solving life

Back to the puzzle metaphor. Let’s say life is a puzzle to be solved, or a riddle. Let’s say that we find 66 ancient clues for solving the puzzle that we can be very sure came from the hand of the puzzle maker.

One group of people goes about applying these 66 clues using the best methods and approaches they know, maybe through trial and error and refinement of method and approach.

The other group adds something else. Not only do they agree with the former group that these 66 clues surely came from the hand of the puzzle maker, but they also assert that these 66 clues are final, an assertion which means that if anything else is ever discovered or tried that is not one of these 66 clues proper that it is wrong. It cannot be part of the solution. Not only are the 66 clues valid, but they themselves in fact are the solution to the puzzle. The puzzle maker is not known to have said this exactly, but the fact that these 66 clues have endured this long through famine, war, and all other disasters, coupled with a few mysterious phrases within the 66 clues themselves, add up to prove that the solution and the clues are one in the same.

It makes for a different approach to the solution—the puzzle maker saying “you can solve this: here are 66 clues” vs. the puzzle maker saying “you can solve this: here are the 66 clues”.

And now I’m probably stirring up some old fires. But this has all been, sorry to say, a red herring. Jesus did not come to show us the way life is solved. He came to show us the way life is lived. And he did it with two words, “Follow me.” Everything else he said or did or taught came down from these two words. It turns out it is a person we have to follow, not some clues, because it turns out that life is personal, not textual. At the center of all reality is not a solution, but a person. The heart God offers us is not stone but flesh. And it turns out that life itself doesn’t need to be solved. It’s already working like it’s supposed to. Most of us just haven’t found it. Or it hasn’t found us.

So I have to wonder, how many of our arguments, doubts, divisions, fears, regrets, and resignations come from a skewed view that life is something to be solved for an answer rather than followed for a romantic adventure?