Sooner or later, we all come to a point where we wake up and ask ourselves what life means. This life we are living: does it matter? All this energy we are putting in on studying or working or church or family or whatever: is it really necessary? I submit to you that most of us at one time or another will ask that kind of question. What does it all mean?
A number of years ago, I watched my father growing older and beginning to ask that question. He had spent his entire adult life working hard, and he hadn’t thought about much else. Too busy to think about great ideas. Too tired after getting up at four in the morning to go out and carry the mail to think deep philosophical questions. Too frustrated at the petty politics that powered the postal service to pine away his time in cosmic issues. But the time came when he began to ask whether his life mattered.
It came about the time the last of my grandparents died. I was in my teens when it happened, and he and I just went for a walk after the funeral. My father said to me as we walked around the old neighborhood, “You know, I could have been something, if it hadn’t been for them. I really could have been something.” He went on to talk about his earliest ambition, which was to be a pastor. But, as an eighteen-year-old, he brought that idea home, and his father had said, “Not in my family, you don’t. No preachers in this family!” So, my father dropped that idea.
Several years later, after he had met and married my mother, he had also developed quite a gift for music. He had become good enough that a radio station up in Cincinnati offered him a chance to sing professionally, and he wanted to move there and take that opportunity. But this time, not his father but his father-in-law said, “No way are you going to break up this family. No, you are not taking my daughter off to live with the *** Yankees in Ohio.” And so he gave up that dream. He stayed at home, worked at carrying the mail, and raised his two sons.
But now the last of the old generation had died. And as he began to think about what he could have been, he found that he resented what he had lost. He was frustrated by what he had missed. And now he was asking himself whether his life really had any meaning. More than that, he also began to find fault. He began to blame.
If, when you get to that point, you don’t measure up to what you think you could have been, who are you going to blame? With whom will you find fault? Faultfinding is our usual human response to failure. Somebody has to take the blame. Somebody has to be at fault. Now who is at fault if I don’t become what I think I could have become?
Job felt that. He had worked hard and had accumulated a great deal, but once it was taken away, he felt empty, useless, pointless. Job felt that his life might just as well end; the sheer number of times he said that he loathed his life is truly frightening. Frankly, if Job were sitting in my office talking with me, I would be running into the next room to dial 911. He sounds as near suicidal as anybody I’ve ever encountered.
And yet there is also something wonderfully honest about Job. There is something refreshing about him, because he won’t quit asking for justice. He demands that somebody show him where his life has gone wrong. Job thinks he has played by the rules, and now all this mess?! Somebody is at fault here! Something is out of whack here. Somebody has to be blamed!
Job is like a friend of mine who said that he got so sick one day he was afraid he was going to die. And then he got so much sicker he was afraid he wasn’t going to die and be put out of his misery! Job is so anxious to see if his life has had any meaning, and if not, whose fault is it anyway?
Now Job has a friend named Bildad. And Bildad has an answer. Bildad has a way of measuring meaning. In the conversation between Bildad and Job we learn a whole lot about faultfinding and about where you can go to measure your life’s meaning.
I
Bildad’s word is: consider the past as your source of meaning. Consider the past. Bildad’s wisdom is that you should look to the past and see if you have kept faith with history. Bildad’s idea is to satisfy what others have expected of you, those who have gone before you. Don’t step out into new territories. Stay with the tried and true. Bildad’s notion is that if you want to know whether your life has meaning, find out whether you did what tradition, custom, habit, other’s expectations taught you to do.
Here’s how Bildad put it:
"For inquire now of bygone generations, and consider what their ancestors have found; for we are but of yesterday, and we know nothing, for our days on earth are but a shadow. Will they not teach you and tell you and utter words out of their understanding?
"How long will you hunt for words? Consider, and then we shall speak!"
Bildad is the guy who is buried in his past. He finds fault with Job because he thinks Job has no regard for his elders, no respect for tradition, and no concern for what others want him to be. Bildad finds fault with Job because it feels to him as though Job has just written off everything that others have learned. And that seems all wrong to Bildad. Consider the past, consider what our ancestors have said. That’s Bildad.
But, you see, what that reveals is that Bildad is himself incredibly insecure. Bildad is spiritually unstable. Bildad is the person who won’t let himself look at new ideas, because it is pretty unsettling to think that maybe your life has been invested in all the wrong things. Bildad he just puts everything into a neat little philosophy, a textbook theology, because down deep Bildad is afraid of himself. He doesn’t trust himself. He clings to the past. All he knows is to hang on to tired old ways, and if he lets himself even imagine that they might be out of date, well, then, where is he going to stand? What will he stand on? “Inquire of bygone generations, and consider what the ancestors have found, ... for we know nothing.”
Have you seen this? Spiritually insecure people grab on to old paths, old patterns, outworn ways, not because they are good and right so much as just because they are old? A friend of mine was the founding pastor of a church not far from here. He served that church from its beginning and stayed there some thirty years. Many of the people who founded it with him were still there thirty years later. He thought they all shared the same values. He thought they all understood that their way of doing church was, oh, a little on the cutting edge, a little different. But, says my friend, as this group of young radicals got older, some of them began to feel insecure. Some of them began to question the things their church had done. Some of them began to wonder about why they didn’t do the old-style stuff like evangelistic campaigns and camp meeting music. And they turned on him! They suddenly ran as fast as they could straight into the Nineteenth Century! And they blamed my friend, their pastor, they found fault with him. Why? Because when you come to a point in life when your powers are waning and you get scared, you may turn to the past. You may think that if only we could do it like they used to, we’d be home free. You begin to find fault with those who want to lead you into change.
I never told Mr. Hart this, but I got kind of uncomfortable when for two Sundays last month we sang, “Gimme that ole time religion, it’s good enough for me.” I got uncomfortable with that, because it just might kick up the Bildad in us, wanting to hurry backwards and find meaning in the past. Singing about the old time religion, good enough for them, just could stir up a terminal case of nostalgia.
If you are looking for meaning and you follow Bildad, you will find fault with those who have been busy changing things and questioning things. You will consider the past as your source of meaning find fault with everything else. You’ll become a chronic faultfinder.
II
On the other hand, Job too is a faultfinder. Job too has a word about how you find meaning, and he doesn’t think Bildad’s got it right. Bildad said, consider the past as your source. Stay with tradition. Job says, No, consider the present as your source. Consider how you feel right now, right here. Consider now, consider the present as the source, because the past is done and the future hasn’t come, and all you have is the present.
Job thinks that it is these old fogies like Bildad who are the problem. Job is like Henry Ford, who declared from the driver’s seat of a Model T, “History is bunk!” Job thinks you have to be now, you have to be what’s happening, you have to be with it. All you’ve got is now!
The problem is, however, that for all his modernity, Job is profoundly unhappy. He is totally unsatisfied. He may not be stuck in the past, as was his friend Bildad, but he is stuck in the present. He is stuck in the feelings of the moment. He is totally stuck tight in what’s going on in his own tummy. Job thinks that God has passed him up and that he’s stuck where he is:
Look, he passes by me, and I do not see him; he moves on, but I do not perceive him. He snatches away; who can stop him? Who will say to him, ’What are you doing?’
If I summoned him and he answered me, I do not believe that he would listen to my voice.
And even if it is true that I have erred, my error remains with me.
These are indeed but the outskirts of his ways; and how small a whisper do we hear of him!
Job is totally stuck in what’s going on in his own tummy. He doesn’t see God; God passes Him by. God is moving on. Everything is moving on. And Job is sitting here stuck in his feelings.
“Look, he passes by me, and I do not see him; he moves on, but I do not perceive him.” God is about whatever God is about, but Job doesn’t think God hears him, Job doesn’t think God stops to pay attention. Job thinks, in fact, that there isn’t even much we can know about God, he hasn’t seen anything more than God’s outskirts, God speaks in bare whispers. All that Job has to rely on is what he feels.
And so Job becomes a faultfinder too. Job finds fault with himself. With himself. Listen to him: “My error remains with me,” says Job. It’s all on me. My life is mine. Mess and all, it’s my fault. Job considers himself to be the source of all there is to know. You can’t learn from the past and you can barely hear God’s whisper, so what is left? What else can you get your clues from? Yourself. Your feelings. And so when things go wrong and your life seems empty of meaning, who can you blame? With whom can you find fault? Only yourself. You consider the source of all meaning to be what makes you feel good, and so when you don’t feel good, then you find fault with yourself and count yourself a failure.
The problem Job has is the problem many of us have. As somebody has said, there is no smaller package in all the world than a man wrapped up in himself. When you make yourself and your immediate happiness the measure of everything, I tell you, you are doomed to be dissatisfied. There will never be enough. There will never be a high enough high or a deep enough joy to satisfy you. There will never be enough. If you are spiritually insecure, there will never be enough money to make you feel secure, there will never be enough acclaim to make you feel wanted. Never enough. You will wallow in finding fault with yourself. Like Job, you will believe that you cannot know God nor can God know you. You will be incredibly lonely. The reason is that you have considered yourself to be the source of everything. You have considered the present moment to be the source of power, and it will lead only to faultfinding. Finding fault with yourself. And that, brothers and sisters, is sick. Very, very sick.
III
So to what source can we look to measure our lives? What source may we consider to provide meaning for us? If, with Bildad, we find out that dwelling in the past makes us find fault with others; and if, with Job, we see that getting stuck in the present and hanging out with our own feelings means that we only find fault with ourselves; then where and to whom shall we go for meaning?
I ask you this morning to consider the future as your source of meaning. Consider the future as the source of your power. And consider Christ as the one who holds the future and calls you into it. Consider not the past nor the present, but the future as your source of meaning. Consider pointing toward what Christ invites you to do. From the Book of Hebrews comes a word for us:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart.
Consider Christ. Consider the future, which Christ holds. Consider God’s invitation to become as the source of your power. You see, the past may have a hold on us, but in Christ you can let it go. And it is true that our feelings shape us, but we can give that up to God. There is a place where you and I can partner with God and find meaning, and that is in the future. There is a place where you and I can still find power, and that is in discovering what God wants us to be about, and going there, doing that, and being that. Consider the future, consider the Christ who holds the future. Think about what you can become, and go there.
Oh, I wish I really knew how to say this. I wish I knew how to persuade, so that we would not wallow in the past with its mistakes or flounder in the present with its fickle feelings. I wish I truly knew how to argue that when you team up with Jesus Christ, and do what He calls you to do, you get over worrying about whether your life has meaning. You get past stewing in your own juices. When you team up with Christ, you see opportunities to serve Him and be with Him in what He invites you to do. Consider the future, consider Christ as your source of meaning; consider the Christ who holds the future.
For I find no fault in Him at all. There is no blame in Him, only love and acceptance. I find no fault in Him at all. Only joy, only hope. I cannot argue it, maybe, but I can point to it. I can point to some of you, who get up each day filled with plans to share your witness and serve others, and you never get tired of it. You have meaning, because you are pointed toward a future with Christ in it! I can point to my own heart, because even though yesterday somebody disappointed me and today I have disappointed myself, tomorrow is full of Christ’s call and Christ’s vision for me, and every morning I just want to get up and get at it all over again! The source of life’s joy is not what has happened, nor what is happening, but what can happen. Consider the source; consider the future; consider Christ. We may not know what the future holds, but it does not matter; we know who holds the future! Alleluia!
It was probably twenty years after my father raised that question about the meaning of his life .. the one in which he found fault with his father and his father-in-law, with the past, for preventing him from doing what he had wanted to do; and when he found fault with himself because he was stuck in his feelings of resentment. It was probably twenty years later, not long before his own death, that he said to me, “You know, I guess I didn’t do too badly after all. I didn’t get to do what I wanted to do, but I did invest in raising my sons. And now, look, I have one son in the ministry and the other one in music. Maybe God did value my life after all.”
Oh yes, oh yes. Friends, consider a future with Christ. Consider the brightness of a future with Christ. “Turn your eyes upon Jesus; look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”
