Rather than loving Jesus so much that we hear his call and gladly do it, finding our contentment in Christ and pressing on for his glory because it is what we most want to do, we focus on ourselves, our felt needs and end up shying away from what Jesus asks because it doesn’t “meet my needs”. It is, when all is said and done, a failure to trust in Jesus. 

It is not uncommon to find people dissatisfied as believers. They may be dissatisfied with their lot in life. They may be dissatisfied with their church. They may even have become dissatisfied with the Lord himself.
There is often a common theme with such dissatisfaction. There is a belief that either they deserve better or that the Lord had committed to giving them something that they don’t currently have or enjoy. When the Lord isn’t giving them what they think he should, they become dissatisfied. This may lead them to try and ‘make good’ what is currently lacking and chasing after things they hope will fill up their lack. In worse cases, it may lead to people backsliding altogether and rejecting Jesus because he hasn’t given them what they want.
The problem is obviously not with Jesus (you knew that!) The problem does not even lie in the dissatisfaction itself. We may all be prone to dissatisfaction sometimes. The issue in these kind of cases is in the belief that things are not how God promised they would be. Although more accurately, the real issue is that God often hasn’t promised these things at all.
Most of us can clock on to the more obvious stuff – the things of the unabashed health and wealth gospel – and recognise God simply hasn’t promised to make us all healthy, wealthy and happy if we just trust in Jesus. At least, not this side of glory. We recognise ‘Lord, fill up my bank account’ is just not something Jesus ever promised to answer with a ‘yes’. But there is a soft prosperity thinking that creeps in which says that God has effectively promised I won’t be dissatisfied, and if I am I must do something to find the contentment he promises.
Only, Jesus doesn’t promise us contentment; he commands us to be content. That is subtly different. Along with the command to be content, he also commands us to do a whole host of other things too. Some of which are quite difficult and may not seem like the obvious road to health, wealth and blessèd happiness.
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Several years ago, the mother of a college student came to me wringing her hands, saying: “I don’t know what to do with my son. I’ve been praying for him for years; he’s in total rebellion. He’s smoking dope; he’s doing all these wild and crazy things, and he won’t listen to me about the Christian faith. Will you talk to him?”
I cautioned her that forcing him to come talk to me would make him a reluctant audience, but I nevertheless agreed to her request. She persuaded the young man to come and see me. When he came in, he was sullen, curt, and obviously hostile. So I asked him, “Who are you mad at?” He replied, “My mother.” And I said, “Why are you angry at your mother?” He said he was mad at her because “every time I turn around she keeps trying to shove religion down my throat.”
I said, “I see, you don’t buy into Christianity?” He said “No, sir.” “Okay,” I replied, “so what do you believe?” He said, “I believe that everybody should have the right to do their own thing.” “Alright,” I answered, “but why are you mad at your mother?” He said, “What do you mean?” “Well,” I replied, “maybe it’s your mother’s thing to shove religion down people’s throats. What I hear you saying is that you want everybody to do their own thing as long as their own thing doesn’t impose upon your own thing. And you want to be able to do your own thing even if it does impose on other people’s own thing.”
I said, “Don’t you see that if you complained to me on the basis of Christian ethical standards that things would be different? If your mother is provoking you to wrath and is being thoroughly insensitive to you as a person, then I would have a foundation upon which to stand with you. I could defend your cause against your mother.” At that point, he started getting interested in the Christian faith.
Of course, the point of the illustration is that the young man knew what he didn’t like, but he hadn’t thought it through. He wanted to come to the conclusion that there is no basis ultimately for ethics, but he couldn’t live in that domain. And that is the point that even a non-Christian philosopher such as Immanuel Kant made, namely, that life ultimately is impossible without God, without justice, without life after the grave.
The bottom line is this: if there is no God, if there is no life after death, then ultimately all of our ethical decisions are absolutely meaningless. That’s a true and inescapable conclusion. If we think about it, it’s the only conclusion we can reach if we have absented God from our thinking. The only alternative to an absolute ethic is a relative ethic. We cannot have an absolute ethic without a personal Creator.
To confess that God is Creator is to confess that we are not cosmic accidents, devoid of ultimate value. We came from somewhere significant and we are headed toward a destination of importance.
Mechanistic determinists and hyperevolutionists say that the human animal is the highest advance up a scale of life that emerged out of primordial slime. Humanity, the grownup germ, is the result of accidental cosmic forces, and the destiny of the human race is at the mercy of these indifferent, impersonal forces. This view does not leave us in total darkness about the goal of human existence, nor does it point us in the direction of significance. What began in the slime is destined for organic disorganization or disintegration.

Written by Michael J. Kruger |
Thursday, September 5, 2024
If we don’t understand a person’s view, we should ask for clarity. And when we get that clarity, we should take them at their word. In sum, we should just follow the golden rule when we disagree with others: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matt 7:12). Truth be told, engaging in disagreement with fairness is hard work. It takes time, and intellectual energy, to really understand your opponent’s argument in a way they themselves would recognize. This is why so few do it. In a Twitter (X) culture, it’s much easier to use quick jabs and witty one-liners than to really try to understand what a person thinks and why they think it.

In the 2020 Apple TV breakout hit, Ted Lasso, there’s a remarkable scene in the local London pub where Ted challenges the show’s nemesis, Rupert Mannion, to a game of darts. Confident that he can beat this silly American who knows nothing about British culture, Rupert quickly ups the stakes with an aggressive bet. Ted agrees and the game is on.
Rupert quickly discovers, however, that he has underestimated this bumbling “aw shucks” football coach. While Ted threw darts with his right hand in the warm-up session, it turns out he’s really left-handed. Rupert also learns something else he didn’t know: Ted grew up playing darts with his father. They played together every week for nearly seven years.
Before Ted seals his unexpected (and for Rupert, humiliating) victory, he gives one of the most memorable speeches of the show. Reflecting on how others have misjudged him his entire life, Ted says,
All them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them were curious. They thought they had everything all figured out. So, they judged everything and everyone. . . Cause if they were curious, they would have asked questions.
Ted’s core lesson here—be curious—is one that I often share with my seminary students. In particular, it’s a lesson that applies to how we engage in disagreement with others. Rather than simply standing back judging “everything and everyone,” I encourage them to be intellectually curious. Why does this person believe this? What are the reasons for their view? How can I learn from this person, even if I fundamentally disagree?
But this is not just a lesson for seminary students. It’s a lesson for all Christians, particularly as the evangelical world is undergoing what is arguably an unprecedented level of fracturing and in-fighting. More intellectual curiosity would mean that we really want to understand another person’s view and why they hold it (beyond just giving us ammunition for our forthcoming rebuttal).
So, what would happen if the evangelical church expressed more intellectual curiosity with one another? I think we would discover four things:
Not Everyone Has Nefarious Motives
For years now, Christian theologians have rightly lamented how genuine intellectual debate is increasingly rare in our postmodern (or post-postmodern) world. Indeed, one might argue that, in certain quarters, it is not even allowed. Arguments have been replaced with declarations—usually statements about the goodness or badness of the other side. And these declarations are often laced with moral accusations that the other side is bigoted, or narrow-minded, or discriminatory, or what have you.
While evangelicals have typically been at the forefront of resisting such a trend, I wonder if in some ways we are now participating in it. One might argue that now it’s evangelicals that sometimes seem uninterested in intellectual engagement and are quick to make declarations about the goodness or badness of the other side. If a person disagrees with us, then that person is just a compromiser, or a liberal, or a fundamentalist, or what have you.
But this is where intellectual curiosity comes in. If we are curious, and genuinely listen to our fellow Christian, then we might discover that they are not in league with the devil or hard-hearted rebels who refuse to follow the “plain” teachings of Scripture. Indeed, we might learn that they love Jesus, want to follow his Word, and actually have arguments for the beliefs they hold.
Now, this doesn’t mean that everyone we disagree with is well-intentioned. And some doctrinal differences are so severe that they are worthy of serious rebuke. Rather, the point here is simply that not all differences fall into this category.
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