Posts Tagged ‘human longing’

Man’s Four Hungers

In his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Blessed—happy—satisfied—whole—are those who hunger and thirst for his righteousness, for they will be filled. This sounds like good news to me! Don’t we all want to be blessed, happy, satisfied, and whole? Surely we all long for such a blessed state of affairs. But then why are so many today broken, fragmented, cracked, and potted?

Metaphysical Loneliness, Atheism, and the Face of God

The tragedy and irony of the digital age is that we in the western world are often lonely and isolated. Surrounded by our Facebook posts, tweets, Ipods, Ipads, Nooks, Kindle Fires, smart phones, and now, smart watches, we are ever connected, but rarely connecting. We meticulously manage our social media image, and it is easy to seem as if we have it all together. Look at all those pictures of me with my friends. Look at me at the Grand Canyons, and in Yellowstone, and in Europe. Check out this pic of me Bungee jumping in Australia. Look at my life. Isn’t it great? Aren’t I popular? Isn’t my life grand?

Atheism and the Unscratchable Itch

It is a fundamental datum of our experience that we all long for meaning; we long for a narrative in which to make sense of our lives, our passions, and our beliefs. But, if God doesn’t exist, the cold, hard truth is there is no meaning. We have a scratch, but no way to itch it.

Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and our Longing for Wholeness

The classic book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde does something to me. It scares me. It is a chilling, vivid picture of what happens when we allow our base appetites to overtake our rational and spirited faculties (as Plato would say). The story also awakens something: it awakens within me a desire for wholeness, a wholeness where all of my thinkings, willings, and emotions are fully integrated.

What comes after Postmodernism? Answer: Paganism

Over the past 10-20 years there has been a lot of worry about postmodernism. In its most extreme, postmodernism represents an unlivable and illogical relativism that cannot be sustained. Then there was the “emergent church worry”—Christians such as Brian McLaren and others who seemed to appropriate too much of the postmodern confusion and import it into a hip and supposedly forward (yet ancient) kind of Christianity.

The revolution of the human heart brought on by Jesus

I just finished reading A Heart for Freedom, the story of Chai Ling, one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising in Beijing. Her story is a gripping account of the heart’s longing for freedom, purpose, justice, and significance. It is also a picture of the fact that the only true revolution is the revolution of the human heart brought on by Jesus.

Divine Mathematics: Jesus + Nothing = Everything, Part Two

In my previous post, I began to explore the divine equation Jesus+Nothing=Everything by thinking about what our longings reveal about human nature. In this post, I want to consider how embracing this divine equation can define your life in bright and liberating ways.

Divine Mathematics: Jesus + Nothing = Everything, Part One

I’ve been reading Tullian Tchividjian’s book Jesus+Nothing=Everything and have been thinking about this mathematical equation. His central thesis is that when you get Jesus you get everything the heart ultimately desires: peace, happiness, rest, joy, meaning, significance and relationship.