There is absolutely nothing mundane about God. Whether I look down at the Bible or up at the stars, there is something about God’s method of self-expression that penetrates an area of my personhood hard-wired to thirst for an experience of glory. Through the Bible, God tells us a true story and he is still continuing his story today.
God could have easily (and justifiably) left us with a set of rules to follow and lessons to learn, but instead, in his unwavering taste for glory, he chose to reveal himself to human beings primarily through narrative storytelling. When Yahweh takes the pen, “Man is sinful” becomes “This one time in a garden…” (Genesis 3) and “Exhibit courage” becomes “Meet Rahab, a prostitute.” (Joshua 2). Not everything God tells us is in the form of a direct narrative, of course, as he certainly gives us real commands and ordinances to follow and real doctrines to learn, but when one truly learns the doctrines and takes the ordinances to heart, the result is always a beautiful life lived out on earth and another stroke or stipple point added by God, the master painter, to his heavenly masterpiece—as planned. The showing off of this masterpiece forever—the display of God’s glory—was, is, and always will be the all-consuming focus of God.
This whole “glory of God” nonsense definitely seems a bit loony to me, at times, especially in today’s culture, but I believe that this is a result of my own underestimation of its beauty, not a result of God’s overestimation of its ability to captivate. Glory is one of those words that doesn’t always translate well to today’s context. “God, Glory, and Gold”, the mantra of the murderous Spanish conquistadors, often comes to mind. Glory itself seems to be an antiquated word. But, if we can look past the misuses and sometimes-negative connotations of the word “glory”, I think it will become clear that “glory”—the glory of God, namely—is the true axis around which the world revolves.
God, though certainly a provider, has never been a God of mere sufficiency. Rather, he has always been a God of lavish excess and lavish artistry. It’s no coincidence that when Jesus feeds the 5,000 people (Matthew 14:13-21), Matthew makes sure to mention how there were baskets full of bread leftover afterwards, so as to clarify that the purpose of the passage was not to show that Jesus was “good enough” to provide adequate amounts of food, but rather glorious enough to explode the laws of nature. Or, because Jesus was fully God and fully man, for example, He was everything that God needed for the penultimate purpose of achieving global salvation. God also added in the tearing of his clothes, however, the gut-wrenching beatings, and the crown of thorns for the ultimate purpose of displaying a masterpiece. In Exodus, the people can’t approach God unless they first wash their feet. In the Gospels, God incarnate approaches the people and washes their feet. There is symmetry, rhythm, and absolute artistry woven throughout God’s story and it all works to display his glory.
As we sat in the airport a few weeks ago before we flew to Kenya, Stephanie and I had a great conversation (iron sharpens iron) about this abstract, hard-to-pin-a-definition-to concept of the Glory of God and why we believed it was not only the ultimate goal, logically, of the entire universe, but also why it was also the ultimate goal of our own lives. The discussion, to me, only helped to confirm the absolutely self-evident beauty of having God’s glory at the center of my life.
Whatever the all-consuming purpose of my life is, I want it to be consistent with the all-consuming purpose of God and the all-consuming reason for the universe’s existence. Though I generally try to shy away from making absolute Biblical assumptions—not because the Bible is difficult to interpret nor because God is not a God of absolutes (as He is), but because I recognize the sinfulness of my own heart and the limited capacity of my own brain—God’s ultimate purpose of displaying his own glory is a rock solid Biblical fact. To disagree with it, one would have to blatantly ignore the full weight of scripture. Isaiah 43:6-7 says, “Bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
In addition to the full weight of scripture, however, it only makes sense, logically, that the display of God’s glory would be the ultimate purpose of the universe. Of course, there are some who say the universe is purposeless, as if incredible advances in biology and astrophysics somehow disallow, rather than bolster, the case for the universe being purposeful. It’s a logical non-sequitor, of course, but luckily these people’s daily actions make a complete mockery of their own worldview as 99% of their actions suggest, by their calculated, goal-oriented, and even caring nature, that they do believe, in the “unsearchable parts” of their souls, that the universe has a purpose! To live a functional daily life, they have to engage in a constant process of turning their brains off, so as not to remind themselves that their worldview contradicts their lifestyle.
But, for those 7,000 of us that have not prostituted ourselves to Baal, metaphorically speaking, and like to engage our brains on a daily basis, rather than turn them off, we realize that glory is the only thing in the world that is ultimate, rather than penultimate. This is not to say that there are not several other highly worthy causes for which we, as human beings, are called to strive for, support, achieve, and even battle against (and these causes will likely determine our vocations), but insofar as one can recognize—or even imagine—these causes resulting in or consummating some “higher” principle or emotion, such causes, worthy as they are, will always be penultimate in nature.
For example, though “helping the poor and downtrodden” is an admirable (and needed) cause, it cannot be the ultimate purpose of the universe, for there was a time, even if it was only for the blink of an eye, during which there were no poor and downtrodden people in the universe. Thus, following that view of the universe’s purpose, it not only follows that there was once a time when the universe had no purpose, but it also follows that if we are successful in aligning ourselves with the universe’s purpose, there theoretically could (and hopefully would?) be a time when the universe returns to being purposeless.
No, I submit that the purpose of the universe, whatever it may be, is eternal and unwavering. Wordly hedonists, as sinful as their worldview may be, at least understand this concept of the difference between the ultimate and the penultimate. They recognize that the penultimate sex, drugs, foods, and carnal pleasures they seek are merely penultimate vessels to serve their ultimate purpose—their flesh’s happiness.
So, glory is not only a candidate for God’s (and consequently, the universe’s) ultimate purpose because of what it is not—penultimate—but also because of what it is—the only ultimate thing in the universe. When I challenge myself by picturing theoretical cause-result chains, I can always imagine each link in the chain resulting in a “higher” result or even a “higher” emotion until I reach glory—then it all stops.
Picture an intimate relationship as an example. The intimate relationship is penultimate because it begets love. Love is penultimate because it begets the savoring of itself. The savoring of love is penultimate because it begets the worship of the God who invented it. And, lastly, worship too is penultimate because it begets glory—the putting on display of a masterpiece—which is, finally, ultimate.
The only question remaining is the question of “to what or to whom belongs this glory?” This time, the answer is not the product of a logical workout, bur rather a sweet and self-evident truth. The glory simply belongs to the only one qualified to receive it—Yahweh.
Lest we think that aligning ourselves with this single, ultimate purpose of God will decrease our zeal for the execution of that which is penultimate, we need only to look at personal experience to realize that this is not true. Laboring for a higher cause only increases our zeal for the lower cause.
Consider a man who is on his way to a department store to buy a golden necklace for his wife. Will the higher cause for which is he working—namely, the love of his wife and the celebration of her beauty via her adornment—be more likely to increase his zeal for picking out the right necklace or decrease it? It will, of course, increase it! If he were to drive to the department store for the sole purpose of trading paper money for jewelry, and with no higher purpose in mind, he would have no zeal at all and would be nothing more than a merchant making his monotonous daily rounds. If you’re looking for a literal, rather than a metaphorical example of this concept, I would point you towards Mother Theresa. It is no coincidence that the embodiment of social compassion in the 20th century was working for the glory of her maker.
Jesus was not, at the core, a “champion” of some penultimate social construct—caring for the poor, democracy, communism, the religious right, or even the institution of religion. Jesus was a champion for the glory of his father. It was that very glory that drove Jesus to the cross. “Now my soul is troubled,” Jesus said, before he was handed over for his death, “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ ‘But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then, a voice came from heaven: I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” (John 12:27-28).
Furthermore, the fact that the glory of God is the ultimate purpose of the universe allows for the widest possible range of penultimate vessels. If “caring for starving children” was the ultimate purpose of the universe, then we would be forced to admit that kindergarten teachers and housemaids are disregarding the purpose for which they were created, an idea we just know isn’t true! But, when the glory of God is indeed the ultimate purpose of the universe, then not only pastors and missionaries, but also kindergarten teachers and housemaids and artists and athletes and environmental scientists all have the chance to participate in bringing glory to God’s name.
If there exists, on this green earth, anyone more passionate about the glory of God than his saints, it would be God himself. It is for this reason that God does not merely sit idle and hope that we choose to put ourselves into situations that will glorify his name. Rather, he actively arranges our circumstances in such a way that they create a story that displays his glory. The glory is found in the story.
I realized this last Sunday, when we were eating lunch after church. I had just finished giving a sermon and our team was talking to our host, Pastor Moses, about the possibility of returning to Kenya someday. I had commented about how Kenya was the one country I had wanted to visit my entire life, but not for the purpose of ministry. All throughout high school, I had followed a blog called Chasing Kimbia (the Swahili word for “run”) and hoped to one day come to Kenya myself to train with Kenyan distance runners.
When I told Pastor Moses about the Chasing Kimbia training program and told him that the training center was located in Iten, Kenya, his eyes lit up as he told me that Iten was the town where he went to high school! I asked him if he had heard of St. Patrick’s high school, the high school where all the best Chasing Kimbia runners competed. “St. Patrick’s!” he responded, with more enthusiasm than before, “that’s my high school!” I also asked him if he knew Brother Colm O’Donnell, St. Patrick’s world-renowned distance running coach, and not only did he know him, but Brother O’Donnell was his principal! Not only was he his principle, but Moses had just visited with him earlier in the month!
I never used to be sure of what I wanted to do with my life, other than that I wanted to run. I ate, slept, and breathed running. Finally, though, when I was a senior in High School, I really probed my mind to figure out what I was even somewhat passionate about other than running (after all, one cannot run forever), and only one thing came to mind: bringing about an end to Christianity in the United States.
I hated every last thing about the Christian faith and I even wrote Facebook notes condemning it. I remember arguing with my high school friends in the back of my first period Physics class about why prayer shouldn’t be allowed in public schools. I have always wanted to do something great and influential with my life (this hasn’t changed), and the only thing—outside of running, which could only last me so long—that I had enough passion to dedicate my life to, was the persecution of the Christian faith.
Had I had known, two years ago, the way our God works, I would have seen it coming from a mile away. Of course God would use one of his former fiercest antagonists to glorify his name—that’s just how he works! What good story doesn’t have an unexpected plot twist? Charles Dickens doesn’t have anything on the creator of the universe. God brought me back to within kilometers of the one place on the planet I’d been dying to go—only he brought me here doing what I swore I’d never do—proclaim his name. I feel like the Apostle Paul and I thank God every day for my twenty-first century “Road to Damascus” (see Acts 9)—my freshman year of college.
When I recognize that it wasn’t despite my prior persecution that God used me in his story, but because of it, I can only help but feel undeserving. God has been penning an epic since the beginning of time, and even as my fingers pound this keyboard, he is writing into existence new events and plot twists. We know how the story began, for in the beginning there was nothing. We know how the story ends, with the doxology—“Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him, all creatures here below, Praise Him above, ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” The only part left unrevealed is the middle. Every one of us plays a part in the middle and every one of us glorifies God, whether we glorify him by displaying his mercy or by displaying his wrath.
God will display his glory. That is non-negotiable. Jesus tells us that if we keep quiet, even the stones will scream his glory (Luke 19:40). Let us submit to the story of God and let his praises be always on our lips, lest we let the stones do all the talking.
