Don't Waste Your Life: Thoughts from Chapter 1

This semester, those of us in our campus Bible study (we number about eight) are studying John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life. Throughout the semester, I hope to blog on some of the passages that impact me the most. My reasons for this are two-fold: I want to interest other people in the book, and I would also like to further discuss it. Last Friday, we discussed the first chapter, “My Search for a Single Passion to Live By,” where Piper contrasts existentialism (“first you exist and then, by existing, you create your essence”) with Absolute Reality (“all that looks like reality to us is dependent on God”). When one considers the prevalence of existentialist thought, it is unsurprising to observe the hopelessness of today’s culture, where everyone is struggling in their futile attempts to “create their essence.”

Perhaps my favorite paragraph from the first chapter was actually one where Piper quotes from C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man.

You can’t go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to “see through” first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To “see through” all things is the same as not to see.
I won’t try to extrapolate on it, but I will ask this: what are common examples of our culture’s attempts to “see through” first principles?

Is "Small Talk" Really So Small?

Some people, I believe, think that I don’t talk very much. (Maybe you're sitting there laughing: that obnoxious guy?) I used to imagine that this was merely because I had no need to participate in directionless chatter:

Hey, how are you doing? Oh, fine. How are you? Pretty good. Anything new? Not really. Life’s busy, as always. Yeah, I know what you mean. Same old, same old.

I’ve found, however, that my imagined distaste for the superficial is, in actuality, laziness demonstrated by my failing to seek out people whom I might not often talk with. I can’t expect to have a conversation of the same depth with someone I haven’t talked to in months as with one of my best friends; but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a meaningful conversation.

I don’t want to waste words; I also don’t want to waste opportunities to build friendships by assuming that my words would be wasted. I keep pondering 1 Corinthians 10:31: whether [I] eat or drink, or whatever [I] do, [I want to] do all to the glory of God.

Pride vs. The Glory of God

I had considered starting a blog for quite a while, but held off for a couple of reasons: I didn't exactly know what I wanted to write in a blog; I couldn't think of a good name. Both reasons, I think, revealed pride.

As to the first, having a purposeless blog with aimless posts (which is what it obviously would've been) would only be an attempt at self-glorification.

And the second? The following thought, which I expressed on two occasions, sums it up: "A good blog with a bad name is not a good blog." I now realize this statement to be quite foolish, for while I believe that names are important (Prv. 22:1), my comment was more related to my determination to find a clever title which might serve as a façade to smooth over the inadequacies within. A blog's value is found in its content and not in its name.

So why am I blogging? The reasons (as of now) are three-fold.

1. Blogs can be an excellent forum for holding discussions which might be impossible or cut short elsewhere.

2. It would seem that blogs are also a great way to keep in touch with people one doesn't frequently see.

3. I enjoy writing, and I want to glorify God in it. (Bob Kauflin had some excellent things to say about Blogging to Worship God.)