I Robot: Fulfilling Your Purpose
04.22.05
Pastor Mark Batterson
This evotional continues our God @ the Box Office series. To check out old evotionals, visit our evotional archive @ www.theaterchurch.com.
One of the most thought-provoking scenes in I Robot is the monologue by Dr. Alfred Lanning. His description of the evolution of robots is a theological treatise on free will. He says, “There have always been ghosts in the machine, random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul.” He says, “When does the perceptual schematic become consciousness? When does the difference engine become the search for truth? When does a personality simulation become the bitter moat of the soul?”
God has given humankind the ability to make choices. We are “free radicals.” We can choose between good and evil. We can take God’s advice or reject it. We can serve God’s purposes. We can also ignore them or oppose them.
Acts 13:36 says, “Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep.” That is the ultimate epitaph. David’s life was far from perfect. He spent a lot of his life hiding out in caves while he was on Saul’s hit list. He committed adultery with Bathsheba and killed her husband to cover it up. His own son tried to steal the throne from him. David experienced the same trails and tribulations we experience. His list of failures is longer than most of ours, but he served God’s purposes! That ought to give us a measure of hope!
Purposeful
We have a question we ask our kids when they do something wrong: did you do it on purpose? We are trying to ascertain whether it was accidental or purposeful. If it was accidental, they get off with a lighter sentence. If it was purposeful they get a tougher sentence. In the context of doing something wrong, doing it on purpose makes it even worse. Let me flip the coin. In the context of doing something right, doing it on purpose makes it even better.
I want to redeem that question we ask our kids and put it in the positive context. When everything is said and done, I wonder if God won’t ask us that very question: did you do it on purpose?
In other words, did you live by default or did you live by design? I’m concerned that the older we get the easer it is to live by default. And if we aren’t careful we can become robotic. We can become machines that go through the motions. We can conform to the world’s protocol.
I Robot is a movie about a robot named Sonny who discovers he is more than a machine. In fact, he has a secondary processing unit. He has feelings and dreams. And he discovers that he is uniquely designed with a denser alloy to serve a unique purpose. In that sense, this movie is a microcosm of life.
Each of us was created to serve a unique purpose. Psalm 139:16 says, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” In other words, the script of your life was written by God before you were even conceived. And the purpose of life is to serve the purposes of God.
A Purpose
One of my favorite dialogues in the movie is the exchange between Dr. Calvin and Sonny. Dr. Calvin says, “Sonny, do you know what Dr. Lanning made you?” Sonny says, “No, but I believe my Father made me for a purpose. We all have a purpose.”
Let me make an important distinction: there is a difference between God serving your purposes and you serving God’s purposes. I think many of us get it backwards. We pull a role reversal on God. We ask God to serve our purposes instead of serving God’s purposes. We ask God to bless what we’re doing instead of doing what God is blessing. We create God in our image instead of allowing God to recreate us in His image. And the end result is a self-centered spirituality.
Let me put some skin on it.
Up until I was nineteen years-old, I asked God to serve my purposes. I think I was genuine. My intentions were good. But it was all about God revolving Himself around my life instead of revolving my life around God. And then I asked God a dangerous question.
I was a freshman at the University of Chicago and I started feeling the pressure to declare a major so I chose pre-law. But I wasn’t really sure that is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And I realized I’d never really asked God what He wanted me to do. So I asked Him. And in typical God fashion, He didn’t answer right away. But I’m glad be didn’t because I’ve learned that easy answers produce shallow convictions.
I began to seek God with a newfound intensity. The summer between my freshman and sophomore year was tough. I felt like I was in no man’s land. The compass needle was spinning.
That all changed in August of 1989. Our family was on vacation in Alexandria, Minnesota. I was up late reading one night and I got up extra early the next morning to take a prayer walk. I walked down some deserted dirt roads and through a cow pasture. And right in the middle of that cow pasture I heard the inaudible yet unmistakable voice of God. I knew that I knew that I was called to full-time ministry.
If you had told me I’d go into ministry two years before that, I would have told you that you were crazy! It wasn’t even on my radar screen. But I trace everything in my life back to that cow pasture where I discovered my purpose. I had no idea when or where or how it would happen. But I had discovered the why behind everything I am and everything I do.
Now let me put up a caution flag. Don’t think that God is going to reveal His purposes to you on a prayer walk through a cow pasture. Oswald Chambers said, “Let God be as original with others as He was with you.” God has unique purposes for each of us and He reveals them in unique ways.
I love reading the way different people discover their purpose. Paul fell off a horse on the road to Damascus. Matthew was collecting taxes. Zacchias was climbing a tree. Peter was mending his nets. The centurions who nailed Christ to the cross were casting lots for his clothing. The woman caught in the act of adultery was committing adultery. Here is my point: each script is unique.
God reveals different purposes to different people in different ways. You never know how or when or where God is going to reveal His purposes.
One night John Kilcullen was having dinner with a friend who described something he happened to overhear in a bookstore that day. A customer asked a clerk a simple question, “Do you have any simple books on Microsoft DOS—something like DOS for dummies?” It was nothing more than a passing comment. It could have gone in one ear and out the other, but it struck a chord with Kilcullen. He came up with a brand of books—books for dummies. That product line now has more than 370 titles in 31 languages with sales of more than 60 million copies.
On March 24, 1975, a relatively unknown fighter named Chuck Wepner did what no one thought he could do—the 30-to-1 underdog lasted fifteen rounds with the heavyweight champion of the world, Muhammad Ali. A thousand miles away, a struggling actor was watching the fight on a newly purchased TV set. He had thought about writing a screenplay about a down-and-out fighter that gets a title shot, but he thought the plot was too implausible until he watched that fight that night. He began writing the screenplay that night and three days later, Sylvester Stallone had created the script for Rocky. Stallone went on to win three Oscars, including one for best picture.
In 1952, Albert Schweitzer won the Nobel Peach Prize for his humanitarian efforts in equatorial Africa. But let me tell you how he got there. He woke up on summer morning in 1896 and said, “While outside the birds sang I came to the conclusion that until I was thirty I could consider myself justified in devoting myself to scholarship and the arts, but after that I would devote myself directly to serving humanity. Fast forward eight years. Schweitzer said, “One morning in the autumn of 1904 I found on my writing table in the seminary one of the green-covered magazines in which the Paris Missionary Society reported its activities. A Miss Scherdlin used to pass them on to me. Without paying much attention, I leafed through the magazine that had been put on my table the night before. As I was about to turn to my studies I noticed an article with the headline, “The Needs of the Congo Mission.” Schweitzer said, “I finished my article and quietly began my work. My search was over.”
The reason I love that story so much is because I discovered the Urban Bible Training Center, the parachurch ministry we came to DC to direct, in a magazine ad. What if I hadn’t seen that ad? I’m not sure we’d be where we are. But I’m grateful that God is so good at getting us where He wants us to go! Proverbs 16:9 is one of my fall-back positions. “In his heart a man plans his course, but God orders His footsteps.”
You never know how God is going to reveal His purposes. It may be a passing comment or television show or magazine article. There are no limits to God’s ingenuity when it comes to giving directions!
Slaves to Logic
One of my favorite lines in I Robot is the way Sonny describes the other robots. He draws a picture and says they are “slaves to logic.”
Please don’t misinterpret what I’m about to say. I’m all for logic. Jesus is the logos—it’s the Greek word for logic. But I also know that “slaves to logic” never fulfill God’s purposes. Here’s why: most God-ordained dreams seem illogical. They aren’t illogical. They are actually super-logical. But they seem illogical. And most dreams die because we aren’t willing to do something that seems illogical. That is probably worth reading again.
Let me pick up my story where I left it off. After sensing a call to ministry in that cow pasture, I decided to transfer from the University of Chicago to Central Bible College. That decision made no sense educationally or financially or athletically. The University of Chicago was the third ranked university academically that year by the U.S News and World Report. CBC wasn’t even accredited. I had people tell me I was committing academic suicide. The funny thing is that CBC wouldn’t even take half from credits from the U of C! Not only that, I had to give up a full-ride scholarship at the U of C. And I had to give up a starting position on the basketball team.
It seemed illogical. And if I had been a “slave to logic” I would have never transferred schools. And it would have stunted my growth vocationally. It was my years of preparation at CBC that put me in a position to plant a church at twenty-six.
I think what I’m trying to say is this: I had to give up something good, a full-ride scholarship at a great school, to pursue something even better. I’ve seen that same scenario work itself out in my life over and over again. If I’m not willing to give up something good I forfeit something even better! The old aphorism is true: good is the enemy of great.
I love the story of Nehemiah. He was the cupbearer to the King of Babylon. For a Jewish exile, that’s about as good as it gets. I don’t know where it ranked on the Babylonian organizational chart, but any position in the palace came with perks and privileges. But Nehemiah’s passion is a thousand miles due west. He feels like God is calling him to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. He has no education and no experience as far as we know. But he was willing to give up a good government job to pursue His God-given purpose.
No Doesn’t Mean No
When you begin pursuing the purposes of God, I can make one guarantee: you will face opposition. It will come in the form of well-intentioned friends who try to “reason” with you. It will come in the form of spiritual opposition by the enemy of our souls. But one way or the other, you will experience opposition.
Last week I heard Bill Hybels speak at a leadership event. Hybels is the pastor of Willowcreek Community Church in Barrington, Illinois. It is not just one of the largest churches in the country, but tens of thousands of churches are part of the Willowcreek Association. I’m not sure there is another church in the country that has influenced more pastors or churches that Willowcreek.
Bill Hybels talked about how Willowcreek got started. They wanted to rent the Willowcreek Theater. They thought it was the "perfect" location for them. But the local manager said, "No." So Bill Hybels talked to the regional manager. He said, "No." Bill asked him who owned the entire theater chain and he tried to set up a meeting with the president of the company. He said, "No." So Bill Hybels when and sat in the waiting area outside his office. His administrative assistant asked if she could help him and Hybels said he wanted to meet with the President. She said, "No." But he asked if he could just stay there. He sat in the waiting room for four hours. The President walked by him several times. Finally, at the end of the day, the President realized that it must be something pretty important or pretty urgent to spend all day in his waiting room. He asked Bill Hybels what he wanted. Hybels said, "I have a way to add revenue to one of your theaters at a time when it’s not being used." The owner was all ears. To make a long story short, Willowcreek met in that theater for six and a half years and grew to several thousand people. And here’s why: Bill Hybels wouldn’t take no for an answer!
When you are pursuing the purposes of God you need to know when no doesn’t mean no!
Maybe you’re frustrated because it feels like God’s purposes are a thousand miles away. Where there’s a will there’s a way! If you don’t take “no” for an answer you’ll eventually get there!
