Every person needs a purpose. This is a fact of life, not a dogmatic proposition. This need for purpose lies behind the inevitable and rampant idolatry in our world. If we do not worship and serve the true God, we will make some other god or cause the object of our devotion. Ultimately, the purpose of our life cannot lie within ourselves. Some do attempt this, but it always fails, sometimes in spectacular and catastrophic ways. We must look outside ourselves for a transcendent cause, a purpose greater than ourselves, something worth giving ourselves entirely to advance and uphold. That is what social justice warriors, advocates of Planned Parenthood, transgender rights activists, and those opposed to religious freedom are doing. (Forgive my redundancy, I just gave the same group four different names.) They are looking outside themselves for a cause to serve that is greater than their own lives. It would be commendable if it were not already inevitable. There are no points for unselfishly serving an external purpose. Almost everyone does, sooner or later. It is as virtuous as breathing, eating, and sleeping.
The question is not whether we will find an external purpose or even whether it will ultimately be inside or outside ourselves. The question is where outside of us will we find it? Idolaters find their gods and religion on a horizontal plane. This is why the social justice movement presently captures the affections of so many. It is the largest idol on the horizon since we successfully saved the whales. But true worshipers must inevitably find their purpose by looking up, not around, and certainly not ever within. It is only when we understand our relationship to God as Creator, Redeemer, and King that we can then properly understand our relationship to the world and finally have a proper view even of ourselves. We will seek justice, because we have come into the service of the just One. We will love and serve our neighbor, because we have been loved and served by our Lord. We will even care about the environment and animals, because these were created by our Father, and he made us their caretakers. But we will not make any of these horizontal concerns into gods nor our service to them into a religion. They are duties, not deities. They are our work, not our worship. Only when we are vertically aligned can we properly relate to everyone and everything on the horizontal plane. --JME
