:

I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven

during the few days of their lives.

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no

pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the

reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands

had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was

meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing, was gained under

the sun.

Does it not surprise you that after years of experimenting and indulging, Solomon said it amounted to nothing?

Solomon’s was not just a harem-filled world of sensuality; he was an artistic genius who penned thousands of proverbs and songs. We miscast him if we forget that he had an immense creative capacity.

Sustaining Solomon’s very thought, psychologists Frank Minirth and Paul Meier say this:

[We] are convinced that many people do choose happiness but still

do not obtain it. The reason for this is that even though they

choose to be happy, they seek for inner peace and joy in the

wrong places. They seek for joy in sexual prowess but end up

with fleeting pleasures and bitter long-term disappointments.

They seek inner fulfillment by obtaining positions of power....

but they remain unfulfilled. I have had millionaire businessmen

come to my office and tell me they have big houses, yachts...

nice children, a beautiful mistress, an unsuspecting wife, secure

corporate positions -- and suicidal tendencies. They have

everything this world has to offer except one thing -- inner

peace and joy. They come to my office as a last resort, begging

me to help them conquer the urge to kill themselves.

This is a difficult fact to accept when one has not lived it. Yet this ought to cause us to stop and take note of the fact that where unbridled pleasure abounds there is greater need to find life’s overarching purpose.

It is purpose that is prior and pleasure that must be in keeping. And let us be sure that if the purpose is wrong, then pleasure gets wrongheaded too. That is why, we must remember, meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. Have you determined life’s purpose yet? God offers that purpose, and pleasure must not violate that purpose.

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Our family of five voted - and the vote was four to one. I lost. The issue was whether or not we would get a pet. Since I had grown up an apartment boy, the only pet I ever had was some cockroaches. But I went along with the vote, and we started down Pet Avenue with the purchase of a gerbil. And I really took a liking to him. But there's something a little strange about those furry little guys. If you could interview a gerbil about, like, what he was anticipating for today's activities, he might say, "The same as yesterday and the day before that." If you asked, "Well, what's that?" he would answer, "The wheel." And so Gerbil climbs on his wheel and starts running. Come back later, he's still running on the wheel. I guess they don't realize what's happening: lots and lots of activity - and absolutely no progress.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Gerbil On A Wheel."

My friend Mark has a successful business, a great family, and he's actively involved in a good church. But the other day, in a heart-to-heart conversation we were having, Mark summed up this deep restlessness in his heart. He said, "I'm sick and tired of the status quo." He's not alone.

I know more and more people who are tired of the "gerbil wheel" of status quo living. It's not that the wheel is bad - it just isn't satisfying. It feels too much like a life that is full of activity, but in terms of doing something really eternal, not really going anywhere. This feeling of restlessness about the wheel you're spinning on may be leading you to the same conclusion my friend has reached. Even though there's nothing really wrong in my life, I really want more from it than just more of the same.

Okay, the reason for the restlessness may be traceable to the reality that God shows us in Ecclesiastes 3:11. He says, "He has set eternity in their hearts." You've got this "hankering," as they say down South, for something that will give your life some eternal significance. You want more than a "gerbil wheel" of doing your job, making some money, maintaining your Christian activities, meeting your responsibilities. It's all good stuff, but again not enough to satisfy a heart that's restless for something more eternal.

The first step off the "gerbil wheel" of status quo living may be in our word for today from the Word of God - Matthew 6:32-33. Speaking of the pursuit of earth-stuff, Jesus says, "The pagans run after such things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given you as well."

As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we were not created to just spend our life building and maintaining an earth-kingdom. We are eternal beings created to make an eternal difference. The restlessness of our heart is ultimately to make a greater difference with the rest of our lives than we've ever made before.

If the status quo isn't enough for you anymore, ask God for a mission that will affect people's eternity, for a life that's committed to building His Kingdom; carrying out His agenda. Nothing matters more to Jesus than the mission for which He came to earth. In His words, "to seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke 19:10)

My friend Mark, who told me of his discontentment with the status quo, said he wants the rest of his life to really be about sharing Christ, getting out the life-saving Gospel of Jesus, and taking people to heaven. He told me he wants his business profits to be about that, his relationships with the people in his world, his influence, the use of more and more of his time. See, that kind of passion to make the maximum possible difference with everything you've got with the rest of the time you have is the beginning of the great adventure your heart has been hungry for.

More of the same running on the same old gerbil wheel will never be enough for a heart that's made for the eternal. Be all about Jesus' Kingdom, and your life will count more than you could have ever dreamed.

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

*

So what was the greatest song of the Twentieth Century? That was the question on a major survey taken in the first year of the Twenty-First Century. And the winner - Judy Garland's signature song from "The Wizard of Oz" - "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." The tragedy is that Judy Garland herself could never seem to get there. She was an international star at the age of 17, and she remains one of the towering entertainers of the century. But tragically, her search for health and happiness led her down a road of drug addiction, disappointing relationships, psychiatric hospitals, and a physical collapse. She died of a drug overdose in a London hotel. It's painfully ironic isn't it? The voice that tried to take us "over the rainbow" could never make it there herself.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "Stranded On This Side Of The Rainbow."

"The rainbow" means something a little different to all of us - but it ultimately represents the fulfillment, the worth, the love we all want to fill us up inside. But Judy Garland's inability to ever get what her heart craved is not an isolated exception. In a sense, maybe you feel stranded on this side of the rainbow.

It isn't for lack of trying. It's just that every achievement has left you feeling hollow afterwards ... every relationship has left you still feeling unexplainably lonely ... every great experience - even spiritual experience - has left you strangely unsatisfied. In a sense, you've been searching for as long as you can remember - but, so far, never really finding. The rainbow is still beyond your reach.

It always will be - until you belong to the Person who gave you your life in the first place. Every other "rainbow" in our life is a terribly inadequate substitute for a love relationship with the God of the universe.

In our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus is talking to a woman who's been looking for the end of her search in relationships with men. You can fill in the blank and put in there whatever your rainbow has been. Jesus has run into this woman at a well where they were both looking for water, and in John 4:13-14, He says, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again." There's the problem with every "rainbow," every "well" we've thought would do it for us - we end up "thirsty again."

Jesus goes on to say, "But whoever drinks the water I give Him, it will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life." Jesus is offering to her - and to you - a spring inside that will never leave you thirsty again, a relationship with Him that will literally give you life here and life forever in Heaven. We've cut ourselves off from our Source by stubbornly living our way instead of His way. And there would be no hope of belonging to the One we were made for, except that Jesus died on the cross to absorb the death penalty you and I deserve.

And He's coming to you today to offer you the relationship with Him that will end your search once and for all. He's reaching out to you - but you have to reach back and grab His hand as your only hope of being forgiven ... your only hope of going to Heaven. If you want to belong to Jesus from today on, tell Him that right where you are. And, if you'd like, I want to send you the booklet I wrote about this relationship called "Yours For Life" - just let me know you want it.

If you're tired of seeking ... if you're ready to find ... then make this your "Jesus day." He's everything your heart has always looked for and never found. Until today.

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

*

"One thing that I want to tell you that only a non-doctor can tell you and that is: That the headbone is connected to the heartbone. Don't ever let them come apart."

Alan Alda

Actor

=========================

"Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart."

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Civil rights leader

*

As a city boy, I have a lot to learn about the country. I remember the time when I was a teenager our youth group played this hide-and-seek game on a farm. This one other kid and I crawled under this piece of machinery - where we had to stay for about a half an hour. I didn't know what it was. After we were stuck there, my nose and I wanted to know what we were hiding under. My friend said, "Oh, this is a manure spreader." Hmmm. Well, in recent times, I've helped out a friend who has some horses - and part of taking care of equine pets is what they call "mucking out" their stables. Now, if you've been a farmer your whole life, please do not laugh at me, but I've been dealing with manure more in the past few months than I have in all my life up until now. And, frankly, I am not fond of it.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Milestones and Manure."

There's a passage of scripture I've been familiar with most of my life that has recently taken on a graphic new meaning to me. Because, in a very real way, it's about manure. I know this is a strange subject for a Christian discussion, but tell that to the Apostle Paul. He's the one who used the analogy.

It's in Philippians 3, beginning with verse 7. Paul has just listed many of the great accomplishments of his life as a religious leader. It's an amazing list, demonstrating why he was one of the most respected, most successful Jewish religious leaders of his generation. Then he met Jesus. He follows his list of life achievements with this statement: "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings."

That word that's translated "rubbish" in this translation is translated "dung" in the King James Version. That's manure - that's basically what the original Greek word means. Paul says that compared to what he has found in knowing and serving Christ, every other milestone and title and achievement in his life is - well, it's like manure.

And that's values clarification. Right now you may be wondering how your life could be so full and yet it's not fulfilling. How you could be enjoying such success and yet feeling like your life isn't all that significant. There's a reason. You're created, the Bible says, with "eternity in your heart," (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and no earth-stuff can possibly give you the meaning and fulfillment you need. Only what you do with and for Jesus can do that. It's not that your career, or your accomplishments, or your acquisitions, or your positions are necessarily bad - they're just not enough.

If you want to make the greatest possible difference with however much life you have left, spend as much of what you have, what you are, and what you've got in loving and serving Jesus. Paul said really knowing Jesus made everything else seem worthless. It's not the championships, the scholarships, the memberships, the friendships that will captivate your heart and thrill your soul. It's making Jesus the central passion, the magnificent obsession of your life.

I haven't heard that little poem since I was a young man, but it's as true now as it ever was - "Only one life ... t'will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last."

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

*

The August 1996 edition of Senior Magazine carried an interview with an actress by the name of Loretta Young. In the article, Young offered an honest appraisal of her life. She spoke of the mistakes she had made, of her “boo-boos” as she called them. Through many a hard knock, she was forced to sort out the priorities of her life and admits that she finally came to the conclusion that the only wellspring of happiness in life comes from God. Not fame, not success, not glamour or material wealth.

“If you’re wise,” she said, “you’ll realize that Somebody Else is running the show and that Somebody Else is smarter than you are.”

Through many a winding turn in her life, this star of television and more than 100 movies, found herself returning home ANOTHER WAY and it’s a good thing she did. For on August 12, 2000, thanks to her faith in Christ Jesus, she returned home to her Heavenly Father.

*

Who of us has not succumbed to the mistaken notion that our real life has not yet begun? We wouldn't say so out loud, but the belief works its way into our thought lives. We find ourselves thinking, “If I can just finish school....” “If I could just find someone to love me....” “When I get married....” “Once we have kids....” “When we finally get out of debt....” “If I could only get a promotion....” Although we may not finish these sentences, the implied ending is that once we enter that desired phase of life, we will be happy; our real life will begin.

This kind of thinking reminds me of playing in the ocean as children. Whenever we decided to “ride” a wave into the shore, we'd look for a great big one that would take us the whole way. As we watched the oncoming waves, the ones that looked big and promising would diminish a bit before they reached us. But there was always one following right behind that looked large and powerful, so we'd wait for it. This could go one for hours as we waited for “just one more wave” that would be as big and fast as it looked from far away. We're just the same as adults, looking ahead to the next phase as the one that will finally live up to its promise.

The Scriptures give us a clear answer to the question of when our real lives start. Paul writes, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). “For me, to live is Christ,” he says in Philippians 1:21, and he is echoing the teachings of Jesus, who proclaimed, “I AM the resurrection and the life.” Our real life begins when we begin to live in Christ and he in us. It doesn't have anything to do with the American dream or an academic degree or finding a soul mate.

Of course, there is the possibility that your real life really hasn't begun yet, if you haven't yet begun to live in Christ. If there's been a nagging realization in the back of your mind that all the things you thought would bring fulfillment haven't quite been enough, or maybe they haven't lasted, maybe you haven't met the right person yet. Jesus made claims that no ordinary human being in his right mind would make, to satisfy needs that no ordinary human could. You don't have to climb one more rung on the ladder to meet him. Whether you've never reached for the life he offers or you've tasted it once and hunger for more, he stands before you, ready to take your hand.

________

Copyright © 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

Someone has said that the “pursuit of happiness” is our national pastime. Everybody in the world wants happiness in life, but this especially true for us Americans. In our Declaration of Independence, we're promised “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

You can see this when you watch commercials on TV. We're encouraged to buy products and services not simply because they will fulfill a particular need, but because they will satisfy our ultimate desire -- the desire to be happy. Buy a new Toyota Camry, and you'll be happy. Take a Vacation to Mexico, and sit in the sun, and you'll be happy. Go on Ultra Slim Fast and lose 10 pounds, and you'll be happy.

But will we really? Or will we just be thinner, tanner, unhappy people, who happen to be driving around in a new car? So many of the things we do to find happiness are ultimately unsatisfying. They give us moments of satisfaction, temporary relief, but they don't deliver the happiness that we thought we'd get.

In New York City, there are 8 million cats, and 11 million dogs. Lots of pets. And since the city is basically just concrete and steel, what does a person do when their pet dies? It's not like you can go bury it in the back yard. The city authorities step in at this point, and they will - for a fee - dispose of your deceased pet for you. Now at the time of this story, they were charging $50 for this service.

An enterprising woman came up with a plan. She thought, “I can render a service to people in the city and save them money.” She ran an ad in the newspaper that said, “If your pet dies, I will come and dispose of it for you for $25.” Here's how she did it:

When she got a call to pick up a pet, she'd make a stop at the local thrift shop, and pick up an old suitcase for $2. Then she'd go to the person's home who'd called her, and put the deceased pet in the suitcase. Then she would take ride on the subway.

Now things have changed somewhat today, but there used to be lots of thieves working the Subways in New York. She'd set the suitcase down next to her and pretend to not be paying attention to it. It wouldn't be long before a thief would come by and steal the suitcase. She'd look up and say, “Stop ... thief.”

My guess is that the people who stole her suitcase got a real surprise when they got home and opened it up. Not quite what they expected!

That's what happens for lot of us when we go after happiness. We grab what we think will give us happiness; yet when we get it, it doesn't quite deliver.

The Bible promises that knowing God, and following God's guidance will lead to ultimate happiness in this life, as well as life in the hereafter. I recently studied Psalm 1, in preparation for a message I gave at our church, and was surprised at how clearly we're promised fulfillment in this life - not just hope for heaven after this life is over. The psalmist says is that following God's ways will lead to a “blessed,” fruitful, and fulfilling life. Jesus said in John 10:10, “I have come that you might have life, and life to the full.”

Of course there are no promises of freedom from suffering and frustrations in life. The promise of happiness is based on a long-term view that focuses more on fruitfulness and fulfillment than the life of ease that we often associate with happiness. This idea is brought into sharper focus when you compare the life of devout belief with its alternative. Both Psalm 1 and John 10:10 establish contrasts. Psalm 1 is about the contrast between the way of the righteous person and the way of the unrighteous. John 10:10 is about the contrast between Jesus' agenda and Satan's (called “the thief” in this verse). One way brings fulfillment and life, the other futility and death.

After seeing the results of the pursuit of happiness apart from God, it seems like an easy decision to me. Every week I encounter people who are coming back to the church after trying to “do life” and find happiness on their own terms. Such a life never seems to deliver on its promise of freedom and happiness. The really happy person is the one who loves God, and follows God's ways.

*

Ever since the Census Bureau released figures last month showing that married-couple households are now a minority, my phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from people asking: “How can we save marriage? How can we make Americans understand that marriage is the most significant emotional connection they will ever make, the one place to find social support and personal fulfillment?”

I think these are the wrong questions -- indeed, such questions would have been almost unimaginable through most of history. It has only been in the last century that Americans have put all their emotional eggs in the basket of coupled love. Because of this change, many of us have found joys in marriage our great-great-grandparents never did. But we have also neglected our other relationships, placing too many burdens on a fragile institution and making social life poorer in the process.

A study released this year showed just how dependent we’ve become on marriage. Three sociologists at the University of Arizona and Duke University found that from 1985 to 2004 Americans reported a marked decline in the number of people with whom they discussed meaningful matters. People reported fewer close relationships with co-workers, extended family members, neighbors and friends. The only close relationship where more people said they discussed important matters in 2004 than in 1985 was marriage.

In fact, the number of people who depended totally on a spouse for important conversations, with no other person to turn to, almost doubled, to 9.4 percent from 5 percent. Not surprisingly, the number of people saying they didn’t have anyone in whom they confided nearly tripled.

The solution to this isolation is not to ramp up our emotional dependence on marriage. Until 100 years ago, most societies agreed that it was dangerously antisocial, even pathologically self-absorbed, to elevate marital affection and nuclear-family ties above commitments to neighbors, extended kin, civic duty and religion.

St. Paul complained that married men were more concerned with pleasing their wives than pleasing God [1 Corinthians 7:33]. In John Adams’s view, a “passion for the public good” was “superior to all private passions.” In both England and America, moralists bewailed “excessive” married love, which encouraged “men and women to be always taken up with each other.”

From medieval days until the early 19th century, diaries and letters more often used the word love to refer to neighbors, cousins and fellow church members than to spouses. When honeymoons first gained favor in the 19th century, couples often took along relatives or friends for company. Victorian novels and diaries were as passionate about brother-sister relationships and same-sex friendships as about marital ties.

The Victorian refusal to acknowledge strong sexual desires among respectable men and women gave people a wider outlet for intense emotions, including physical touch, than we see today. Men wrote matter-of-factly about retiring to bed with a male roommate, “and in each other’s arms did friendship sink peacefully to sleep.” Upright Victorian matrons thought nothing of kicking their husbands out of bed when a female friend came to visit. They spent the night kissing, hugging and pouring out their innermost thoughts.

By the early 20th century, though, the sea change in the culture wrought by the industrial economy had loosened social obligations to neighbors and kin, giving rise to the idea that individuals could meet their deepest needs only through romantic love, culminating in marriage. Under the influence of Freudianism, society began to view intense same-sex ties with suspicion and people were urged to reject the emotional claims of friends and relatives who might compete with a spouse for time and affection.

The insistence that marriage and parenthood could satisfy all an individual’s needs reached a peak in the cult of “togetherness” among middle-class suburban Americans in the 1950s. Women were told that marriage and motherhood offered them complete fulfillment. Men were encouraged to let their wives take care of their social lives.

But many men and women found these prescriptions stifling. Women who entered the work force in the 1960s joyfully rediscovered social contacts and friendships outside the home.

“It was so stimulating to have real conversations with other people,” a woman who lived through this period told me, “to go out after work with friends from the office or to have people over other than my husband’s boss or our parents.”

And women’s lead in overturning the cult of 1950s marriage inspired many men to rediscover what earlier generations of men had taken for granted -- that men need deep emotional connections with other men, not just their wives. Researchers soon found that men and women with confidants beyond the nuclear family were mentally and physically healthier than people who relied on just one other individual for emotional intimacy and support.

So why do we seem to be slipping back in this regard? It is not because most people have voluntarily embraced nuclear-family isolation. Indeed, the spread of “virtual” communities on the Internet speaks to a deep hunger to reach out to others.

Instead, it’s the expansion of the post-industrial economy that seems to be driving us back to a new dependence on marriage. According to the researchers Kathleen Gerson and Jerry Jacobs, 60 percent of American married couples have both partners in the work force, up from 36 percent in 1970, and the average two-earner couple now works 82 hours a week.

This is probably why the time Americans spend socializing with others off the job has declined by almost 25 percent since 1965. Their free hours are spent with spouses, and as a study by Suzanne Bianchi of the University of Maryland released last month showed, with their children -- mothers and fathers today spend even more time with their youngsters than parents did 40 years ago.

As Americans lose the wider face-to-face ties that build social trust, they become more dependent on romantic relationships for intimacy and deep communication, and more vulnerable to isolation if a relationship breaks down. In some cases we even cause the breakdown by loading the relationship with too many expectations. Marriage is generally based on more equality and deeper friendship than in the past, but even so, it is hard for it to compensate for the way that work has devoured time once spent cultivating friendships.

The solution is not to revive the failed marital experiment of the 1950s, as so many commentators noting the decline in married-couple households seem to want. Nor is it to lower our expectations that we’ll find fulfillment and friendship in marriage.

Instead, we should raise our expectations for, and commitment to, other relationships, especially since so many people now live so much of their lives outside marriage. Paradoxically, we can strengthen our marriages the most by not expecting them to be our sole refuge from the pressures of the modern work force. Instead we need to restructure both work and social life so we can reach out and build ties with others, including people who are single or divorced. That indeed would be a return to marital tradition -- not the 1950s model, but the pre-20th-century model that has a much more enduring pedigree.

________

Stephanie Coontz, a history professor at Evergreen State College, is the author of “Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage.”

For Thomas Dyer, there was fire and brimstone. “There was the idea that there’s an angry God and somehow you could really make Him mad.” Dyer grew up fearing God. He was a Cumberland Presbyterian, then a Baptist. He had hoped religious conviction would lead to contentment. He attended seminary and preached as a Southern Baptist minister.

That seems like a lifetime ago as Dyer, 43, sits on a cushion in the shrine room of the Pema Karpo Meditation Center in Raleigh. Six statues of various Buddhas are positioned against the walls. His teacher, a Tibetan monk who founded the temple, listens as Dyer explains his exodus from the pulpit in search of nirvana.

“The question that arose in my mind is, ‘Why is there so much suffering?’ Christianity did not have a satisfactory answer. I wanted to be happy. The idea that we have to live with suffering until we die just did not make sense to me -- the idea that God wants you to suffer so you can then enjoy heaven.” Dyer kept asking, “Is this all there is to life?” As a Christian, he had been interested in mysticism. That led to meditation. Dyer studied Buddhism, then visited the temple near his home in Raleigh. Right away, he says, “It was like, ‘Whoa, I’m home.’”

In and out of church, Dyer says unhappiness and dissatisfaction seemed pervasive. Wealth and success made no difference. “Everybody is basically suffering about the same. The average Joes you can see happiness in their lives, but it doesn’t take long that you will see confusion and dissatisfaction. I wanted to explore the idea that you could find a solution to suffering.”

Converting to Buddhism wasn’t painless. “When you grow up in the Bible Belt, that teaching is very strong. It’s almost better to be a drug addict, an adulterer or a scalawag than to say, ‘I’m a Buddhist.’”

He questioned whether he was “denying Christ or endangering my eternal position. But as I continued my meditation, these types of fear just dissolved.”

His marriage and two children also were issues. Dyer’s wife, Sidney, and the children are Christians, members of First Evangelical Church. “It challenged us to the point that it made us wonder if we could make it,” she said.

Sidney’s belief that “God plans it all” helped. “I actually thank God in a way because I wouldn’t have gone as deep in my own faith if I hadn’t been challenged,” she said. Instead of rejecting the suffering that her husband questioned, she embraced it: “I think each individual’s suffering is personally designed for that individual to lead him to God.”

She describes her husband as “a deeply spiritual person” and holds out hope that his spiritual journey will lead him back to Christianity.

At Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, president Michael Spradlin says a minister’s conversion from fundamentalist Southern Baptist tradition to Buddhism seems “unfathomable.” Spradlin says most suffering in this country is no more than “inconvenience” compared with the real suffering of those in Sudan and other war and famine-ravaged countries.

Spradlin suggests that if Dyer really was a born-again Christian that Southern Baptists and a “forgiving God” might consider his exploration of Buddhism as a “wrong step or a wrong path” and that he could be welcomed back to Christianity.

Dyer, who says he still appreciates the teachings of the Bible, says he doesn’t think of Buddhism as a rejection of Christianity. But the happiness he once sought as a Christian no longer seems beyond his grasp. “Without a doubt, without equivocation, there has been a continuous, constant diminishment of suffering and awakening of peace and happiness,” he said.

In a 1999 film titled “Music of the Heart,” a character named Roberta begins a relationship with a man named Brian. At one point, Roberta — whose husband had left her — asked Brian a question: If you ever met a woman who fulfils your needs better than I can, would you leave me for her?”

Brian’s answer: “Theoretically, yes.”

June is the traditional month for weddings, and in my view, every engaged couple ought to watch this film, and discuss it with marriage advisors in their church. As Robin Phillips notes in a BreakPoint article titled Generous Love, it’s all-too-common today for brides and grooms to seek to have all their needs met in the person they are about to marry.

Certainly, marriage does satisfy many of our needs, Phillips writes, but “at best it does so partially and imperfectly. At some point, our marriage partners will always let us down.”

Are we wrong to seek personal fulfillment in our spouses? Of course not. The problem is that, in expecting our marriage partner to meet all our needs, we are seeking fulfillment in the wrong place. No mere human can possibly meet all our needs. Only God can do that.

Phillips quotes Augustine, who said in his Confessions, “Seek what you seek but not where you seek it.” Interestingly enough, the Bishop of London made the same point in his outstanding homily during the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

As the bishop noted, “As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This,” the bishop said, “is to load our partner with too great a burden.”

He’s right.

And when we do this, it’s not surprising that we are often tempted to move on to someone else whom we think can do a better job of meeting our needs. This is why we must ground both our lives and our marriages in Christ. When we do this, “a deeper type of love can kick in,” Phillips writes -- a “generous love rooted in the other-centeredness of Christ.”

Again, quoting the Bishop of London’s marriage homily: “Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this; the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves...In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.”

Are you on the verge of getting married? What are your expectations of your spouse?

To dig deeper into issues like these, I highly recommend that you undergo the kind of marital preparation recommended by Marriage Savers, a ministry created by my friend Mike McManus.

________

Copyright (c) 2011 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

“It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.”

In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents.

Three years later, when his camp was liberated, most of his family, including his pregnant wife, had perished -- but he, prisoner number 119104, had lived. In his bestselling 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning, which he wrote in nine days about his experiences in the camps, Frankl concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning, an insight he came to early in life. When he was a high school student, one of his science teachers declared to the class, “Life is nothing more than a combustion process, a process of oxidation.” Frankl jumped out of his chair and responded, “Sir, if this is so, then what can be the meaning of life?”

As he saw in the camps, those who found meaning even in the most horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those who did not. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing,” Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Frankl worked as a therapist in the camps, and in his book, he gives the example of two suicidal inmates he encountered there. Like many others in the camps, these two men were hopeless and thought that there was nothing more to expect from life, nothing to live for. “In both cases,” Frankl writes, “it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them.” For one man, it was his young child, who was then living in a foreign country. For the other, a scientist, it was a series of books that he needed to finish. Frankl writes:

This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”

In 1991, the Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club listed Man’s Search for Meaning as one of the 10 most influential books in the United States. It has sold millions of copies worldwide. Now, over twenty years later, the book’s ethos -- its emphasis on meaning, the value of suffering, and responsibility to something greater than the self -- seems to be at odds with our culture, which is more interested in the pursuit of individual happiness than in the search for meaning. “To the European,” Frankl wrote, “it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to ‘be happy.’ But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to ‘be happy.’”

According to Gallup, the happiness levels of Americans are at a four-year high -- as is, it seems, the number of best-selling books with the word “happiness” in their titles. At this writing, Gallup also reports that nearly 60 percent all Americans today feel happy, without a lot of stress or worry. On the other hand, according to the Center for Disease Control, about 4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose. Forty percent either do not think their lives have a clear sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose. Nearly a quarter of Americans feel neutral or do not have a strong sense of what makes their lives meaningful. Research has shown that having purpose and meaning in life increases overall well-being and life satisfaction, improves mental and physical health, enhances resiliency, enhances self-esteem, and decreases the chances of depression. On top of that, the single-minded pursuit of happiness is ironically leaving people less happy, according to recent research. “It is the very pursuit of happiness,” Frankl knew, “that thwarts happiness.”

***

This is why some researchers are cautioning against the pursuit of mere happiness. In a new study, which will be published this year in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Positive Psychology, psychological scientists asked nearly 400 Americans aged 18 to 78 whether they thought their lives were meaningful and/or happy. Examining their self-reported attitudes toward meaning, happiness, and many other variables -- like stress levels, spending patterns, and having children -- over a month-long period, the researchers found that a meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a “taker” while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a “giver.”

“Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided,” the authors write.

How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness, they found, is about feeling good. Specifically, the researchers found that people who are happy tend to think that life is easy, they are in good physical health, and they are able to buy the things that they need and want. While not having enough money decreases how happy and meaningful you consider your life to be, it has a much greater impact on happiness. The happy life is also defined by a lack of stress or worry.

Most importantly from a social perspective, the pursuit of happiness is associated with selfish behavior — being, as mentioned, a “taker” rather than a “giver.”

The psychologists give an evolutionary explanation for this: happiness is about drive reduction. If you have a need or a desire -- like hunger -- you satisfy it, and that makes you happy. People become happy, in other words, when they get what they want. Humans, then, are not the only ones who can feel happy. Animals have needs and drives, too, and when those drives are satisfied, animals also feel happy, the researchers point out.

“Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others,” explained Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of the study, in a recent presentation at the University of Pennsylvania. In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in need. “If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need,” the researchers, which include Stanford University’s Jennifer Aaker and Emily Garbinsky, write.

What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans, according to Roy Baumeister, the lead researcher of the study and author, with John Tierney, of the recent book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Baumeister, a social psychologists at Florida State University, was named an ISI highly cited scientific researcher in 2003.

The study participants reported deriving meaning from giving a part of themselves away to others and making a sacrifice on behalf of the overall group. In the words of Martin E. P. Seligman, one of the leading psychological scientists alive today, in the meaningful life “you use your highest strengths and talents to belong to and serve something you believe is larger than the self.” For instance, having more meaning in one’s life was associated with activities like buying presents for others, taking care of kids, and arguing. People whose lives have high levels of meaning often actively seek meaning out even when they know it will come at the expense of happiness. Because they have invested themselves in something bigger than themselves, they also worry more and have higher levels of stress and anxiety in their lives than happy people. Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low happiness among parents, including the ones in this study. In fact, according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, research shows that parents are less happy interacting with their children than they are exercising, eating, and watching television.

“Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy,” Baumeister told me in an interview.

Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important finding of the study, according to the researchers. While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning.

Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. “Thinking beyond the present moment, into the past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life,” the researchers write. “Happiness is not generally found in contemplating the past or future.” That is, people who thought more about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more meaning in their lives, though they were less happy.

Having negative events happen to you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life.

Another study from 2011 confirmed this, finding that people who have meaning in their lives, in the form of a clearly defined purpose, rate their satisfaction with life higher even when they were feeling bad than those who did not have a clearly defined purpose. “If there is meaning in life at all,” Frankl wrote, “then there must be meaning in suffering.”

***

Which brings us back to Frankl’s life and, specifically, a decisive experience he had before he was sent to the concentration camps. It was an incident that emphasizes the difference between the pursuit of meaning and the pursuit of happiness in life.

In his early adulthood, before he and his family were taken away to the camps, Frankl had established himself as one of the leading psychiatrists in Vienna and the world. As a 16-year-old boy, for example, he struck up a correspondence with Sigmund Freud and one day sent Freud a two-page paper he had written. Freud, impressed by Frankl’s talent, sent the paper to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis for publication. “I hope you don’t object,” Freud wrote the teenager.

While he was in medical school, Frankl distinguished himself even further. Not only did he establish suicide-prevention centers for teenagers -- a precursor to his work in the camps -- but he was also developing his signature contribution to the field of clinical psychology: logotherapy, which is meant to help people overcome depression and achieve well-being by finding their unique meaning in life. By 1941, his theories had received international attention and he was working as the chief of neurology at Vienna’s Rothschild Hospital, where he risked his life and career by making false diagnoses of mentally ill patients so that they would not, per Nazi orders, be euthanized.

That was the same year when he had a decision to make, a decision that would change his life. With his career on the rise and the threat of the Nazis looming over him, Frankl had applied for a visa to America, which he was granted in 1941. By then, the Nazis had already started rounding up the Jews and taking them away to concentration camps, focusing on the elderly first. Frankl knew that it would only be time before the Nazis came to take his parents away. He also knew that once they did, he had a responsibility to be there with his parents to help them through the trauma of adjusting to camp life. On the other hand, as a newly married man with his visa in hand, he was tempted to leave for America and flee to safety, where he could distinguish himself even further in his field.

As Anna S. Redsand recounts in her biography of Frankl, he was at a loss for what to do, so he set out for St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna to clear his head. Listening to the organ music, he repeatedly asked himself, “Should I leave my parents behind?... Should I say goodbye and leave them to their fate?” Where did his responsibility lie? He was looking for a “hint from heaven.”

When he returned home, he found it. A piece of marble was lying on the table. His father explained that it was from the rubble of one of the nearby synagogues that the Nazis had destroyed. The marble contained the fragment of one of the Ten Commandments -- the one about honoring your father and your mother. With that, Frankl decided to stay in Vienna and forgo whatever opportunities for safety and career advancement awaited him in the United States. He decided to put aside his individual pursuits to serve his family and, later, other inmates in the camps.

The wisdom that Frankl derived from his experiences there, in the middle of unimaginable human suffering, is just as relevant now as it was then: “Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself -- be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself -- by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love -- the more human he is.”

Baumeister and his colleagues would agree that the pursuit of meaning is what makes human beings uniquely human. By putting aside our selfish interests to serve someone or something larger than ourselves -- by devoting our lives to “giving” rather than “taking” -- we are not only expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that that there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness.

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Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/?single_page=true#ixzz3H4NE45iz

Ever since the Census Bureau released figures last month showing that married-couple households are now a minority, my phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from people asking: “How can we save marriage? How can we make Americans understand that marriage is the most significant emotional connection they will ever make, the one place to find social support and personal fulfillment?”

I think these are the wrong questions -- indeed, such questions would have been almost unimaginable through most of history. It has only been in the last century that Americans have put all their emotional eggs in the basket of coupled love. Because of this change, many of us have found joys in marriage our great-great-grandparents never did. But we have also neglected our other relationships, placing too many burdens on a fragile institution and making social life poorer in the process.

A study released this year showed just how dependent we’ve become on marriage. Three sociologists at the University of Arizona and Duke University found that from 1985 to 2004 Americans reported a marked decline in the number of people with whom they discussed meaningful matters. People reported fewer close relationships with co-workers, extended family members, neighbors and friends. The only close relationship where more people said they discussed important matters in 2004 than in 1985 was marriage.

In fact, the number of people who depended totally on a spouse for important conversations, with no other person to turn to, almost doubled, to 9.4 percent from 5 percent. Not surprisingly, the number of people saying they didn’t have anyone in whom they confided nearly tripled.

The solution to this isolation is not to ramp up our emotional dependence on marriage. Until 100 years ago, most societies agreed that it was dangerously antisocial, even pathologically self-absorbed, to elevate marital affection and nuclear-family ties above commitments to neighbors, extended kin, civic duty and religion.

St. Paul complained that married men were more concerned with pleasing their wives than pleasing God [1 Corinthians 7:33]. In John Adams’s view, a “passion for the public good” was “superior to all private passions.” In both England and America, moralists bewailed “excessive” married love, which encouraged “men and women to be always taken up with each other.”

From medieval days until the early 19th century, diaries and letters more often used the word love to refer to neighbors, cousins and fellow church members than to spouses. When honeymoons first gained favor in the 19th century, couples often took along relatives or friends for company. Victorian novels and diaries were as passionate about brother-sister relationships and same-sex friendships as about marital ties.

The Victorian refusal to acknowledge strong sexual desires among respectable men and women gave people a wider outlet for intense emotions, including physical touch, than we see today. Men wrote matter-of-factly about retiring to bed with a male roommate, “and in each other’s arms did friendship sink peacefully to sleep.” Upright Victorian matrons thought nothing of kicking their husbands out of bed when a female friend came to visit. They spent the night kissing, hugging and pouring out their innermost thoughts.

By the early 20th century, though, the sea change in the culture wrought by the industrial economy had loosened social obligations to neighbors and kin, giving rise to the idea that individuals could meet their deepest needs only through romantic love, culminating in marriage. Under the influence of Freudianism, society began to view intense same-sex ties with suspicion and people were urged to reject the emotional claims of friends and relatives who might compete with a spouse for time and affection.

The insistence that marriage and parenthood could satisfy all an individual’s needs reached a peak in the cult of “togetherness” among middle-class suburban Americans in the 1950s. Women were told that marriage and motherhood offered them complete fulfillment. Men were encouraged to let their wives take care of their social lives.

But many men and women found these prescriptions stifling. Women who entered the work force in the 1960s joyfully rediscovered social contacts and friendships outside the home.

“It was so stimulating to have real conversations with other people,” a woman who lived through this period told me, “to go out after work with friends from the office or to have people over other than my husband’s boss or our parents.”

And women’s lead in overturning the cult of 1950s marriage inspired many men to rediscover what earlier generations of men had taken for granted -- that men need deep emotional connections with other men, not just their wives. Researchers soon found that men and women with confidants beyond the nuclear family were mentally and physically healthier than people who relied on just one other individual for emotional intimacy and support.

So why do we seem to be slipping back in this regard? It is not because most people have voluntarily embraced nuclear-family isolation. Indeed, the spread of “virtual” communities on the Internet speaks to a deep hunger to reach out to others.

Instead, it’s the expansion of the post-industrial economy that seems to be driving us back to a new dependence on marriage. According to the researchers Kathleen Gerson and Jerry Jacobs, 60 percent of American married couples have both partners in the work force, up from 36 percent in 1970, and the average two-earner couple now works 82 hours a week.

This is probably why the time Americans spend socializing with others off the job has declined by almost 25 percent since 1965. Their free hours are spent with spouses, and as a study by Suzanne Bianchi of the University of Maryland released last month showed, with their children -- mothers and fathers today spend even more time with their youngsters than parents did 40 years ago.

As Americans lose the wider face-to-face ties that build social trust, they become more dependent on romantic relationships for intimacy and deep communication, and more vulnerable to isolation if a relationship breaks down. In some cases we even cause the breakdown by loading the relationship with too many expectations. Marriage is generally based on more equality and deeper friendship than in the past, but even so, it is hard for it to compensate for the way that work has devoured time once spent cultivating friendships.

The solution is not to revive the failed marital experiment of the 1950s, as so many commentators noting the decline in married-couple households seem to want. Nor is it to lower our expectations that we’ll find fulfillment and friendship in marriage.

Instead, we should raise our expectations for, and commitment to, other relationships, especially since so many people now live so much of their lives outside marriage. Paradoxically, we can strengthen our marriages the most by not expecting them to be our sole refuge from the pressures of the modern work force. Instead we need to restructure both work and social life so we can reach out and build ties with others, including people who are single or divorced. That indeed would be a return to marital tradition -- not the 1950s model, but the pre-20th-century model that has a much more enduring pedigree.

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Stephanie Coontz, a history professor at Evergreen State College, is the author of “Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage.”

For Thomas Dyer, there was fire and brimstone. “There was the idea that there’s an angry God and somehow you could really make Him mad.” Dyer grew up fearing God. He was a Cumberland Presbyterian, then a Baptist. He had hoped religious conviction would lead to contentment. He attended seminary and preached as a Southern Baptist minister.

That seems like a lifetime ago as Dyer, 43, sits on a cushion in the shrine room of the Pema Karpo Meditation Center in Raleigh. Six statues of various Buddhas are positioned against the walls. His teacher, a Tibetan monk who founded the temple, listens as Dyer explains his exodus from the pulpit in search of nirvana.

“The question that arose in my mind is, ‘Why is there so much suffering?’ Christianity did not have a satisfactory answer. I wanted to be happy. The idea that we have to live with suffering until we die just did not make sense to me -- the idea that God wants you to suffer so you can then enjoy heaven.” Dyer kept asking, “Is this all there is to life?” As a Christian, he had been interested in mysticism. That led to meditation. Dyer studied Buddhism, then visited the temple near his home in Raleigh. Right away, he says, “It was like, ‘Whoa, I’m home.’”

In and out of church, Dyer says unhappiness and dissatisfaction seemed pervasive. Wealth and success made no difference. “Everybody is basically suffering about the same. The average Joes you can see happiness in their lives, but it doesn’t take long that you will see confusion and dissatisfaction. I wanted to explore the idea that you could find a solution to suffering.”

Converting to Buddhism wasn’t painless. “When you grow up in the Bible Belt, that teaching is very strong. It’s almost better to be a drug addict, an adulterer or a scalawag than to say, ‘I’m a Buddhist.’”

He questioned whether he was “denying Christ or endangering my eternal position. But as I continued my meditation, these types of fear just dissolved.”

His marriage and two children also were issues. Dyer’s wife, Sidney, and the children are Christians, members of First Evangelical Church. “It challenged us to the point that it made us wonder if we could make it,” she said.

Sidney’s belief that “God plans it all” helped. “I actually thank God in a way because I wouldn’t have gone as deep in my own faith if I hadn’t been challenged,” she said. Instead of rejecting the suffering that her husband questioned, she embraced it: “I think each individual’s suffering is personally designed for that individual to lead him to God.”

She describes her husband as “a deeply spiritual person” and holds out hope that his spiritual journey will lead him back to Christianity.

At Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, president Michael Spradlin says a minister’s conversion from fundamentalist Southern Baptist tradition to Buddhism seems “unfathomable.” Spradlin says most suffering in this country is no more than “inconvenience” compared with the real suffering of those in Sudan and other war and famine-ravaged countries.

Spradlin suggests that if Dyer really was a born-again Christian that Southern Baptists and a “forgiving God” might consider his exploration of Buddhism as a “wrong step or a wrong path” and that he could be welcomed back to Christianity.

Dyer, who says he still appreciates the teachings of the Bible, says he doesn’t think of Buddhism as a rejection of Christianity. But the happiness he once sought as a Christian no longer seems beyond his grasp. “Without a doubt, without equivocation, there has been a continuous, constant diminishment of suffering and awakening of peace and happiness,” he said.