Can a normal person live out a story that is worth reading about? I ask myself that question all the time. I love a good adventure story: Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan, Lord of the rings... a lot of these types of fictional characters/stories are just ordinary people who get thrown into extraordinary circumstances and come out as heroes. But does that really happen? Can a guy or girl in real life today become a hero?
Most of the "real life" stories that are big sellers nowadays have something sensational in them to catch our attention. The protagonist has to be unique in some way. Maybe they came from nothing and made it big, maybe they created something that changed the world, or they persevered through a traumatic experience that taught them something about human nature and the will to survive or maybe they just do crazy things and tell others about it.
Unfortunately, in the day-to-day reality of a planet with 7+ billion people, these stories are the rare exception. But that doesn’t seem to stop us from comparing ourselves to these stories every time we consume them, and I am no exception here.
I think the reason we are drawn to extraordinary stories is at least in part because it gives us hope. "Maybe I can matter too, maybe I can rise above my circumstances, maybe instead of being another “ordinary person” who just buys the books and watches the movies about heros I can be one of them!" Regardless of our heroic dreams they ignore one big truth:
This life isn’t about you.
Did you know that? Sure, there is the day to day stuff about life. We need to eat and drink and find shelter and friends and a job and community. But I'm not talking about that stuff, I am talking about what drives us, the motivation for everything we do, the overarching reason for being on this earth. The predominant worldview preaches this simple message daily: It's all about you, make sure you get yours. But, in a world where there are so many people, that can be tough. A roughly more accurate number for people alive today would be around 7,400,000,000 people… it's really hard to comprehend how big that number is, so let’s do a thought experiment to try and grasp the magnitude. Say when you were born the goal your parents had for your life was for you to meet as many people as you could before you died.
The average lifespan in the US is 78 years old. So if your parents got you started when you were old enough to understand what was going on, we’ll say 5 years old, and they got everyone on earth to stand in line for you to meet them one at a time*, and you took just 1 second to say hello to each person before moving on, and you did this for 16 hours a day every day of your life. By the time you die you would only say hello to about 1.5 billion people.
That’s your whole life and you could only “meet” about 20% of the people on earth.**
Is that not astonishing?
With that backdrop, can you honestly think the big picture in life is all about me? I think it’s at least equally astonishing to have the pride that says I matter more than anyone else in that 7.4 billion. Simply looking at the number of people on earth who can all think and act and work together for good or evil gives us, I think, only a couple of options for our outlook on life. Either we are completely insignificant and should do everything we can to make ourselves stand out before we fade away forever, or there really is something bigger than any one person, something that does matter and deserves our attention and study.
This is where things change for religious people compared to anyone else. It doesn’t have to be Christianity at this level, because no matter the belief, religion provides us something that we can aim our life at, something worth pursuing, something that helps remind us that we are significant and that what we do matters. Most people would agree if there is something that matters then they would at least want to find out about it so they can be part of something that lasts.
On the flip side, without a clear goal our existence is dependent on our circumstances. There is nothing to aim for, no goal to reach for except to glorify ourselves as much as we can to the exclusion of everyone else with the hope that what we do matters or at least will carry on for a while so people will remember us. And with 7.4 Billion people trying to do the same thing it can be quite hard to stand out, especially when everyone is using their own scale to judge.
This is where the Christian worldview shines like an atom bomb.
For a world in this state, there is no greater news than the Gospel story. It answers all these questions and solves our worldview problem. I don't need to worry about how to be a hero, because there is already one, I don't need to worry about being better than everyone else because the real hero of the story accepts me the way I am. And I don't have to walk around wondering what the purpose of my life is because the hero has a mission for me. There are details that have been left for us to work out. We still must figure out the job we want, the spouse we marry, the place we live, the food we eat, how we vote, how we raise our kids..... but the framework for all these decisions is already in place. When we understand the under-girding purpose for why we do all these things it is so much easier to enjoy life, especially when hardships come. This is because we have an anchor that we can hold onto that doesn't fail. Tim Keller puts its this way:
"It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you."
That made me think of a parachute for a skydiver. If your jumping out of a plane your putting your trust in the parachute right? And if you trust the parachute that means on the way down you will pull the rip-cord to use it. Not only that, but you can then enjoy the view it provides all the way down.
But if you jump out of the plane thinking "I got this". It doesn't matter how much faith you have in that statement. If you don't put your trust in your parachute at some point before you hit the bottom that faith is for naught.
Life is a lot like this, the only hope you have is to trust in something bigger than yourself (pull that rip-cord). So the question it comes down to is twofold, who is the hero of your story and who is your faith trusting in? If your answer isn't God for both those questions, I'd implore you to ask a follow up, when I get tossed out of the plane of comfort and the good life, is my parachute going to save me, or am in for a messy ending?
*(Fun fact, this line would wrap around the earth about 84 times),
** (Another fun fact, if they lined up correctly nearly all of the people you would say hello to in your life would actually understand the word “Hello” since only about 1.5 billion people understand the English language.)
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