More than a Good Story

In Donald Miller’s latest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, he focuses on what he calls, “living a better story”.  The book looks at our lives as stories that are being told and we are the main characters.  He walks you through all the elements of a gripping story and shows how we walk through those same elements in our lives.  Throughout his explanation he keeps coming back to how GOD is the ultimate author of this story and how He wants us to live out that story in the most significant and fulfilling way possible.

I love reading Donald Miller’s writing.  He’s tremendously thoughtful and thoroughly engaging.  However, the premise of this latest book felt odd to me.  As I was reading I couldn’t help but feel that he had totally missed something.  I kept waiting for it to come around in the end and make total sense, but it never seemed to get there. 

After some reflection I realized how totally self-centered this concept was.  The whole idea that my life is a movie where I am the main character is, in my understanding, incongruous with Biblical Truth.  It leads one to believe that he/she is the most important thing and everything else in the world is secondary to his/her own satisfaction and fulfillment.  Miller would never state it that way and, to be fair, I don’t think he believes that, but that’s how it comes across to me in the book. [please note that I have a great respect for Donald Miller and this is not an attack on him, his theology, or the book as a whole - it is simply about the response the book elicited from my thoughts]

The problem with us being the main character, even if we acknowledge GOD as the ultimate author, is that our needs are first and foremost while the needs, hurts, desires, and lives of those around us are only important as far as they affect our own lives.

I have sometimes wondered if my lot in life is to be a “supporting character”.  Maybe my purpose in life is to never be in a place where I am satisfied, but to be constantly following GOD and pushing others forward in their calling, to an unending struggle with finding a place of my own and never getting there.  This would be a totally selfless life.  Is this what I am, you are, we all are, called to do?  To be totally selfless? 

Sunday school answer: YES!

Real life answer: I have no idea.

I wrestle with reconciling this tension between personal desire and submission of will.  On one hand, I don’t think we have any right to expect to get the things we want or the things we think will fulfill us.  After all, when we understand that we are freed from the power of death through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ what more could we want?  At the same time, if we are trying to follow GOD’s will and we are doing the things we are called to do, the things we were created to do, shouldn’t we feel fulfilled in those tasks?  When we are the people that GOD created us to be there is a great satisfaction there. 

I am drawn in these thoughts to Paul’s remarks in 2 Corinthians 11 as he tells of the hardships he’s faced for the sake of the Gospel (including beatings, stoning, shipwrecks, days on the open sea, etc).  Then in Philippians 4:11 he says, “…I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.”

Paul was living out his GOD-driven purpose.  Paul was fulfilling the mission set out for him.  Paul was not concerned with his personal outcome so long as he completed the task of speaking and teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  And yet, he still had a "thorn in his flesh" (2 Cor. 12) that he could not escape and he prayed earnestly that it be taken from him.  Of course, in the end, Paul accepts his lot with this thorn (although I see nowhere where he is happy about the thorn itself, only the Glory of GOD that is allowed to shine through the weakness).

What I get from what Paul tells is a reminder that we live in a world between the “already” and the “not yet”*.  Christ has already won the war.  Our fates are sealed.  The believer is destined to enjoy eternal glory in the presence of GOD while those who refuse Jesus as LORD and Savior are destined to a miserable eternity of separation from our Father as they suffer in Hell.  Although this victory is won we still live in a world where GOD has not unleashed the fullness of his judgment.  Until His justice is dispensed sin will still fight tooth-and-nail on the earth and the battle between good and evil will persist.  It is in the midst of this battle that we will be torn between our personal desires and submission to the will of GOD. 

This means that we, as believers, are NOT home.  We live in temporary bodies on a temporary earth.  Because this is all temporary we will never feel satisfied, we will never feel completely fulfilled.  This doesn't mean that we are to focus solely on ourselves or solely on others.  GOD puts us in places in this life to effect the lives of others.  He puts us in places to be a "supporting character" in the lives of others. But he also puts others in our lives to be "supporting characters" for us.

I don't believe that we are the main characters in a movie about our lives.  However, we all have roles in a million different stories in a movie about GOD.  All of life, in every corner of the earth, is living out the story of GOD's love, hope, glory, redemption, and sanctification of the earth He created.

Live that story.

* For a great, in-depth read on this subject in particular check out “Dual Citizens” by Jason J. Stellman