Do You Deserve The Best?

Well here we are in a brand new year and people are wondering what 2016 will hold for their lives. If you invest in the stock markets or have any part of your retirement portfolio in them, you might be wondering what is going to happen with your money (Wall Street News).  As we enter into a new year people all over the world have many things to be thankful for and yet many have much to be fearful of.

It is an interesting dynamic between thankfulness and fearfulness.  The balance between thankfulness and fearfulness is part of the equation that drives our expectations in life.  This is because if I allow fear to rule my life I will be driven into either desperation or despondence.  Meaning I will either be driven to take bold actions that I would not normally be inclined to take in my life or I will simply shrink into a shell and shun the world and not take actions that I should be taking in my life.  On the other hand if I allow thankfulness to rule my life, I risk an abnormal state of euphoria or I risk a state of constant disappointment in my life.  And what drives our expectations in life, is what brings us to a state of entitlement.

I overheard a mother and daughter talking on New Year’s Eve and the mother was wishing the daughter the best year in her life in 2016.  This seemed normal to me as most of us wish each other the best in life.  But then the mother added something alarming onto the statement.  She said “Because you deserve the best.”  And I immediately thought “Why?”  Why do we, any of us, deserve the best?  What have any of us done to merit the highest quality of anything in our lives?  When we start believing that we deserve the best in our lives we enter dangerous territory on a path to developing an entitlement attitude towards life.

This is an epidemic that is sweeping America and I believe most Western European counties as well as parts of Asia.  Many conservative commentators have exposed this on talk radio and in their books.  We have even had it creep into our legal system as is evidenced by the Affluenza Teen (see any of these news article here).  Even within theistic realms we have developed the ideal that we somehow deserve the best in all that life has to offer.  And note that there is a very sharp contrast between God wanting the best for our lives and us deserving the best in life.  We, the people of the world, have come to establish within our minds that we should get the very best that life has to offer.

This is simply astounding to me.  First of all it is totally unrealistic.  It presumes that there is enough of the best to go around in the first place.  However you define what is best, if you do happen to acquire it, then more of it would have to be found in order for others to have it as well.  Liberals have been attempting to achieve this happy utopia for decades and they have never even come close.  And note that those who have achieved any level of success in life hardly ever want to give up that level of success in order for the rest of us to enjoy some of the benefits they have acquired.  And yet they would typically be the first to demand that we do more.  The logic is confusing to me.  It would seem to me that if they really wanted an equal playing field they would first address their own affluent states before requiring the rest of us to do something with ours.  And please note that I (personnaly) have no desire nor expectation of them to do so.

Secondly it makes no sense from any point of your world view.  For the atheist it is always astonishing to me that they would take up any world cause.  To what end would an atheist want the best for either themselves or anyone else?  The atheistic view point, by definition ascribes no meaning in life.  Nor can it.  There is no order, no design, no grand purpose in life.  It is simply all random and without definition.  They cannot do anything about it.  Events were prescribed from the absolute beginning from the occurrence of the Big Bang. Even their attempts at ascribing some change in their own lives or the lives of other is the result of completely random events that follow the laws of the universe.  For the agnostic any type of ambition on their part would seem contrary to their world view.  As long as you are not affecting their particular station in life, the agnostic should not care about whether or not you obtain the best in life.  Neither should they ascribe to any particular state of affluence on their own.  They are, after all, agnostic in their point of view.

For the theist however, it is confusing to me as to how they could have any expectation as to what they deserve in life.  As a theist I understand that what I deserve and what I obtain is ordained by the plan and purpose of the creator.  And if I am a Christian I understand that the best is not what I expect but what God provides in my life.

As a Christian I understand that what I deserve in life is a cross, eternal separation from the Creator, a Holy and Righteous God.  But I also understand that what the Creator has provided us is His Grace, complete and unmerited favor in the very act of taking that cross away from me (and you) and providing restoration to his family and his goodness in our lives.  And by doing so, Jesus Christ, on His Cross, has already provided the very best that life has to offer.  There is no greater gift, there is no greater prize to be achieved.  He has done it all and it is by His Grace that it has been made available to us and not some some entitlement we should expect.

So this New Year I wish for each and every one of you the BEST life has to offer.  My hope and desire is that you will find God’s Grace in your life.  That you will come to understand and enjoy a personal relationship with the Creator of all we survey, and that this new found relationship will come to change your expectations in life, as well as mine.

Happy New Year to ALL.