We’ve lost our way. Instead of allowing God to lead us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake, we’ve too often followed a different way, our own way. The earliest Christians were known as followers of the Way. But we’ve taken lesser paths, paths that divert us from the Way. For millennia, the paths of power, pleasure, and wealth have been powerfully seductive paths that lead many astray. They remain so today. In recent years, the lesser path of partisan politics on the left and the right has been especially attractive to many in the United States. Other lesser paths lead us, we hope, to comfort, respect, or self-optimization.
All of these paths lead us astray. They can seem like they might be the Way. God wants us to enjoy life, doesn’t he? We can use the power and wealth we gain to do good, right? God does want us to enjoy life, to use the power we have for good, to enjoy the good gifts he gives, and to share generously. But often our good intentions fall short. Rather than receiving joy from God, we devote ourselves to comfort or even outright hedo nism. We often coat our pursuit of power, pleasure, and wealth with a Christian veneer, but what is underneath is not truly Christian, because it is not truly Christlike. Many of us have taken what we thought was the Way of Christ, a path we are told will please God and therefore bring us happiness, success, and other blessings. We are told, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, that if we just read our Bibles enough, pray enough, serve our church (and maybe our community) enough, give away enough money, then life will pretty much go as we want it to. We’ll be fulfilled, feel close to God, be part of a good church, have a happy marriage and family, experience deep friendship, and find fulfillment in our career.
With all this in mind, we follow this path. But if we are honest, we have discovered that this path doesn’t lead us to where we want to be, nor where we ought to be. We don’t have the kind of fulfillment we thought we’d have. God often seems absent at best and uncaring at worst. We question whether God is even real. We are frustrated with church. Our marriages bring disappointment, both in ourselves and in our spouses. Some marriages barely survive, while others don’t make it at all. Our kids break our hearts, in small and large ways. We do the same to them. They wander away from the faith or pursue a life of faith very different from our own that we don’t understand. We wonder what, if anything, we could have done differently to keep them on what we think is the right path. Friends disappoint us. We disappoint them. And the time we spend working can seem futile.
There is no easy solution here. The world, the church, and we human beings who inhabit them are fallen. Things in the world, in the church, and in us are not what they are supposed to be. God feels distant. Community with our siblings in Christ at church takes work and seems elusive. Marriage is hard. So is singleness. If we have children, they become adults who ultimately make their own decisions, for better or worse. Deep friendship seems unattainable. And at its best work is still work.
Yet in the midst of the pain, suffering, disappointment, and frustrations that mark our time on this planet, there are also green shoots of truth, goodness, beauty, and unity. Sometimes they grow and even flourish. Creation is being redeemed; we play a part in that (Rom. 8:18–25). We receive many good gifts from God in this fallen world: God himself, the body of Christ, deep friendship, a vocation, and perhaps marriage and parenthood. We won’t get everything we want. Even so, we can experience shalom and help others do the same. Shalom is, very simply, a deep inner well-being, inner harmony, and wholeness. It includes harmony with others, with the rest of creation, and with God. Shalom will not come about without God’s transformative activity in our lives, in our relationships, and in the world. God must work. Yet we have a part to play here, too, a part that is often neglected.
