You Were Created to Be Part of Something Big

There is definitely an “above and more” positioning of human beings in the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2. Adam and Eve were not the highest of the animals. The whole account presents them as being unique, different, and above the rest of the things that God made. It is just as clear, too, that these two people were made for more than their own existence. They weren’t placed in the garden for self-survival and self-satisfaction. They were immediately given a vision and commission that would take them far beyond the borders of their own needs and concerns. Transcendence was a part of their humanity. They were given amazing capacities to do what no other creature could do. Anything less would be a subhuman existence.

Think about what this means for all of us who are the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. You and I were created for more than filling up our schedules with the self-satisfying pursuits of personal pleasure. We were meant to do more than make sure that all of our needs are fulfilled and all our desires are satisfied. We were never meant to be self-focused little kings ruling miniscule little kingdoms with a population of one. Sure, it’s right for you to care about your health, your job, your house, your investments, your family, and your friends. It would be irresponsible to act as if none of those things mattered. Yet it is a functional human tragedy to live only for those things. It is a fundamental denial of your humanity to narrow the size of your life to the size of your own existence, because you were created to be an “above and more” being. You were made to be transcendent.

Jim sat before me, his slumped body a testament to the depression that gripped him. He said he had awakened a few months earlier and realized that there was no one who cared if he woke up that morning. No one cared if he was healthy or sick. No one cared if he was happy or sad. He said, “I get up in the morning and put on great looking clothes, leave my beautiful, modern condominium, get in my luxury car and drive to my high-paying job, only to go back to my beautiful condominium at the end of the day to start it all over again. I could die today and no one would even notice. I have it all; why can’t I be happy?”

Jim did have it all, yet in getting it all he had denied his own humanity. In his quest for everything, Jim had missed the one thing that separated him from everything else that God made. Jim had constructed his own kingdom, indulged his every dream, and met his every need. He had ruled his kingdom with discipline and success, but he discovered that it was an empty kingdom, and he was an empty king. It was not that Jim had attempted too much. The tragedy was that he had settled for way too little, and that is exactly what he got.

How about you? What is the big vision that you’re working toward? What is the big dream you are investing in? What is your definition of the “good life”? When will you know that you have been successful? If you had it all, what would “all” look like? I am afraid there are many people of faith who attend church each week, give regularly to God’s work, know their Bible pretty well, and don’t live overtly evil lives; but they have settled for “below and less” when they were created for “above and more.”

The mistake that they have made is that they have shrunk their Christianity to the size of their own lives. They have taken God’s grace and wisdom as an invitation to a better marriage, a better relationship with their children, a better extended family life, better success at work, etc. And there is a way that God’s grace does invite me to all of these things. But here is the point of this little book: God invites you to so much more! God’s grace invites you to be part of something that is far greater than your boldest and most expansive dream. His grace cuts a hole in your self-built prison and invites you to step into something so huge, so significant that only one word in the Bible can adequately capture it. That word is glory.

HARDWIRED FOR GLORY

Admit it. You’re a glory junkie. That’s why you like the 360^o, between-the-legs, slam dunk, or that amazing hand-beaded formal gown, or the seven-layer triple-chocolate mousse cake. It’s why you’re attracted to the hugeness of the mountain range or the multihued splendor of the sunset. You were hardwired by your Creator for a glory orientation. It is inescapable. It’s in your genes. The groundhogs don’t compete for who has made the most glorious underground den. Or, as my brother Tedd says, the penguins don’t score one another as they dive off the ice into the frigid sea. There is no penguin announcer who says, “That was a 9.3, had high technical merit, but lacked artistic creativity.”

But we’re different. We’ll flock to a museum to see the Salvador Dali masterworks. We’ll wait in a ninety-minute line for a ride on the ultimate roller coaster. We’ll dream for days about the glory of the upcoming Thanksgiving feast. And we’ll work like crazy to achieve one glory moment in some area of our lives. We were simply made for glory, but not just the shadow glories of the created world. We were made for the one glory that is transcendent—the glory of God. When you grasp this, your life begins to make a difference.

THE GLORY THAT TRANSCENDS

Now, let me talk for a minute about purpose. There is a way in which this book is about living with purpose. Yet it is about so much more than that. There are many people who have lived lives of purpose that didn’t really make much of a difference. Every person’s life is purposeful because every human being lives in pursuit of something. So, it is not enough to determine to have purpose. Let me state it this way: It is a good thing to have purpose, but if your purpose isn’t tied to glory, you have still denied your humanity.

Let’s consider the glory-focus of Genesis 1 and 2. There are four transcendent glories that were created to be the life-shaping focus of every human being. The first is the glory for which every human is to live, and the following three are glories that flow from the first. Each of these calls us out of the tight confines of a self-oriented existence to something fundamentally above and beyond. We will introduce them here and expand on each throughout the book.

God glory

We were made to be more connected to what is above us than to what is below us. To put it another way, our lives were designed to be shaped more by our attachment to the Creator than by the creation. We were made to experience, to be part of, to be consumed by, and to live in pursuit of the one glory that is truly glorious—the glory of God. A ravenous and not easily satisfied pursuit of this glory is meant to be the compass of our living. In Genesis 1, God comes on scene the minute Adam and Eve take their first breath. He is there to command their allegiance. He is there to be the central focus of everything they ever think, desire, say, and do—and when he is, their lives have transcendent meaning and purpose.

Here’s what this means. The transcendent glory that every human being quests for, whether he knows it or not, is not a thing; it is a person, and his name is God. People are transcendent because people were made for him. It is only in communion with him and in submitting all other forms of glory to his glory that I will ever find the “above and more” that my heart seeks. God’s immediate presence in the lives of Adam and Eve is a call to the ultimate in transcendence. They are to live for the One who is glory. And they must never shrink the size of their glory focus to the narrow glories of their own little lives.

Stewardship glory

It is amazing as you read the story of creation to see that God carefully constructed his world and then placed it in the hands of people. God gave Adam and Eve the responsibility for being good and faithful stewards of everything he had made. In effect, they were designed to be God’s “resident managers.” Their vision of personal purpose was meant to be as wide as the universe that God had created. They were constructed to do more than take care of themselves; they were called to care for the wide variety of amazing things God had purposefully crafted to be reflectors of his glory.

The transcendence of human beings is expressed as people reflect God’s glory by their rulership and stewardship over the surrounding created world. This call to manage the created order was a divine call to transcendence. It was a call for Adam and Eve to never shrink the size of their care to care for themselves.

Community glory

You and I were made for relationships. Adam wasn’t meant to live alone. Adam wasn’t meant to be Adam’s best friend. The community that Adam and Eve were meant to live in with one another was designed to be the beginning of a huge web of interdependent human relationships that would define much of the focus and energy of peoples’ lives. Human beings’ lives were meant to transcend the narrow glories of independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency.

We were created to have lives shaped by a constant pursuit of the glory of humble, dependent community. We were made to need one another, and this community was meant to exist in a variety of forms, including neighbor, family, friend, church, city, state, nation, brother, sister, parent, and spouse. This web of ongoing relationships daily calls us out of our insulation and isolation to experience a community glory that selfish, personal focus can never deliver. God makes Adam and Eve and immediately calls them to the transcendent glory of a world-reaching, generation-spanning, and history-encompassing community.

This commitment to community was meant to be a major shaping focus of their day-by-day living. This act of God to immediately tie Adam and Eve into community with one another was a call to transcendence. It was a call to never shrink the size of their community to a functional community of one.

Truth glory

Immediately upon creating Adam and Eve, God did something that he had not done with anything else he made. He spoke to them. This mundane moment was a moment of transcendence! The Lord, King, and Creator of the universe was speaking the secrets of his divine wisdom into the ears of the people he had made. In this act God was calling Adam and Eve to transcend the boundaries of their own thoughts, interpretations, and experiences. They were to form their lives by the origin-to-destiny perspective that only the Creator could have.

God had hardwired Adam and Eve with the communicative abilities that they would need in order to receive his revelation, because the glorious truths that God would progressively unfold to them were meant to shape everything they thought, desired, decided, and did. Their lives were set apart from all of the rest of creation because God had opened his truth glory to them and them alone. By themselves they never could have discovered the things he told them. These treasures of wisdom would only be known by Adam and Eve because God decided to reveal them. God’s words contained knowledge of him, the meaning and purpose of life, a moral structure for living, the nature of human identity, a fundamental human job description, a call to human community, and a call to divine worship.

Never were Adam and Eve built to exist on conclusions drawn from their experience, or concepts resulting from autonomous interpretations. Every thought was meant to be shaped by the truth glory that he would patiently and progressively impart to them. God’s seemingly mundane act of communication in the garden was in fact a call to transcendence. It was a call to an “above and more” way of living. It was a call to Adam and Eve to never shrink the size of their thought down to the size of their thoughts.

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Excerpted from A Quest for More © 2008 by Paul David Tripp. Used with permission of New Growth Press. May not be reproduced without prior written permission.

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