We’ve all had this experience: at a friend’s house, they have fed us something so delicious that we begged for the recipe. Assuming our friend is willing to part with his or her (okay, her) top secret recipe, imagine the following scenario.
You take the recipe home, eager to reproduce the experience you so enjoyed. But during the process, you do a curious thing: you deviate from the recipe repeatedly, sometimes drastically. “Two eggs? I’ll put in these grapes instead. I like grapes.” “Two cups of sugar? Why don’t I just use salt? They both look the same.” When it’s done, you take a bite, and, horrified at the disaster you’ve created, you exclaim, “What a terrible recipe!”
Ludicrous, you say? Of course it is. Yet isn’t that what passes for a clever argument among those who object to Christianity? (Actually, they go farther and deny the friend even exists!) The Lord designed a world for the delight of His creatures and gave clear instructions as to the path of blessing. But instead of obeying the Lord’s directions, “Each of us has turned to his own way” (Isa. 53:6). No wonder there is pain and suffering in the world! Far from being an argument to reject God and the Bible, suffering is an argument to embrace the Lord and His Word. We’ve tried our way and it has failed miserably. Why not repent and follow the divine recipe?
On a smaller scale, others fear that the Lord is out to make us miserable. Someone once quipped that Puritanism was the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, was having fun. Many unbelievers have the same impression of Christianity: they view it as a set of rules outlawing many of the activities they enjoy most and mandating onerous responsibilities. Needless to say, such a misconception can be a hindrance to the gospel in their lives.
Sadly, this problem isn’t limited to unbelievers. Isn’t it true that even believers—perhaps all of us at one time or another—have thought that we would miss out if we did things God’s way? Even if we don’t think it for ourselves, don’t we sometimes think it for others? Are there not times when we as parents are tempted to relax what we know to be God’s desire because we fear it will be too hard on our children? As if we love them more than the Lord does? Or do we not live in a day when churches are increasingly departing from the truth in order to appease the misplaced priorities of believers and unbelievers alike, a time when more and more of the Bible is ignored as it is viewed as too hard and unenjoyable for the masses?
Such thinking is utterly misguided. The fact is that all the suffering this world has ever known has come as a result of sin, a consequence of rejecting the Lord’s way in favor of our own. There is no more blessed life than one lived according to the directions of the One who loved us so much that He died for us.
Perhaps this is why our Lord began that most famous of sermons—the Sermon on the Mount—with a nine-fold description of the blessed man. He was describing heaven’s standard: a life of careful (and sometimes costly) obedience, but a life that enjoyed all the blessings of heaven both now and in eternity. In short, a life like His, heaven’s blessed Man.