The Engine of Life
Sunday night, I took a phone call with a young man I know. He was in the youth group I lead at a church once upon a time. He, like so many young men, is from a very troubled family with parents who are not present. Inevitably, he has found himself in trouble, in a court ordered boot camp of sorts. He is a well-meaning kid who, like so many others, is struggling to find the motivation to push forward in things that would make him productive. I pray for him often as I think about the kid I was and the man, without the power to change I found in Christ, I would have become.
What some know about me is that, decades ago, I was there. I was desperate to succeed in life. I worked hard when a job was in front of me, but had no idea why I kept failing at the basics. I near never paid my bills on time. I struggled to keep a job even if I always had one. I struggled to advance in anything that resembled a career with a future. I took dead end job after dead end job, living in squalor and spending my meager means on things that provided only momentary enjoyment. Many young men find themselves there, and the reason is simple: when the engine of motivation is broken by a lack of personal identity and purpose, the fruit will not come.
I had no reason to strive beyond simply feeding myself except to satisfy my own basic desires. That simply isn’t enough to sustain a man into meaningful advancement in life when the foundation of one’s experience is shattered by something the world refers to as “trauma.” Appetite, it will get you up and send you to work, but it won’t make the mind discipline itself into a sharp-edged sword. It won’t hone the man’s focus into something effective when the very core of who you are tells you that failure is inevitable.
The world calls the experiences that break little boys “trauma.” Scripture calls it “sin,” “iniquity,” and “transgression.” Scripture says that these things lead to death, that they damage, they destroy. They cause harm that starts as a ripple and, ultimately, builds into tidal waves that reach far beyond the intended point of impact. Looking around at the men perishing by deadly habits and life choices, it seems the self-evident that the problem is immense. Scripture is screaming at us to pay attention, and yet, where are we in the call to repent? Why are we so afraid to tell people that it is sin that is murdering the world, murdering them? We see the fallout in our families, our daughters, and our young men daily. We see the impact of sin bleeding into and through their lives on down to future generations.
But, I digress back to the point: this young man and my much younger self both needed healing from sin. What near everyone presumes, what people tend to hear, is that we needed to stop sinning. Is that true? Of course, but where do the habits of young men come from? Our flesh? As a matter of fact, they certainly have some roots there, but the force of the flesh is fed by the habits, the persistent words and deeds and attitudes of the family and friends we grow up in.
We do what we see, what we experience, what we live. The impact of the sins of one’s family and close contacts during youth, their sinful actions and words have immense repercussions. From our childhood, they stretched into our minds and tore out our will to succeed at anything beyond the immediately necessary. They warped and poisoned our motivations and will. They tore out the engine of life and replaced it with something dead and poisonous: self-hatred. Sealing the poison into the engine is this hatred built upon the fact that we, too, have committed great sins. If they cannot be free, how can we ever be?
And so the young man finds himself bound by two chains. The first chain he did not build. It is the chain of his mind trapped by what he’s been taught to believe about himself. This comes from the words of his own family and close friends. The second is like it but he crafts it himself from what he has learned of his own wicked nature by carrying out many of the same sins he suffered under.
Some reading this will be confused as to what I’m referring to when I say “the engine of life,” but the engine of anyone’s life is the same. It’s what we believe. It’s not what we say we believe. It’s what we actually believe because that is what we act upon every day, and what we act upon is rooted in what we believe about the world and our place in it. When that engine is poisoned, it works against us, perverting our motives and distorting our desires. This has disastrous outcomes.
James, writing to the Israelite people scattered among the nations, warned them, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have, so you murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” (James 4:1-3)
You lust and do not have. You are envious and cannot obtain! All of this want and not having causes conflict, strife, and pain. Sometimes, it causes murder, but how do we right this situation? How do we stem the craving for things that drive us into conflict and anxiety? How do we correct the motives of our own hearts?
The answer is simpler than one might imagine: take the hammer of God’s Word and apply it to the steel of your mind. This is what I did in my mid 30s. I realized my beliefs, my concept of what life should be was killing me so I threw it in the trash. Some call the “concept” or “idea” of what life should be a “worldview.” Few ever actually consider this engine, that it exists, what their own is made up of, and how it might be impacting them.
A worldview is a bit more than simply your idea of what life should be. It’s what you believe about existence. What you believe about where you came from. What you believe about where you’re going, and what you believe about your own purpose. These are simple but deeply foundational ideas that shape us whether we realize it or not, and they can save a man from death by his own habits and spare a young man (like my friend who called me) a life of pain, and I have applied that to my entire family, especially to the raising of my own children to great effect.
If you see my family and wonder how my children are thriving, the answer is simple. First, the grace of God, but that grace came with a secondary thing: a deliberate effort to seek to understand reality from a biblical perspective. So, if you want to see the fruit of your child’s life blossom into something healthy, plant the seeds of identity and purpose. Do it from scripture carefully as you do it for yourself. Help them to understand who they are and why they matter. If you do that from God’s Word while applying, it to yourself (communicating God’s love and God’s desire to bless their work done by His will) the rewards are eternal and immense.
Consider this: I started writing this before six AM, and having just finished my devotional, I listened to my children prepare for their day. I told them nothing as I listened in the morning but “good morning” and yet they went about doing their devotionals, getting ready for school, and eating breakfast. They know who they are and what they’re about. They know that they are loved, cared for, and supported.
Why? Because we do not scream at the branches in order to cause them to bear fruit. We pour medicine into the roots, into the engine of life. We tend to the soil around those roots that they might be nourished into strong healthy beings that by their very nature bear good fruit. Why? So that it may be enjoyed by those closest to them who may also be made healthy by their light.
A choice becomes a habit and good habits take intention.
Make good choices, plant good things.
Grow a good garden, especially in your family and among your children.
Amen.
