We might like to think we run on coffee, but God made us to run on God. They designed our human machines with an empty fuel tank, then offer us free unlimited fill-ups. But of course, we don't WANT God, we want happiness. It's no good asking God for happiness apart from "God stuff," though, because there IS no happiness apart from God. Any other fuel we plug in - money, sex, power, or yes, even coffee - will gunk up the works of our human machine, and eventually break us. There is no substitute. We were made to run on God.
Throughout history so much effort has been expended on these alternative fuel sources: on things to make us happy apart from God. Humanity has come up with some pretty nifty ideas, too. Inevitably, though, each new institution or civilization brings the most selfish and cruel people to the top, and it all collapses back down into oppression and injustice. That's Satan's legacy at work.
And what about God? What is their legacy? What clues have they left us to point back to our best and only fuel source?
First, they gave us a conscience: the instinctual personal knowledge of right and wrong. Next, they gave us collectively what C.S. Lewis calls "good dreams" - the instinctual knowledge scattered throughout myths and religions of a God who becomes human, who dies for us, and who rises again. And finally, God chose one particular people, and spent centuries hammering into their heads what sort of Creator we have: that there is only one God, and that God cares about our choices and behavior. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament is an account of the hammering process.
Suggested Reading: John 15:5-11
Study Questions:
1) What (or who) have you looked to for fulfillment or happiness apart from God? How important are those things in light of how God designed us?
2) What does it mean to "run on God"? What does that look like? How can God fuel your work, relationships, hobbies, etc?
3) How does our conscience point to God? How do other religions or myths point to God? How do the Old Testament Jews point to God?
4) Do you think these three things God has left us are enough? Why or why not? Conversely, what else has God left us?
Original Text: “God’s Remedies”
Additional text for context: “God made us: invented us as a
man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run
properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on
Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food
our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just
no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about
religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because
it is not there. There is no such thing.
That is the key to history. Terrific energy has been
expended – civilisations are built up – excellent institutions devised; but
each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and
cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. […] That
is what Satan has done to us humans.
And what did God do? First of all He left us conscience, the
sense of right and wrong: and all through history there have been people trying
(some of them very hard) to obey it. None of them ever quite succeeded.
Secondly, He sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer
stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and
comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men.
Thirdly, He selected one particular people and spent several centuries
hammering into their heads the sort of God He was – that there was only one of
Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the
Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.
Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly
turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive
sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at
the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians,
anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be
nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean
that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world,
who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you
have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the
most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.
- - Mere
Christianity
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