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WHO AM I? AND THREE ADDITONAL CRUCIAL QUESTIONS
This series of lessons will
attempt to address four questions that every human being
ask,
whether they realize it or not. The answers to these questions determine how
we live our lives and how we interact with the universe around us. Because the
answers to these questions are foundational to the way we live our lives it is
of fundamental importance that we understand what these answers are. The
questions are:
1. Who am I?
2. Where did I come from?
3. Why am I here?
4. Where am I going?
In our study of these questions
we will find that the answers quite often will overlap and that there will be
much common ground covered. Yet the emphasis, in spite of the commonality,
will be different. Let us then begin to contemplate ourselves.
Question One: Who Am I?
The question of who we are can
only be answered by use of knowledge outside of ourselves.
Just as we cannot
determine our appearance without the assistance of a mirror so we cannot
properly understand ourselves if we do not evaluate ourselves by means of
something or someone external to ourselves. To answer the
question of
who we are requires that
we know our origin, our purpose, and our future, for only in knowing where we
came from, why we are here, and where we are going can we come to a proper
conclusion regarding who we are.
As we mature from infancy
through childhood and on into adulthood we discover that we are embarked upon
a course of self definition. Our interests, abilities and relationships have
moulded us into what we are today. Yet if I were to look back at my earliest
memories I find nothing there that indicates that I planned to be where I am
today. That I am a teacher of the Bible at Pickering Standard Church is not
something that I planned it is something that happened to me. So in one sense
I am who I am because of my personal desires and ambitions, yet in an other
sense I am who I am because someone outside of me has pushed me where I would
not have gone.
Many in our world have attempted
to answer the question of who they are without accounting for
the
someone outside of themselves and as a consequence their
answers are out of touch with reality. There is someone outside of every one
of us and He is introduced to us both generally through His creation and
specifically through His revelation of Himself in the Bible. Any attempt to
discover who we are that does not account for God is inaccurate and not worthy
as the guiding principal of our lives.
While the Bible never directly
asks the question of who we are we can find the answer everywhere within its
pages. There is never any doubt in the minds of any its writers that we are
God’s children, His workmanship, and members of His body (Christ):
Romans 8:16
–
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.
Ephesians
2:10
–
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians
5:30
–
For we are members of his body.
The Bible deals directly with
the issue of who we are. Witness Isaiah’s response to being in the presence of
God Most High:
Isaiah 6:1-5
–
In the year
that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a
throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above
him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their
faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And
they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the
whole earth is full of his glory." At the sound of their voices the doorposts
and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. "Woe to me!" I
cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people
of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
One of the interesting points
here is that Isaiah knew who he was, he was a “man of unclean lips” and he
lived among “a people of unclean lips.” He knew he was not holy enough to see
what he was seeing and live, for Isaiah the question of his identity was one
with a moral answer, it related to right and wrong. Lest we start to think
that Isaiah had this question settled in his mind with that answer and that
for others the answer would have been different observe the response of the
seraphs to Isaiah’s lament:
Isaiah 6:6-7
–
Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he
had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said,
"See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned
for."
The answer in heaven to the
question of Isaiah’s identity was also a moral answer. Isaiah was impure and
he was made pure. Heaven’s regard for man is not who are we in the way that
most modern philosophers would see the question, in absolute ignorance of God,
but who we are in relation to God. Are we righteous or unrighteous? Are our
lips clean or unclean? Has our guilt been taken away or does it remain on us?
Once that question is settled we can get on with life. Again, look at Isaiah’s
response to his God given righteousness:
Isaiah 6:8
–
Then I heard
the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And
I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
Once we begin to seriously
consider who we are, we inevitably come to the understanding that we are
embarked upon a journey of both self definition and self discovery. In one
sense we continually define who we are through the choices we make in our
lives yet in
an other sense we are
constantly discovering new truths about ourselves. It is as though we are a
jigsaw puzzle in which we determine which pieces to insert in order to
complete a predetermined whole. Ultimately, the question of who we are finds
its only perfect answer in the One Eternal God. I am a Christian and am
utterly reliant upon God and totally devoted to God; without Him I am nothing
with Him I am all that I will ever need to be.
Question Two: Where Did I Come
From?
Genesis 1:1
–
In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:26-28
–
Then God
said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over
the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the
earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created
man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he
created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in
number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the
birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Genesis 2:7
–
The LORD God
formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life, and the man became a living being.
The question of where we came
from is a question of great significance. It is an important question not
simply because it seeks basic, foundational knowledge about our origins, it is
important because the answer to this question determines our own importance.
If it is true, as many believe today, that we are merely complex biological
machines then we will have a different opinion of our worth than if we would
if we believe that we have been created by God. As it turns out there are only
two possible answers to the question of “Where did I come from?”
1. I am a result of limited, uncaring, and impersonal natural processes
2. I am created by an infinite, loving, and personal God
I cannot consider as valid any
response to the question of our origin that incorporates a belief in a god
other than the God Who reveals Himself through both the Bible and all of
creation. I do this deliberately since, as they have been created by man, all
the gods spoken of in all other religions are limited, uncaring, and
impersonal because they are non-existent. Evaluating the question in this
context we discover that if we believe that we are the result of natural
process then we must believe that we are merely worms that have learned to
walk upright and that we have no more significance or value than a single
celled organism or a clump of dirt since the same natural process brought both
of us about.
If we believe that we are
created by an infinite, loving, and personal God then our value comes from the
realization that He cared to make us and has placed us here for His purpose.
We will discuss the issue of purpose further along, but for now I wish to show
that who we are is determined by the purpose of our existence. If it is true
that we are here only as the result of natural processes then there can be no
purpose to our existence, life is meaningless since we are accidents in time
and our identity has no lasting significance. If, however, it is true that we
have been created by God then there is purpose to our existence, our life has
meaning because our existence is the result of God’s purpose and our identity
has an eternal significance.
Here is an illustration: If I
were to throw an open box of toothpicks in the air and noticed when the
toothpicks fell to the ground that they spelled out a word that word would
have no meaning since it was simply the result of a combination of wind
resistance, throwing velocity, and position in the box. But if I took those
same toothpicks and placed them on the floor in such a way as to spell out the
very same word that word now has the significance that I have imparted to it,
there is a reason behind the existence of the
word,
its origin was by design rather than by chance.
As can be seen from this
progression the answer to the question of where we came from can only be found
either in our creator, or our lack of a creator. The answer determines who or
what has ownership of us, nature or God, and the coming up with the wrong
answer results in a dilemma as one must then live one’s life at odds with
reality, see the brief discussion of Nietzsche in next section.
Descartes’ pronouncement “I
think, therefore I am” was the result of his desire to rationally prove the
existence of God from a strictly human point of view, by finding one
unalterable truth which could not be doubted and upon that foundation of
certainty building up to the certainty of God.
In essence
establishing the reality of God by means of the reality of man.
Unfortunately for Descartes, and for the way of thinking which he initialized,
the reality of God cannot be built upon what man thinks, instead it is the
very reality of God that determines the reality of man. The answer to our
question “Where did I come from?” can only be found when we understand that we
exist only because God wills it. Even the ancient Greeks realized in this as
is
evidenced by this quote from one of Paul’s sermons in the city of Athens:
Acts 17:28
–
'For in him
we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We
are his offspring.'
“The fatal flaw in the myth of
human goodness is that it fails to correspond with what we know about the
world from our own ordinary experience.” (Charles Colson – “How Now Shall We
Live?” – pp. 189)
The fact is that from a strictly
empirical viewpoint there is sufficient proof for the validity of everything
within the Bible that, as Paul once wrote:
Romans 1:20
–
For since
the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-- his eternal power and
divine nature-- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been
made, so that men are without excuse.
The extension of his argument,
which is proven by Paul’s use of the statement “so that men are without
excuse,” is that since there truly
exists
the One True God Who created us therefore we as His creation have a
responsibility to live according to His decree.
Question Three: Why Am I Here?
It is a question of purpose, we
are essentially asking: “What is the reason of my existence?” As the answer
will determine our interaction with reality we could also ask: “Where and how
do I fit in best with what I see around me?”
Since we have been created by
God we therefore fit best in His creation when we live according to His
guidelines. This is born out in the life of Friedrich Nietzsche. In the middle
1880s Nietzsche proclaimed that “God is dead.” As a result there was no longer
any rational basis for human morality. Nietzsche died insane and many scholars
believe that it was because he could not live consistently within God’s
universe while maintaining his denial of God in his way of thinking. If God is
dead then everything is gone and life itself is pointless.
Our purpose, the reason for our
existence, depends completely on our origin. So, as was seen earlier, the
question of our origin, when answered, also determines the reason for our
existence and our responsibility to the world around us. The determination of
our purpose is crucial for as Nietzsche also said:
Nietzsche
– Men and women can
endure any amount of suffering as long as they know the why of their
existence.
For some evolutionists our
responsibility is to survive at all costs since they adhere to the Darwinian
principal of “Survival of the Fittest.” For other evolutionists our
responsibility is to protect the world from destruction by its dominant
species since that species, man, is no different in essence from any other
creature. Hindus, enslaved under the concept of Karma, or “what goes around
comes around,” believe that all that happens to them in this life is either
punishment or reward for their actions in a previous life and that their
responses to these happenings act to determine their position on their
presumed ladder of life in their next life.
For the Christian our
responsibility is stated very nicely by Micah:
Micah 6:8
–
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of
you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
King David also
realized this same truth some 250 years earlier and gives the reason why as
well:
1 Chronicles
29:10-17
–
David
praised the LORD in the presence of the whole assembly, saying, "Praise be to
you, O LORD, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours,
O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the
splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O LORD, is the
kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you
are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and
give strength to all. Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your
glorious name. But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to
give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you
only what comes from your hand. We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as
were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope. O
LORD our God, as for all this abundance that we have provided for building you
a temple for your Holy Name, it comes from your hand, and all of it
belongs to you. I know, my God, that you test the heart
and are pleased with integrity. All these things have I given willingly and
with honest intent.”
King David also
saw that our desire to devote ourselves to the giving of glory, praise, and
honour to God is something that is both instilled and nurtured by God
1 Chronicles
29:17-18
– “And
now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to
you. O LORD, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep this desire in
the hearts of your people forever, and keep their hearts loyal to you.”
For the Christian,
therefore, our purpose is to do the will of the God Who placed us here and Who
created the universe in its vast array for our benefit and His glory. Creation
itself obeys the same principal, in the words of the Christian music group AD:
All creation
sings, hail the King of kings
All creation
sings, glory to Your name
And Jesus indicates the same
idea in His response to the Pharisees of His time when they told Him to make
His followers be silent on the occasion of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem:
Luke 19:40
–
“I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."
So the question of
why we are here for the Christian is best answered when understood in the
context of their special creation at the hand of an almighty and loving God
who is worthy of praise for all that He has done and is doing in their lives.
It is a question that has in its answer a firm view of the Christian’s
ultimate destination.
Question Four: Where Am I Going?
It is a question of destiny, of
what is our life all about, taking purpose to the next obvious step: “Why is
there a purpose?” We have observed previously the meaninglessness of existence
for those who believe in evolution, for all who have no belief in God.
Consider now the meaninglessness of their death. For such a high form of life
as man to merely end in the oblivion of death seems pointless, why live at
all. The writer of Ecclesiastes well describes the futility of living within a
philosophical framework that takes no account of God:
Ecclesiastes
3:19-22 (Pete’s Paraphrase)
–
The fate of
man is identical to the fate of the animals; the same end awaits them both,
each die in the same way. Their lives are the same and to be a man is to have
no advantage over being an animal. Everything has no point. Man and animals
both come from the same place and will both return to that place when they
die.
Ecclesiastes
3:19-22
–
Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As
one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage
over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come
from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward
and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth? So I saw that there
is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot.
For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?
Ecclesiastes
9:5
–
For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they
have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten.
Ecclesiastes
9:10
–
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the
grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor
knowledge nor wisdom.
Contrary to such a view of the
meaninglessness of life and death the Christian has hope:
2 Samuel
14:14
–
Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must
die.
But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished
person may not remain estranged from him.
Even Job, in the midst of all of
his troubles, knew that death would not merely end his suffering and despair,
it would lead him at last to the God he had so faithfully served all of his
life:
Job 19:25-27
–
I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the
earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I
myself will see him with my own eyes-- I, and not another. How my heart yearns
within me!
There is a goal for those who
know the truth, a destination for which we yearn. For the Christian the answer
to the question “Where am I going?” is Heaven! Purpose has been ingrained into
our existence, there is no emptiness to greet our non-existence but rather the
God who has made us and who will welcome us into His kingdom with open arms.