On Fulfillment

“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” John 17:3

There is a strain in Christianity today that places a premium on fulfillment. Yet I am uneasy about the inward-curved bent that has overtaken much of our Christian notions of fulfillment, turning us away from God as the chief object of our joy, and turning us toward ourselves. We mistakenly think that the pathway to happiness lies in getting in touch with ourselves. “How does this make me feel?” “What unique qualities make me special?” “What plans does God have for my life?” And of course, we ask such questions under the guise of Christianity—after all, doesn’t God want us to be happy? But getting in touch with one’s self, while not without merit, is not the final means of fulfillment. A preoccupation with how we feel about our lives, about our potential, can lead to a subversive form of self idolatry. The pathway to fulfillment is not through self-fulfillment, but through God-fulfillment. God is not primarily interested in us getting to know ourselves—we are dead-end streets. He is far more interested in us getting to know Him. And He calls us to Himself because He loves us; because He knows that the knowledge of Him is the only means to lasting happiness.

The propensity to self-obsess is pervasive in the church. Groping blindly within ourselves, we vainly search for something—anything—within us that will satisfy the sense of discontentment that we feel. And when we hear that God’s presence in our lives leads to happiness (as indeed it does), we wrongly assume that God’s primary function in our lives is to help us navigate the labyrinths of our own souls. Not so. Knowing ourselves gets us only ourselves—our finite, broken, and inward-curved selves. But knowing God gets us an experience of the infinite, whole, and self-giving God. God did not send Jesus to help us know ourselves, He sent Jesus to help us know Him.

And we must remember that God does not call us to know Him because He is needy of us. He has been ever and eternally satisfied in His Trinitarian relationships (God forbid that we should ever think He created us because He was lonely). Rather He calls us to know Him as an expression of His infinite bounty. Thus the creature’s path to happiness is not the same as that of the Creator’s. God finds legitimate pleasure in self-absorption, for He is the fount of all goodness—the infinite source of all delights. Where else would an infinite God look to find infinite satisfaction than to Himself? Yet we finite creatures are quite another story. We are not self-satisfying. We are by nature limited (and by sin fallen) and destined to find satisfaction outside of ourselves. Where else should a finite creature look for infinite satisfaction than to God Himself? He is the source of all satisfaction, all comfort and all joy, both for Himself and for us.

God will not be the means to our self-fulfillment, unless He is first the object of our self-fulfillment. And once He has become the object of our self-fulfillment, we will find that He is the sole means as well. There is no other means to God than God Himself. Are you dissatisfied with life? Seek not a deeper knowledge of yourself. Seek instead a deeper knowledge of your God.