Have you wondered, in our busy modern day, what is the chief end of our lives?

There was a time when I was young, when I briefly pondered a simpler version of this question.
I yearn for a “True God” that I can really trust. Didn’t want a man-made one, conjured out to soothe the insecure worries of man. With so many in the market, how can I be certain which is the right one? I think I was crying then, after a good old beating from my mom. Strangled a short prayer under the blanket to this “unknown God” out there. I really really want to know him, but I want the “real stuff”.

Interesting enough, this little prayer of mine was answered 10 over years later, when I was 20.
God met me at the church camp and I received what the Charismatics (a Christian denomination) termed as the “baptism of the Holy Spirit”. The reality of God came bursting into my life. I realised then, there is a real God out there, and that he has a name - Jesus Christ.

Hence, to me, man’s chief end is not for some noble “bigger than life” kind of purpose. Man’s chief goal is not “for what” but “to him”. The chief aim in life is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. (Westminster Shorter Catechism).

That’s my testimony, but what relevance does it have for the rest of the world? For a very simple reason - our human lifespans are very much finite. At our death bed, we do not care very much for scientific arguments, abstract philosphies and novel ideas of leaving our legacy behind in the form of children and history books. Those are noble goals, but try one step better - what happens after death? Our ancestors and philosphers have long grappled with these ultimate questions:

1.Creation - Where do we come from? Where are we going to?
2.Being Good - Why should one be good? What or who defines the standard/benchmark/yardstick of what is good? How good is good enough?
3.Religion - Is religion man made or God made? Are these partial revealations all leading to the same God?

However, this is a blog page, not a thesis!! Hence, I will just share from my personal experience and leave this “chim” questions for another day.

As I grow older, God began to show me the condition of my heart. It says in the bible:

“the heart is deceitful beyong understanding”

And apparently, I find it very much so, as I begin to reflect into my inner motivations. Many nice “christian” things that I did, are not really done out of love for others, but because of my own selfish ambition and ego. Do you know that even in doing good things, we can have wrong motives? The bible says that the “righteousness of man is as filthy rags to the Lord”. I really believe so when it said:

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

If our own righteousness could bring us life, then there is no need for Jesus to die for us. But since history, how many of us can claim to have been worthy enough for God to give us eternal life? God’s standards are so so exacting! Who can enter heaven on his own strength? If the standards are sky high, then tremble, because we know that death is holding our lives in ransom. Jesus really really have to come to die for us. I look inside my life. I look outside into the world. I look even into the church. I realised how desperately we need Jesus.
“God’s care for humanity was so great that he sent his unique Son among us, so that those who count on him might not lead a futile and failing existence, but have the undying life of God himself.”

I can never fully comprehend how much God sacrificed when he gave his son to die in our place. He became a curse. The rejection, the pain, the sufferings, the rape, the genocides…all the sorrow of man from the dawn of time to the closing of the ages, he took it on in one cosmic moment. How dreadful it is when our sin cause the divine separation of the son from the father. I will never comprehend. I can only imagine and know the debt that we owe our God.