(By Dave, 15 min)
Scripture
Isaiah 6:1-6
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
Libertarian party
Recently I listened to a few libertarians talk about their political views. Wanting to know more, I visited the Libertarian Party’s website. Here’s a quote that captures the same thing I was hearing from the discussants: “Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another”.
That got me thinking about the Declaration of Independence and this statement from the second paragraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness—”. The founders believed that one right given to the created from the Creator is to pursue happiness.
This fits well with the Libertarian party’s idea of pursuing your interests. After all, for most folks pursuing their interests brings happiness. But notice that both Libertarian and Declaration statements rest on an unstated presumption. Pursuing one’s happiness is the chief purpose of our lives.
Isaiah’s view
Isaiah had an experience in today’s Scripture verse that speaks to this presumption. He receives it in the year King Uzziah dies. Uzziah was a very good war and peacetime King reigning in Judah for 52 years. However, he became proud and lost reverence for God in his last days. The king enters the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the holy altar that was to be used exclusively by God’s chosen priests on behalf of the people. Because Uzziah violated the holiness of the space he is afflicted with leprosy.
In Isaiah’s vision. God is within the very temple that Uzziah desecrated. The Lord is filling the space as the train of his robe is found everywhere and a throne has lifted Him high. Seraphim fly around God demonstrating to Isaiah that praise is the only proper response for any created thing. So perfect is God that even these heavenly beings cannot look at Him and they cover their eyes. Moreover, God is too perfect to look upon their imperfection, so they cover their feet leaving only one set of their six wings free to serve their purpose of flying while praising God’s consummate holiness.
Isaiah’s response seems appropriate: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips…” The prophet is not woeful because he stands in the presence of God and fears the very evident power displayed. His concern is that he stands in the presence of God as a sinner from a nation of sinners.
In his increasingly disconcerting vision, the non-priest and ethically inadequate Isaiah is in the temple where he does not belong standing before the Holy God of all. The last guy who was here was Uzziah, and he left with terminal leprosy.
There is no hope for poor Isaiah, and in his moment of desperation one of the seraphim comes to him. Taking a coal from the altar made for atonement, Isaiah’s lips are touched, and that which separates him from God is removed. Only then does God call for a volunteer to pass His truth to the people. Having been made suitable to stand in the presence of God, the prophet immediately responds with his very famous words: Here am I! Send me.
If Holy God chooses to make you clean, then clean you will be and ready to serve. However, He does not conscript people for service but instead calls for volunteers.
We must choose
It appears we have a choice. Our chief purpose could be to pursue happiness and our own interests? Or as believers in Jesus Christ who made us as clean as the Seraphim’s coal, it could be to serve God?
From a secular perspective, the choice implies mutual exclusivity. One must give up pursuing their own happiness and interest to serve a perfect God or abandon God to do as one pleases. But that dichotomy is false and perniciously so because it implies that an interesting happy life cannot be found in service to God. In my experience as an atheistic and then Christian educator, this is the opposite of the truth.
Lasting happiness is not found by pursuing it. For 4 ½ years I pursued a graduate degree so that I could become a teacher. I was squarely in my days as an atheist. The day I defended my work and passed the oral exam, I expected to be elated. Overcome with happiness to have this long journey done. There was a brief period of that the afternoon I spent celebrating with my colleagues and family. By the next morning an emptiness began. A feeling of now what do I do. The happiness was gone and replaced by a yearning for another dose.
At least for me, but I suspect for all, lasting contentment and happiness is not found by pursuing one’s interests. Instead, happiness, or more appropriately joy, is a byproduct of choosing to pursue God’s interests. Perhaps an example could best illustrate what I mean.
The remarkable barber
For years I went to a barber named Tony. Tony didn’t pursue happiness by cutting hair. Happiness came to him because he cared for his clients.
His waiting room was always packed with at least 5-10 people any time you walked in. When you did, you were greeted by name. It didn’t matter how long since your last visit. He always remembered you. Although Tony owned the barbershop, he had two other cutters. As people came in, he remembered their order of arrival. When one of the barbers finished with a client, Tony would call the next person by name. He even remembered the clients who wanted to wait for him and would juggle the order of people accordingly.
It was quite amazing because there were hundreds of people who came to the shop over the course of a month. But if you came and returned, he learned your name. That’s all it took for him to dedicate a piece of his mind to you.
Your name isn’t all he recollected. Whatever you talked about last time in his chair was remembered when you returned. He would pick the conversation up right where it left off asking something like, did your wife enjoy visiting her parents. When Tony was done cutting your hair, he stuck a vibrator on his hand and gave you a quick upper back massage. Then he very warmly said goodbye and wished you well until the next visit.
Of course all of this makes good business sense, but ridiculously so. No one expects their barber to pay attention to his clients like this. If a barber is affable and gives good haircuts, that’s enough for most folks to return. There was more to Tony’s effort than good business. Tony cared about you personally and you could feel it. He came to work each day not to work for his clients but to care for them.
Without saying a word about religion, Tony answered God’s call on his life to be a servant to other people. Think of the cognitive effort he put into remembering his clients and what was going on in their lives. Unlike my pursuit of interest in graduate school that gave only transient happiness, Tony’s service to God through loving people produced an unending stream of personal happiness that came walking through his door every day. A happiness and contentment you could see on his face every time you returned.
I don’t know if Tony was a religious man, although I suspect so given some of our conversations. But Jesus laid out God’s purpose on our lives when he identified the second fundamental commandment upon which the law rests, loving your neighbor as yourself. In caring deeply about his clients, Tony served God. He answered the call for volunteers placed on his heart, and as you can see from my profound memories of him, he served the kingdom well.
Final comments
My experiences support Isaiah’s vision, and I wonder if yours do as well. When I pursued happiness and my interests as the chief purpose of life, the moments of happiness were transitory. I would be left yearning for another happiness fix. Then, I became a Christian, was cleansed of sin as was Isaiah, and accepted God’s call for volunteers. None of the things I did for a living changed, but the reason I did them changed a great deal as did the persistence of a richer happiness Christians call joy.
It seems to me that when you respond to Christ’s removal of your sin with: “here am I, send me” and begin living for Him, happiness follows in much greater abundance. Indeed, the founders and the libertarians have it right, they just have the wrong unstated presumption. I might rewrite the libertarian’s statement this way: Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests in service to God.
Maybe tomorrow as we rise from bed, we shouldn’t start by thinking about the list of things we need to get done. Maybe start by thinking how we will do them given that Christ made us right with God and He is asking all who accept that forgiveness: whom shall I send into a groaning world.
Alright y’all. Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you have a great day and that your days are filled with God’s purpose until the next post. Many blessings to you until then,
Dave
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