Dreams, direction, and God
- At April 02, 2011
- By Nathan
- In Career Planning
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It is sometimes difficult to discern how personal hopes and dreams relate to God’s grand purpose for our lives. Our aspirations can be so strong and seem so significant, and yet somehow we know that they are secondary.
Goals that are tightly tied to who we feel that we really are must matter. Still, our particular plan might connect directly with God’s plan, and then again, it might not – or at least not in the way we imagined.
Atheists do not need to wonder about or agonize over how their own aspirations connect to the larger scheme of life. For denying God amounts to admitting sooner or later that life – all of life – is pointless. Pretending that it is otherwise is just an exercise in self-deception. Many try not to walk down this dark path towards nihilism, but it is the next stop after naturalism on the worldview highway travelled by millions in the West.
This observation, I should mention, can be traced back to James W. Sire and his book The Universe Next Door.
This means that thoroughly secular parents should, in all honesty, tell their kids to ditch their dreams: For according to their ideology, whether they realize it or not, human aspirations matter about as much as humanity, which is to say – not much.
So it is better to be a little confused about which direction to take, in terms of a career, than to be completely paralyzed by a philosophy that serves to deconstruct all human endeavors. Living with a mysterious arrangement or two in the universe beyond our present comprehension isn’t all that bad when you consider the options.
The Apostle Paul prays to God for people in Greece like this: “May he give you power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do” (2 Thess. 1:11, NLT). At the same time, over in Italy, it becomes clear that not everything people – even people like Paul – attempt to do will be accomplished (Romans 1:13).
Paul is famous for making several missionary journeys on and around the Mediterranean Sea, and yet his plan to travel to Spain never really worked out.
The point of this post is actually quite clear in a hazy sort of way: Your personal hopes and dreams for the future may really matter, but only under God.
© Career & Life Direction 2011. All rights reserved.
