Good News Quote #25

From Chapter Four, Why You Don't Have to "Find God's Will for Your Life": Or, How Faith Seeks Wisdom.

For our thinking is to be mature, which is to say grown-up and adult or, in Jesus' vivid words, "wise as serpents." We are not allowed to suppose that the dove of innocence is incompatible with the serpent of wisdom.


Such language -- wise as serpents! As usual, our Lord teaches with a boldness of authority that is enough to get people rattled. We might ask, "You mean, like the serpent in the garden who god Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?" Yes, that serpent. Jesus knows how to choose his metaphors. We are to be wiser than that serpent and all his ilk, staying away from his shortcut to the knowledge of what is good and bad.


The name of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Hebrew contains the same pairing of words as Solomon's prayer asking for a heart that discerns between good and bad. Solomon is praying for what the serpent was offering, but he's not accepting the serpent's shortcut. He doesn't believe in magic potions or recipes or fruit that could make him wise with one bite. He wants the real thing, which means it must be his own heart that is shaped in wisdom by the Spirit of the Lord; he's going to have to learn. That's why the book of proverbs of Solomon begins with a scene of instruction and the commandments to seek wisdom and understanding. There is no shortcut to learning wisdom, no bypassing the hard work of learning to make good decisions, because the aim is to acquire a heart of wisdom -- and such a heart must be formed by a wisdom that is truly its own.

Good News Quote #24

From Chapter Four, Why You Don't Have to "Find God's Will for Your Life": Or, How Faith Seeks Wisdom.

Take for example the most far-reaching spiritual investment that most of us ever make: "Should I marry this person?" It's a huge question for young people to face, and they need some help from those of us who've already faced it. We shouldn't misdirect them by getting them asking the wrong questions. The worst question of all is: "Is this the one?" The assumption behind this question is that God has a particular person in store for you to marry: that's his will for your life, and you need to find out who's the one he has in mind. This way of thinking makes your most fundamental investment -- the person in which you invest your whole self for the rest of your life -- a guessing game about what's in the mind of God.


But suppose God wants you to seek wisdom, like a steward learning to make good investments. What sorts of questions should you be asking then? Here's what I tell my students: you ask a series of questions about what's good. You ask, first of all, "Is this a good person?" For you should marry a person of Christian virtue: kind, faithful, and generous of spirit. Then there's a second question to ask, more specific: "Is this person good for me?" That is to say, you should marry someone who resonates with you in particular. [...]


There are many good people out there with whom you can make a good marriage, and a good marriage with a good person is good enough. Indeed, it is more than good enough; it is one of the greatest blessings on God's green earth.

Good News Quote #23

From Chapter Four, Why You Don't Have to "Find God's Will for Your Life": Or, How Faith Seeks Wisdom.

If you're looking for a recipe, formula, or method for making decisions, then you're looking for the wrong thing. There is no recipe. There is only wisdom, the heart's intelligent skill of discerning good decisions from bad ones. This is a skill, not a method -- not a formula you can apply to particular situations simply by following the rules, but a habit of the heart you have to develop through long experience of your own, which includes making mistakes from time to time. The concept of wisdom is what every method for "finding God's will" leaves out of the decision-making process. It's left out precisely because the project of "finding God's will" is an attempt to guarantee you won't make a mistake. All such guarantees are falsehoods, attempts to short-circuit the hard work of acquiring wisdom.

Good News Quote #22

From Chapter Four, Why You Don't Have to "Find God's Will for Your Life": Or, How Faith Seeks Wisdom.

The providence of God is called his "hidden will" for good reason. Like the future itself, God's will for our future contains great depths that we can't see very far into. [...]

There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes a prophet will tell God's people what God has in store for them. But even then there is much that remains hidden in God's will for their future. This is illustrated in one of the most famous passages about the will of God in the Bible. It's where the prophet Jeremiah speaks words of comfort to the exiled people of Israel in the name of the Lord their God: "I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jer. 29:11). God knows these plans, but Israel doesn't. He does not in fact reveal much about them. Through the prophet, he tells them that they will remain in captivity for seventy years, and then he will bring them back to their own land. But that's about all. He doesn't reveal the details. The point is clear: God knows his plans -- we don't.

Good News Quote #21

From Chapter Four, Why You Don't Have to "Find God's Will for Your Life": Or, How Faith Seeks Wisdom.

The way my students talk about it, God's will is out there waiting to be found, like the one person they're convinced God has for them to marry. But how do you know where to look? And how do you know when you've really found it? (Once again, the "how do you know?" questions, with their accompanying anxieties, are a sign that something's gone wrong). What happens if you mistake the will of God and don't marry "the one" that God has for you? (Do you wonder why evangelical Christians have as high a divorce rate as everyone else?) Or what happens if you only get God's "second best" will for your life? (Do you wonder why "disappointment with God" is such a trend among evangelicals?) A whole boatload of anxieties is tied up with this notion of "finding God's will."