Philip Yancey

Looks at both the visible and supernatural to search for faith, offering new perspectives on looking beyond what is visible to find meaning and purpose in life.

What on Earth Are We Missing?

Rumors of Another World

Fred Rivett

James Agee once described a human being as "a furious angel nailed to the ground by his wings," and some of that fury shows up in the Christian ascetics. They wanted to escape humanity and fly away.*

Abuses arise from regarding pleasure as an end in itself rather than a pointer to something more. "Perfect are the good desires you have given me," prayed Pascal; "Be their End, as you have been their Beginning."

When you have made your eye the instrument of impurity, you cannot see God with it.

If humanity serves as your religion, then sex becomes an act of worship. On the other hand, if God is the object of your religion, then romantic love becomes an unmistakable pointer, a rumor of transcendence as loud as any we hear on earth.

We instinctively recognize the lie when sex becomes a mere transaction. I know of some societies that legally tolerate prostitution, but none that honor the profession.

Every married person I know wonders at times if he or she has married the wrong person. 

Cognitive scientists, he explains, recognize a restlessness in the human mind, a need to do something with our thoughts and to pursue goals. Being human means grasping for something more, just as Adam and Eve did.

Animals seem content living out the singular goal of survival, without the need to reflect on themselves or grasp for more. Yet when God created a being in God's own image, he built in restlessness, along with curiosity and desire, in full awareness they could lead the human to choose the wrong path.

Jesus' famous parable of the prodigal son paints the picture clearly. By any standard of good and bad behavior, the prodigal son failed, squandering his inheritance and cavorting with prostitutes. He deserved punishment, not celebration. But the father, representing God, had eyes only for healing and restoration: "This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." God's method with evil is cure, not prevention.

Bill Wilson, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, reached the unshakable conviction, now a canon of twelve-step groups, that an alcoholic must "hit bottom" in order to climb upward.

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