The Purpose-less Driven Life

How to Make Fearless Life Decisions

(This is Part Two of “The Will of God for My Life”)

At last count there are eight things I said I would NEVER do (going back to my high school days), and I’ve done them all.

Some were career decisions, some were relationship decisions, some moral choices, some faith related. All were life-altering in their consequences. And here I am, at 71, looking back and trying to see “the hand of God” and find evidences of His providential grace in the outcomes of my free choices.

Most of humanity, whether we consult Tarot cards, a Ouija board, chicken entrails, tea leaves, a phrenologist or a clairvoyant holy elder on a mountain we want to know that our life is being directed, constrained, designed or ordained by some power outside ourselves. I think there are several things related to that desire.

First, it gives us “significance”. If my life path is divinely ordained then who I am and what I do matters to “the deity” and to the world. It’s nice to be needed, wanted and recognized.

Second, it gives us assurance that we aren’t total screw ups even when we screw up. And if… when we do, the “universe” does its “yin-yang” thing, the gods set people straight, karma bears its fruit, or God works all things together for good in His omniscient, omnipotent providence. All of which is evidence that ultimately, as significant as we think we are called to be, our screw ups, sins, choices and failures at fulfilling our divine purpose is less consequential and significant than who we are. In short, we have a need to know our damage in the universe is fixable and worth fixing because our existence is a greater good than the evil we do, and there is redemption from failing to find or fully realize our divine purpose.

Third, which is related to the second, is freedom is an exhausting weight and fearful mystery. If we bear full responsibility for our choices and the gods/universe/Force or God isn’t manipulating our crappy choices and their consequences to restore some balance, justice, peace or good then we are our own gods of our own individual universe… which is existentially and spiritually a dreadful, frightening burden.

I think all of those concepts are intertwined because they all try to explain who we are, why we exist, and how the cosmos deals with our “bad” actions in the grandest scheme of its existence. How we explain ourselves to ourselves is pretty much a universal human existential/spiritual need to know, and the “job” of the spiritual life is to balance what we believe is the significance of our existence, the consequentiality of our actions in the universe, and how/how much our gods intervene in both our good and evil. An over-emphasis on any one thing creates big issues: over-estimating my significance of existence or actions becomes pride, over-estimating the cosmos/gods’ control over me becomes some sort of pre-destination and a denial of free agency and accountability. And essentially all human transgression, evil, fault, failure, or sin comes from one of those two places.

So, what does all this mean when it comes down to “knowing our purpose”, finding our “life path” or God’s will for my life?

As I said in my last essay, I don’t believe our "life path" is divinely revealed to us. I’m not sure God can truly ordain what our life path is if free will is true. Even St. Paul who said he was set apart from his mother’s womb revised his understanding of his "divinely ordained life's purpose" after his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus to kill Christians. But intervention, even divine, does not guarantee the “correct choice” if free will is true. In spite of my firm belief in all the “signs and wonders” that led me to marry my first “soul mate” at age 20, I’ve now been married 50 years, but not in a row. I ended up divorced after twenty years, one of the things I “would never do”, because I did some other things I said I’d never do. Knowledge of God’s will and the doing of God’s will are two different things even if we “know” what is divinely commanded and ordained.

Looking back now, even IF my “calling to the priesthood” was a true call and was actually the divinely ordained will of God for my life and not my delusional prelest, either way, I managed to de-rail it by not doing the will of God for my life in a far simpler, fundamental, daily call and vocation: love my wife as Christ loves the church. So one way or the other, the will of God for my life both remained the same at one level but changed in functionality: the arena of battling my demons to fulfill His simple, fundamental, daily will just moved addresses is all.

So my understanding of believing my "life path" was ordained by God, or even revised and manipulated by Him on the fly because of my failures, meant defining the significance of my life by what I do for a living, who I’m with, or where I live. The issue I wrestled with was my self-definition of "significance" or “what is better or more spiritual”. In my mind of course the priesthood would have been better and more spiritual and a successful construction business and being able to help the poor, build churches and monasteries etc. was OK but still a “participation trophy”. (I’ve gotten over that, thank God). But I’ve spent over forty years of my Christian life doing construction, not by my preparations, aspirations or vocational choice, though I still believe it was the providence of God that put me in the place to have the opportunity to choose a laborers’ life. And ultimately I "chose it", even if it was reluctantly, because at the time I was constrained by circumstances and the need to feed my family. If I hadn’t chosen it, there would have been other choices to make, including becoming homeless because of my decisions.

So, I often think of the Prophets who spent decades of their lives doing ordinary stuff like herding sheep, picking figs or figuring out how to love an incorrigible whore before any thought of their life having "spiritual significance" entered their radar because of a surprising, unexpected, undeniable divine intervention. In the grand scheme of Scripture, out of the billions of people who have lived in history, we have a small handful of characters that get that call. The fact of the matter is, most of us are not biblical characters. Because of our spiritual narcissism we get it backwards... we assume a specific ordained purpose and that we WILL experience divine intervention and we WILL do something with biblical level significance, then based on those assumptions, we look for events and circumstances to prove it to ourselves and can interpret as the hand of God directing us.

But maybe… just maybe, God is just doing damage control, human sh*t happens and His providence is “waste management”. In the big picture of history maybe what we DO is much easier to “fix” and work around than who we are… which is basically a holy elder, guru, psychologist, 12-Step, country music axiom: No matter where you go, there you are.

So, here's how I see "life path" and decisions now:

A. Don't "overly-spiritualize" your life path unless you are contemplating becoming a pimp or paid assassin. When it comes to choosing a “life path” or vocation, there are choices that are moral decisions and there are choices that are just decisions. Generally, you won't be a better or worse Christian in a normal, particular environment. If you’re looking for the perfect workplace to fulfill your calling, welllll…. We are created FOR paradise, not BY paradise. The angels fell from heaven and Adam and Eve sinned in Eden. So, if your work environment dictates your spiritual life, maybe it’s that you don't have a stable spiritual life and you should work on that, not your resume.

That said, we’re all weak and broken and sometimes a daily beating isn’t what we need. The old saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is not always true. Sometimes what doesn’t kill you can cripple you for life or put you in the hospital with permanent brain damage. The point is, unless there is a clear moral issue or potential further irreparable damage don’t make a life choice out to be more than just a decision between two options on your table that amounts to baked potato or brussel sprouts as a side dish. If you don’t like brussel sprouts, pick the potato. There’s nothing particularly spiritual about enjoying or not enjoying your job if it’s an “honest living”. Leaving a crappy job isn’t a moral decision. If you don’t like it, just pick another one, leave like a Christian and be a Christian at the new one.

B.  If you are married, provide for your family. If you’re single, you can live under a bridge with trolls if you want. If you have chosen to marry and have kids then you also chose to work to feed and clothe them, it’s a package deal. Sometimes that may mean taking a job that isn’t something you want to do with your life. Personal aspirations and principles are what you have until your kids have no shoes. As a Christian, you just don’t have the option of providing for them by being a paid assassin. So take a good paying job if one is available. There is no virtue in poverty. But, neither is there virtue in riches. Don't confuse your "career" with your "spiritual life" (see “A”).  If you can do computer programming and are good at it and can make 185.00/hr., don't be fooled into thinking you'd be a better person by becoming a cashier at a Thrift Store for minimum wage because you are "sacrificing". Virtue is in learning to live simply, guilt-free and generously. Give away more than is comfortable no matter how much you make.

C. But what if I see "The Hand of God" working in my life?  Honestly, I still vacillate about this one. I firmly believe the providence of God has been a part of my life from day one. Providence is not the problem, it is MY INTERPRETATION of the events and the when, the how and the results of that providence. We can see "success" as blessings and "failure" as a consequence of sin. But they could just be the results of market forces, competence and hard work or being lazy or a total idiot. Sometimes it’s just your hands and will working according to and within the structures and state of the created order, not the hand of God and His will.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen "the hand of God" in something in the short run and now 20, 30, 40, and 50 years removed from it have re-interpreted the events, providences and outcomes. The fact of the matter is, providence is cumulative and consequences flow down for decades not just weeks or months. If God is working all things together, then it’s ALL things about which we have no clue and how they are being "set up" or how things will work out in the long run beyond our life. I am VERY wary of interpreting recent events as "the hand of God" or seeing blessings or outcomes in them. I really don't know what is really a blessing or a sign or merely an event within the fallen order that God will have to re-define, work within, do some magic with, or merely let it play out to its logical end and hopefully I will learn a lesson from it.

D. The most well-known character in the parables is the Good Samaritan. He helped an outcast in need and put himself on the hook for the sake of a stranger. He wasn't on an official medical mission trip with an agency—he wasn’t anyone special or called by God or directed miraculously to the injured man. He just did the right thing where he "happened" to be, walking down the road on an ordinary day. So I need to see sweeping the floors, making the bed, taking out the trash if I happen to be standing in front of a sink full of dirty dishes or a full garbage can as a "mission from God". Every moment is the place we "happened to be when…" and we will either be a good Samaritan and attend to it, or we will be a priest or Levite and walk by because we have more important things to do because of the will of God for our life. And if we master the present moment maybe we’ll get a chapter in the Bible….

All that said, it boils down to this: We just need to make the best decisions we can with what we have and where we are spiritually. Whether the decisions are delusional or truly spiritual, in the end they are both pointed toward God in a round about way and He’ll have to work with it all anyway, so don’t sweat it and be a Christian at what you decide. In the end, no matter where you end up it can be for the glory of God and your spiritual growth in the long run. And the long run is longer than you think.