Fulfillment

I am just an ordinary man who is trying to get the most out of life—engaging in that quest. In my wandering quest, I came across fulfillment. I met it—or I should say Him. But, the trouble is, getting Fulfillment inside me is a very long, slow process. No worries, though, because He who is fulfillment is both patient and diligent. He knows that there is much in the human heart that is incompatible with True Fulfillment. True Fulfillment will not abide divided loyalties. He was not willing to be put on the shelf of fulfillment like a trophy alongside those other fulfilling parts of my life—my education, my job, my hobbies, my past achievements, even my perceived successes in marriage, parenting or other relationships. Fulfillment does not remove those things from my life, but neither allows them to remain on a pedestal. Though patient, He will never cease reordering and, sometimes, cleansing away that which undermines a full experience of Himself.
The first thing Fulfillment did was to lead me through a process of debt fulfillment . Fulfillment began, and continues, with forgiveness. But, this has been no open and shut case. Theologically, I can grasp what my Bible tells me—that Jesus pays for and forgives all my sins the moment I commit to trust in Him. However, the debt fulfillment has continuously been understood from new angles and perspectives throughout my life. Fulfillment is tenacious—He wants to give me more and more and more of Him. He is not satisfied with leaving me ignorant of, nor infected by, self-destructive, self-serving attitudes and beliefs. Fulfillment knows that there is always more fulfillment for me through His engaging in a relentless, patient, and careful process of exposure—exposing the intricacies of my soul to me.
The exposure has had a focused purpose—a lifetime course in learning that we acquire more life the more of it we give away. It’s no surprise that Fulfillment declared that you cannot serve Love and Money. They are indeed opposites. One is acquired by giving. The other is lost by giving—and so we hoard it. We hoard not only money, but we hoard any number of things. Our hearts engage in an endless campaign to replace Fulfillment with any number of artificial fulfillments. The more we can gather up, the better. We need any number of them, because inevitably, life gets tough in one way or another. In response to my failure to find fulfillment in a relationship, I crave for and seek after recognition in my work. In my failure at work, I craze an adrenalin high from my mountain biking. And so the cycle continues…
Fulfillment knows that these many roads, which have many names, lead to one heartache (and heart break) after another. And yet, the path that Fulfillment leads us on seems no better, if we self-confident followers of Jesus are honest with ourselves. The path of Fulfillment is a path of suffering, there is no doubt about it—the most painful of which is in our own souls. This is largely due to the fact that Fulfillment reveals to us the extent to which our modus operandi, which offered us so much promise—and so many promises, leads to disillusionment. He will not let us get comfortable with or deceived by the idea of a commodious life in our modern liberal democracies, with safety net welfare, countless educational and job opportunities, pension and health care plans. He draws the eyes of my heart into the reality of my soul. Fulfillment will not let us be deceived by the veneer of material comforts and vocational achievements—certainly not bad things as far as they go. But, they do not go far enough. They do not descend into the soul of a man and offer deep, lasting fulfillment.
They say that good leadership must begin by an accurate definition of reality. And so it is true with the quest for fulfillment. It begins with perceiving the realty of the human soul. But in the soul of the man there is always turmoil, confusion, anger, insecurity—all sorts of disorder. It is into this hidden place that Fulfillment must go. And when He begins to reveal to us the reality of the situation in that dark, tumultuous place, a surgeon’s care is needed. He often uses the benefit of time and many experiences, in order to not overwhelm. Usually the damage is so severe, any number of procedures are needed to repair and restore health. (I should speak for myself, but maybe you can relate.) The physician called Fulfillment can and does operate countless times, with many instruments, in order to repair our sickened souls.
Fulfillment’s constant purpose is to renew, restore, regenerate the human soul. To floodlight the caverns of the human soul with Fulfillment’s pure light—this would be utterly terrifying. So, He works his way through those dark passageways educating us on the deceptions that reside in our own soul—and not just the deceptions, but also the ugly self-aggrandizements. I will make something of myself. Fulfillment shows us the varied loves resident in the human soul that love wrongly. The loves that reject Fulfillment, replacing him through any number of artifices. I’ll prove everyone wrong about me. Any idol that can be constructed is but an image of the idol maker—self idolatry. I have right to be proud of the accomplishments of my company. How can the creator find fulfillment or completion in that which he has made? Fulfillment comes from within, not from that which is created without.
The loves of our soul can go wrong not only with what we make for of of ourselves, but also with what is given us—the gifts of Fulfillment rather than Fulfillment Himself. She satisfies all of my deepest needs. He makes us see what we don’t want to admit because he knows that disordered love not only causes disorder in the lives of others (I can never meet his deepest needs; I can’t measure up) but deep disappointment and pain in our own as well (I thought she would always be there for me).
He exposes, but then empowers. Truth is power, as philosophers have said. The work of Fulfillment is evidence of this. To know the truth about our own souls is an awesome thing. His insights cut us to the core. Truth does a work in our soul. He reveals, reorders, and reorients. He empowers the soul to have its flow reversed, from a conduit of grasping to a conduit of giving. He will make something through me. We, the followers and friends-in-the-making of Fulfillment, find that after we find Him, he leads us on this paradoxical path of pain and joy. There is still so much disorder in our souls, and yet Fulfillment tutors us in a life of giving to the extent that we get what He has to offer and give it away, sometimes freely—knowing that His supply of Fulfillment is endless, and sometimes half-halfheartedly—affected by the residual grasping in our souls.
I now know with certainty that the rest of my life will involve this tension. I know it because I know enough of my heart to know that a liar and thief still resides in me. An adulterer too. Even a murderer. The propensity to grasp rather than give keeps its hold in my heart. I live in the tension between being a sinner while being called to live according to God’s design for me, which is a calling to love. I am a self-centered individual more times than not, though I am attempting to learn to be a conduit of giving. The point is not for you to know more about my spiritual journey, however, but for you to be encouraged in your own navigation of that tension—the journey of a grasper learning to give as a follower of Jesus.

Diversity of Communities

Liberals are supposed to be the champions of freedom and opportunity to live as one pleases. However, they are not the champions of the freedom of local communities to live as they please corporately. They have, in the 20th century, worked for diversity at the federal level to the extent that local communities are being restricted from ordering their communities as they please. One of the great hopes of diversity is that by allowing difference, we can gain appreciation. But appreciation for what? For the sake of appreciation? Diversity cannot be an end in itself. Yes, there can be many ways of living that are all good. But not all ways of living are good. Some ways of living are better than others. Liberals have not hesitated to argue that the Scandinavian way of doing social welfare is superior to the American, for example. Yet, the US has the perfect system for allowing diversity of this type—diversity of ways of life, diversity of choices about how to organize our communities and distribute our resources—to function within our federal structure. But instead of doing so, both liberals and conservatives, have led our nation on a path of centralizing power and jurisdiction in D.C. It makes sense for the conservatives. They want to keep things the same and what better way to do so than to use the federal government’s central power and authority to do so. However, the liberals should know that allowing diversity within communities is a better way. People want liberty not just to choose how they live, but also to choose between diverse types of communities. Allowing communities to forge ahead, organizing themselves and their way of life in unique ways, solving problems in new ways, and selecting values they deem important could create a wonderful diversity of communities throughout the US which would free people to live in communities of their choosing. It would also allow communities to borrow ideas and make improvements based on the experience of other communities. If the trend of centralizing of power in D.C. continues, there will be more and more uniformity of communities. That will not be a good thing for the US’s experiment with self-government.