The Simplicity of Maturity

Our world is deeply confused about parenting, and it shouldn’t be any surprise that kids are deeply confused about growing up. For millennia the proven path to maturity required children to learn sacrifice for others, but new and unproven theories are redefining parenting and the family itself in the twenty-first century. Often seeded with humanistic assumptions, modern approaches have now shipwrecked a few generations of children, beginning with Baby-boomers, and now secular research and even the popular press are documenting how widespread this failure is.

It means modern parenting is a best-guess scenario. Little social consensus remains, and even the self-proclaimed leaders among academics and social scientists are deeply divided. Far more tragic, parents often cannot (and sometimes should not) look to their own parents for guidance. The confusion and failures of parents now spans generations, and the proven model of maturity is fading from modern memory.

Fortunately God provides us with a clear and simple path to maturity. It is a process:

1. To move away from immature demands that others meet our needs.
2. To become capable of providing for our own needs.
3. Finally, developing a surplus to give in sacrificial love.

Paul captures this process of growth in one verse:

He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need. Ephesians 4:28 (NASB)

“He who steals” accurately describes demanding Infantiles. The solution? “Steal no longer!” Infantiles may not feel their demands are thievery, but that is what God calls it, pure and simple. (Read “Steal No Longer” which is someone’s blog about employing this principle, and how to win.)

It means the demands must stop! This is not optional. It is a timeless, culturally-agnostic fact of human genetics that until “he will have something to share with one who has need,” the Infantile lives in a cauldron of seething emotional turmoil. Demands will not satisfy long-term emotional needs.

The Furnace of Present Love Feelings

The modern child-centered home and the influence of the “Self Esteem” movement is producing a new social phenomenon where childhood extends far beyond the age of 18. It means a population of “adult kids” is forming. It is a subculture with a consensus that further perpetrates Infantile demands. Their propaganda is seeded in the media, movies and TV sitcoms.

This new Infantile subculture is a furnace of super-heated emotional needs. As Infantile meets Infantile, expectations crash against demands, and when relationships crumble they fall back to one conviction: I was betrayed! The furnace intensifies with loneliness and heartbreak, but the Infantile is oblivious to the obvious problem: the problem is me!

Often our response is not repentance. Many move into self-protection. “I can’t be wrong. It is the world that is wrong!” ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman – Biblical Approach part 2)::

Parents were the first to stoke the furnace of Infantile demands. In a safe and loving home, kids were provided Present Love Feelings that met their emotional needs. Growing up in the center of the universe, the child charges into the world with confidence, feeling loved, supported, and completely ungrateful.

The goal for parenting is not to make kids feel loved. Nowhere in scripture can we find such an injunction. We don’t mean to say that parents shouldn’t make their kids feel loved, but we are saying this isn’t the goal of parenting. Many parents would agree, yet because it’s the easiest way to make someone feel loved, pumping out the Present Love Feelings ends up becoming a parent’s default effort. “Soccer Moms” and minivan families lavish such a wealth of Present Love Feelings on the kids, but these are all modern behaviors and part of the modern confusion about maturity.

Leaving home, these kids thrive on a reservoir of Present Love Feelings which fuel their spirited dreams of conquest. But a latent emotional bomb lies beneath the surface: unable to create healthy relationships, these young adults suffer painfully in their quest to refill Present Love Feelings. Usually the bomb explodes after the collapse of a few random romances.

Without emotional fuel people cannot function for long. The hidden bomb explodes in a cloud of emotional instability which can deal crippling blows to the body’s chemistry, its immune system and large array of crippling maladies, as research has demonstrated (see Loneliness). These young adults become new patients at Dr. Ankenman’s clinic, crippled with emotional distress:

Every emotionally unhappy person in the world works from the perspective that says, “love has to come to me.” The final cure of the emotionally-upset person is learning to give love. ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman – Biblical Approach part 2)::

The problem for parents is one of investment.

Strategic Investment

Children need Present Love Feelings for confidence and motivation, and parents provide these feelings through Investment, a buzzword of Baby-boomers. It typically means building positive memories (those Present Love Feelings) with their kids. But these memories not only lack endurance, they get distorted.

Children and parents perceive love differently. Parents may be loving, but kids are not. Kids are born with all the menacing traits of Depravity, and are “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). Without gratitude, children perceive love as a reward. The more they receive, the more convinced they become of the right to receive love. The Infantile Love Defect is formed when this expectation for love migrates to adulthood:

When you don’t know how to love, your love bank goes dry. Then you go seeking a juvenile form of love – the adolescent dating mill. ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman – Biblical Approach part 2)::

Investment by Reality Parenting means imparting Permanent Love Values, not only Present Love Feelings. From God’s view the most worthy and enduring investment is the understanding of what makes love work. This is how kids can keeps their emotional reserves full, endure failures and continue to fight. This is how they build the significance they long for (see “A Significant Story”).

But significance is only possible where substance first exists.

A Foundation of Substance

With substance, kids can negotiate with the world because they own something of value. The Herculean effort of child-raising is to build this substance, and it requires extensive schooling, discipline and consumes a great deal of resources.

::callout("We do remain confused about how to build substance...", "width:150px")::Reality Parenting means helping children translate their potential into substance which they can use in their “world commerce” as Seligman notes:

So what I want to say about self esteem is that it’s a consequence of poor commerce with the world, and what needs improving in kids with low self esteem is not directly how they feel, but the skills for good commerce with the world.

The self esteem movement cares more for feeling good than for doing well…In two generations, our societies have switched from doing well societies to feeling good societies, and it’s quite odd that in these two generations national depression got worse by all measures. Dr. Martin Seligman.

Teenagers either possess some substance or they hear well-deserved terms like “no good”, “shiftless”, “lazy” and “useless”. Young adults either hold enough substance to pay for basic needs, or they begin stealing from those with substance. These people are, of course, Infantiles.

There was once a custom called a dower which young men paid in order to get a wife, and it goes back to the dawn of recorded history and was practiced by most cultures. In poor villages the dower was perhaps a couple of goats, but it served as a way for a young man to prove his substance and ability to care for a wife and family. This primitive custom is now replaced by the modern Infantile Male who believes he has the inviolable right to the woman of his dreams. Which is more primitive?

American culture no longer uses the primitive dower, but we are confused about how to build substance. We rely on institutions of learning and corporate bureaucracies to build the substance of a young adult. But as Dr. Ankenman pointed out:

Growing up on the outside does not necessarily mean you have grown up on the inside. There is often an outward form of maturity but an inward void. – from ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman – Biblical Approach part 2)::

This is not an attack on higher education, but a fair critique of the simple-minded significance produced by our modern systems. Kids need diplomas and career development, but those systems cannot deliver authentic significance as we discussed earlier, and they certainly lack the substance contained in God’s love.

Kids desperately need the diploma of advanced Love Ethics, as revealed by God. This is the weakness of the modern era: to “act like men” (1 Cor. 16:14) is a fading memory, and not taught anywhere in the World System. What does it mean?

Real substance means “let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor. 16:14). It leads to a powerful life backed by an unshakable character, like God, “with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17).

Reality Parenting

To live “in love” is the epitome of courage and strength. This is the character produced by Reality Parenting:

• Raising children with an emotional stability able to face the upheavals headed their way.
• Rising above the foolish and hurtful ways of people all around us who lash out against the world.
• Penetrating and impacting the hearts of others despite their resistance, yet with kindness.
• To be an agent of change by healing the haunting alienation of past relationships.

The retreat and withdrawal of the Tribal Christian home is a loser strategy. Supposedly withdrawn from the dangerous world, Tribal homes still drink its poison when the home revolves around the kids. They build a contrived significance which produces princes and princesses without any real significance except, “I’m me!”

We need a more biblical paradigm, because effective parenting does not come naturally to the natural mind.

Living With Depravity

Healthy parenting is deeply tied to the supernatural aspect of our humanity, which means viewing kids from God’s viewpoint, guided by His rules and not those feelings we cherish and define as love. How difficult it is to play with our little kid and then read, “By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger” (Ephesians 2:3).

Kids are cute, but their deeply-sinful and flawed natures are not cute.

“We raise kids with the sense of, ‘let’s have a nice life.’ But also let’s realize that all of life is not nice. How do teach them to handle it? Protect them and keep them naïve until they get burned? No! ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman – Biblical Approach part 2)::

What follows are some of the most basic principles of Reality Parenting in a depraved world.

• Welcome and listen to criticism about our kids.

How I hated the way my own mother reacted when the school called! I knew she would take their side, and she did every time. My parents firmly held to the biblical tenant that we cannot blame problems on teachers, and especially on those in authority.

Yet some authorities and teachers are terribly corrupt or incompetent. So how do we reconcile this?

It is both possible to be on your kid’s side and also teach obedience to their authorities. The Principle at one of my boys’ school was a picky bureaucrat. His name rhymed with “Black-heart”, “Black-fart”, “Hard-heart” and other delightful names, I pointed out to my son. We had many chuckles over that, but we also talked about obeying him. My son knew I was on his side because I shared in the pain of dealing with Mr. Blackheart.

• Welcome and listen to criticism about our parenting style.

“I must be honest with you, but I really haven’t a clue about how to raise kids,” a frustrated father told me. I had to chuckle, because I knew the feeling. Without the Word of God, everyone is guessing. It is no more embarrassing to admit shortcomings as parents than to admit we’re all sinners. The two are identical concepts.

After raising kids everyone says, “I know I’ve made mistakes!” Then why get defensive when someone says, “You’re making a mistake…”?

If mistakes are unavoidable, the best reaction would be, “Oh good! I was wondering what my mistake was!” We must react this way, because people take such big chances to raise the issue, and we want that feedback to continue.

Do we realize that when one person gives us negative feedback it’s probably just the tip of the iceburg? This isolated feedback probably represents the voices of many others not daring to say anything!

Even if the feedback is defective, insufficient or perhaps off-base, there must be something which points to the underlying weakness. Even if the feedback is motivated by jealousy or some other illegitimate basis (Which is almost impossible to know, anyway!), still there must be a weakness in your parenting (or child) which is vulnerable to this kind of “attack”, if that’s what it truly is.

• Be not be surprised by your child’s evolutionary sin.

One young Christian couple was horrified by a phone call from school. Their child had forged their signatures on a note, and then lied to the teacher about it! They were incensed!

I asked the parents a simple question: “Weren’t you doing far worse things at his age?” (Of course!) “Then how can you possibly be surprised?” Their answers were muddled.

Authority-by-Pretense occurs when parents are outraged by a child’s behavior. When exercising authority all the time, as parents must, it is easy to lose sight of the real basis of our authority: our love. Admitting foibles does not undermine loving authority. To acknowledge our own sins dissipates the shock of failure we see in our kids.

The Priority of the Jesus Love Ethic

Christian parents like myself think the greatest task in parenting is teaching the kids how to “receive Christ.” But how is this possible? Can parents control their kid’s will?

This explains why the following is so tragically common:

So you have the Wilson family, and it’s composed of two Christians, and two kids who have their parent’s religion. The world can’t tell the difference, but I could see that two had the grace of Jesus in them, and the others were conforming to the Wilson household…Maybe they were saved, maybe not.” ::bibtex(Ankenman-t287,Ankenman – Christian Family)::

There are more important priorities for the Christian home:

So what is most important thing to teach my child? How to hold the fork right? No. How to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior? No. Both are good, but the most important thing for anyone to realize a good love life with God and society is to know how to give love. That is the prime focus of child-raising.” ::bibtex(Ankenman-t287,Ankenman – Christian Family)::

This squares with God’s Word. Godly parenting means illuminating “God’s ways” so the decision to “accept Christ” is not about pleasing parents, but an intelligent decision about Christ:

Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6 (NASB)

To instruct “in the way he should go” is a Hebrew way of urging that each kid is instructed uniquely, and not with a generic, shotgun approach to “Receive Christ!” The invitation to receive Christ is great unless it becomes impatient or replaces instruction on “God is love.” This has significant implications.

• The most pressing task for parents is to plant a clear awareness of what God’s love means.

The greatest fact about Jesus Christ is God’s love. The truth about God is distorted everywhere else, so Christian parents bear the burden of teaching about love, especially when some of the greatest distortions come from legalistic Christians. Parents who model God’s loving character with diligence impart a legacy kids “will not depart from” easily.

• Sibling rivalry is an unhealthy enemy of the Jesus Love Ethic

::callout("The popular belief that sibling rivalry is healthy is a myth.", "width:150px")::Unloving, mean-spirited behavior between siblings should be anathematized. This is what the culture won’t teach, and what Christians must prioritize. Cruelty, pain, hatred and jealousies of any sort should bring a sobering response from parents.

Ankenman tells the story of a school bus rolling up to a house and kids come running out to greet their older brother! This was a sincere bond that should be normative among siblings in a Christian home, he points out, if kids are living sacrificial love.

The popular belief that sibling rivalry is healthy is a myth, he says:

They need to learn giving love one toward the other. To understand their position in relation to the other requires total sacrifice. “Not my will, but the will of my loved one. I want the best for my loved one.” There’s nothing in the Bible that says you should have a family argument. ::bibtex(Ankenman-t287,Ankenman – Christian Family)::

Today the culture separates kids and no longer mandates that older kids care for the young ones, but why should Christians follow the culture?

• Correction must be character-oriented, not behavior-oriented.

Strict families appear healthy, but only because the rules are so shallow. Like the Flanders family in “The Simpsons,” all seems well in this house, but the rules are merely polite behaviors. Kids can conform to superficial rules without actually maturing. Underneath the politeness lies a deep-seated rottenness building in the heart.

The goal is to effect character change, not merely behavior change. This is the essence of biblical Love Ethics. Punishment is not as desirable as the kids learning to understand and care about others. More desirable than punishment is developing heartfelt gratitude in the heart, and no amount of rules, strict disciplines or good manners can produce thankful hearts.

• Hobbies and extra-curricular activities are inconsequential compared to the relationships kids develop.

The many activities of Yuppie parenting do not produce mature kids. This issue must be made emphatically:

• This does not mean hobbies and extra-curricular activities are wrong or useless. Childhood is a vital time for exploring and developing those latent skills, but it is not the last chance for developing these skills either.
• It does mean those activities should never come close to the priority given relationships. Unlike any other time in life, childhood is where the emotional foundations are established, by all standards of measure. Childhood memories should never be filled with bizarre, failed, painful or non-existent relationships.
• It does not mean relational development is opposed to these other activities. Wise parents should be involved in the child’s activities to help develop relationships among the peers.
• It does means if a choice is necessary, hobbies lose! Childhood is where ethical priorities are established. Parents are the first and most significant teachers of what makes relationships work and what doesn’t—in a selfish world this is not intuitive knowledge, and where else can they possibly acquire such priceless wisdom?

Teach the Hierarchy of Love Ethics

::callout("Read more about Infantiles in the new Love Ethics Section.", "width:150px")::Spend an afternoon with a parent who fusses, corrects, picks and monitors a kid’s movements. It’s nerve-wracking to watch—how does the child feel?

There is a great war for the hearts of our children in the modern era. Kids were never able to escape their parent’s authority so easily. Watch the TV shows kids watch and you’ll see how often parents are depicted as fools. Our culture advocates rebellion and provides all the outlets to make rebellion easy.

This means Christian parenting must be persuasive. The old-world “because-I-say-so” parenting is not entirely convincing, and yet kids receive great persuasion from competing sources outside the home. Fortunately, Christians are in a unique position to leverage wisdom in their parenting, not mindless rules. God’s wisdom is so evident in the hierarchy of ethics we studied earlier. It is so tragic and unnecessary when Christian kids leave home relieved to be “free at last!”

Persuasive Parenting means Love Ethics are not discussed only when infractions occur. Parents must use the process of discipleship described by Christ: “teaching them all I commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19) What did Jesus do with his disciples for three years? He taught the primacy of love, the mechanics of God’s love, and the specific ways their personalities were unloving and required change.

For example, consider the way Jesus dealt with Simon when he made his typically-rude remarks about one of Jesus’ guests: “Simon, I have something to say to you,” and then he told Simon a story that ended with a question that hit the bullseye target of all wise instruction and correction: “Which of them will love more?” For three years Christ taught his “boys” Love Ethics. (Read Luke 7:40ff for the full account.)

Years later, the disciple “whom Jesus loved” summarized his personal experience under the discipleship of Jesus:

For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. John 1:17 (NASB)

The Framework of Reality Parenting

Biblical parenting operates within a framework, and that means teaching the hierarchy of Love Ethics. In practical terms it means:

• Not all “harmful behaviors” are equal. The most harmful of all is the kid who suffers in loneliness in a morally-rigorous, uptight home. Such homes are alienating to their friends and creates an isolated Christian island of resentment. But these parents not only raise resentful children, but children with peers eager to educate about rebellion. It might not happen while the kid lives at home, but they won’t live at home for long. Excellent examples of foolish Christian over-protection is found in the book “Playstation Nation” (read about it), or the silly injunction against Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course dangers lurk in addictions to TV or gaming, but such addictions are much more likely to flourish when a kid lacks healthy peer relationships. The priorities must be taught, not the whole corpus of ethical behavior.
• Social etiquettes and mores should receive the lowest priority. Clean language and injunctions against “rude” behaviors are given the highest priority by some Christian traditions, far beyond any biblical standard. Respect is a virtue, and few would argue otherwise, but not a character trait. Respectful mannerisms can, in fact, become excellent tools for camouflaging deep and damaging bitterness. There are so many other times and places where social niceties are taught and learned. Why spend so much parenting capital on this one? And here’s a shocker: it means cussing is by far one of the most trite issues parents can raise. Compare how many scriptures address cuss words against those addressing bitterness, and then look at how many cuss-free Christian homes are plagued with sibling rivalry and sibling indifference. Something is terribly wrong here.
• Neither simplistic nor heavy-handed discipline can possibly instill Love Ethics. To learn loving interactions requires more than conformity. It must become a mind-set. Harassed and busy “Soccer Moms” (and Dads) dish up terse, sharp reprimands which are utterly ineffective for this level of change. How many times have we watched a parent picking and nagging away at a child, yet because there is such a flood of injunctions it’s impossible to follow through with meaningful discipline. The kids know it and ignore the ceaseless, simplistic chiding. What a waste of breath! Chiding disqualifies a parent’s authority in the child’s mind. On the other extreme, homes characterized by excessive or harsh punishment create an atmosphere of resentment in which Love Ethics can never flourish.

An Outreach Focus

The fearful “Tribal Trap” is perhaps the most deceitful way to raise kids. From the viewpoint of our Savior, it’s rebellion against His expressed will to “Go!” – which means “out into that dirty world!” Without leadership, the kids will never “Go!” in a godly way. They will, of course, eventually go out from the home, but they’ll do it as naive Punks and Sissies vulnerable to a world of predators. Tribal Fear and Tribal Inexperience are not strengths to pass on to kids.

The Christian family must have a total outreach focus. This protects the family from the typical problems of how to keep children safe from the satanic devices that trap them later: they’ve already been exposed, but in a victorious way. – ::bibtex(Ankenman-t287″,”Ankenman – Christian Family)::

There are two ways for kids to escape the Tribal Trap: one is through rebellion, which I mistakenly chose in my youth, and the other is through the family’s outreach focus. Ankenman tells a story about his own daughter’s introduction to the dirty world:

People will say “Young people won’t learn until they try it for themselves.” That is untrue. My oldest daughter got involved with a girl that was an outcast in her church group. She got an eye-opener because the girl was truly a selfish brat! She had many selfish demands. Finally one day Terry lit into her and just let her know what she was doing and demanding. It was a step forward because Terry never had to deal with someone who did a whole lot of yelling and screaming to get her way. But she had the experience of getting involved beyond where she normally would have had to and she learned certain people have to be confronted with discipline…she learned that she can handle herself and not be hurt and crushed because people are nasty. ::bibtex(Ankenman-t287,Ankenman – Christian Family)::

“Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you,” (1 John 3:13). This is perhaps the most unsettling discovery waiting for Christian kids. No matter how much they try, they will be hated if they “act like men” as the Bible adjures. Why? Because Christians love, and the world hates. It is as simple as that.

Next: Building substance with Permanent Love Values

The Flash

It happened in a remote desert in the American West. The vast desert was suffocated in nighttime silence and the darkness was blinding from rare clouds that smothered the stars like an evil presence. In the center of this wasteland stood a handful of men waiting silently but fidgeting or smoking. They were an elite group of scientists gathered from distant countries and gathered in this one spot in New Mexico. Years of theoretical calculations and engineering led to this moment of testing the world’s most expensive science. The budget surpassed the entire automobile industry, but it was still just a theory costing billions.

A gong shattered the silence from somewhere in the desert, and then silence fell again. Five more minutes. Dawn was an hour away, and they were exhausted but still tense and dreadful. Everyone knew this moment could split open a world inconceivable in human experience, but nobody could think of anything to say.

Then it happened: light filled the desert sky from horizon to horizon, far more brilliant than sunlight and it caramelized sand in 100-million-degree heat and the brightest light ever seen on earth. It would sear their eyes to the socket if not for thick welder glasses. Some girls in Hiroshima would soon be caught off-guard gazing with naked eyes at a silver dot gliding across the sky called the Enola Gay. That one American bomber unleashed more explosive power than a fleet of thousands.

The fuel of stars. They called it Trinity, where the first atomic bomb unleashed a dragon’s breath of heat bound inside the atom. The flash towered in a mushroom of purplish, dark radioactivity. The brilliance faded and a windstorm rolled across the desert and blasted the scientists, then passed. It was silent again, but not dark.

“I am death,” someone uttered, “the destroyer of worlds.” His name was Robert Oppenheimer, the chief scientist at Las Alamos where they built The Bomb in secrecy. Like many of the scientists he was a pacifist and a humanitarian never dreaming of unleashing atomic fire against men, women and children—but they did it at Hiroshima and again at Nagasaki.

A horrified Japanese emperor declared unconditional surrender, and then America faced the new world of atomic energy with ominous implications. This is when Dr. Oppenheimer and the other scientists suddenly grew fearful of the future:

Before we opened the door to this horrifying new world in which we live today, we should have knocked. But we have chosen to fall into the house together with the door. – J. Robert Oppenheimer, Atomic Energy Commission hearings^1^

The Quest

The “Father of the Atomic Bomb” grew to despise his title, but while isolated in Los Alamos he energized the scientists to work feverishly on The Bomb. After the war the public gasped at the beast he created, and Oppenheimer reversed course: the rest of his life was devoted to stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as if he could stuff the genie back into the bottle.

Why the inconsistency? As early as 1942 Oppenheimer was aware of the Hydrogen bomb and its near-infinite capacity for destruction, but he pressed forward and soothed squeamish scientists afraid of the implications. In the self-contained world of Las Alamos he thrived in his role as “Father of the Atomic Bomb.” It all made perfect sense.

Oppenheimer’s famous and confused life depicts The Quest: a lifetime struggling for significance. In Las Alamos he was The King, crowned with significance. Outside Las Alamos he fought for years against the misinterpretations and aspersions the public cast against him for The Bomb. He tried reaching for higher peaks of greatness, and became the first chairman of the new Atomic Energy Commission. From that platform he launched an effort to steer world powers and direct the future of mankind through international control of nuclear weapons. But from such lofty heights he also made political enemies, and they rallied and finally denounced him as a communist sympathizer during the “Red Scare” of the McCarthy era. The accusation was absurd, but reason and justice rarely prevail in such times.

The Quest for significance is the great motivation behind the feats of history. Ancient Pyramids and monolithic skyscrapers arise from a haunting drive in individuals and entire cultures for greatness. Everybody pursues The Quest because the alternative—a life of insignificance—is a prelude to death, and even the Bible agrees:

“Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless! What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes.” – Ecclesiastes 1:2–4

Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” answers Solomon’s question, “What do people get for all their hard work?” Willy Loman was a salesman nearing retirement. His reached a tragic terminus in his complex life of “constantly insisting that he needed to ‘make it big within two weeks,’” and then The Quest drove him to suicide. Who can read Miller’s play without a twinge of heartbreak for this helpless man? We are “worth more dead than alive,” he concludes, and then takes his life. Even in death he was in hot pursuit of The Quest: he thought suicide would bring together people he knew from 40-odd years a salesman, and then he would be appreciated at least in their memories. But only his poor wife and two embittered sons attended. It was not The Quest he imagined.

T.S. Elliot depicts The Quest as always out of reach, just barely:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall.
…
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Across the ages figures like Willie Loman and J. Alfred Prufrock wasted their lives on The Quest because they refused to accept a simple, timeless truth: your significance is not self-determined. Rather, significance is determined by others. Oppenheimer fought vociferously against the popular opinion held of him, but despite his objections he is still The Father of the Atomic Bomb today. He was powerless to change it.

The Spark

It was God who placed this drive for significance deep in our hearts when He first created:

Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image…They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky…” God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals…” – Genesis 1:26–28 (NLT)

He also put a quest to rise above immediacy and behold a panorama:

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. – Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NLT)

People may define significance differently, but everyone still defines it and pursues it. We must find it. We were designed for it, and without it life becomes so random and painful that people kill themselves or others or settle into a resigned, grinding death. Significance is the difference between humans and animals, so killing and eating fish is a world away from killing and eating humans. It is all a matter of significance.

Why did God give it?

Loving Significance

“You feel you’re worth something because someone big and important has loved you…When I’m bearing the cross, I don’t feel good, but I have significance in a relationship that moves me forward.” – R. Ankenman

The quest for significance in the Bible is sharply different from Miller’s salesman and all those others and it is refreshing:

“We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand…”—Rom. 5:2

This “introduction by faith” means “the privilege of approach to a person of high rank.” (prosagōgēn in Greek—see BKC.) It means entering the throne room of the Creator Almighty, and the message is strewn across the Bible:

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, – Hebrews 10:19–20 (NASB)

Scores and scores of verses repeat it: our exalted, privileged and special relationship with the Creator God is a grand motivation not only because it means significance, but it means life actually works, and it overshadows “Tribulations”:

“…and we exult in hope of the glory of God…we also exult in our tribulations…we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” – Romans 5:3ff

Exult repeated three times “literally means ‘to boast’ or ‘exult’ here in a pure sense.” (see BKC—Kauchōmetha in Greek.) What a contrast to the depression of that salesman and Prufrock!

The significance when someone feels loved—not a mere abstraction, but an emotional, stirred heart—by someone as big and important as the Creator God creates power and courage to move against the uncertainties of life. Pufrock felt the opposite—”in short, I was afraid”–because the man in Elliot’s poem is lonely and tragic as he faces death. That salesman was isolated and inconsequential too.

Vast Reserves of Energy

The sense of greatness generated by love builds and builds reserves of courage able to brush aside opposition, which explains why Paul had such endurance:

Great is my confidence in you; great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort; I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction. – 2 Corinthians 7:4 (NASB)

Such courageous energy was also described by Christ available to

“They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over.” – Luke 6:38 (NASB)

Christ lived and died filled with reserves of courage:

Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. – Hebrews 12:2 (NASB)

These vast reserves are not idealistic because they are poured out in measurable, physical activity:

Take a little boy, for example. He goes into the great, green, beautiful world. He bumps his head and discovers the world is mean and nasty to him! So he goes running back inside the house to where mommy is and says, “Please kiss it, mommy!” What he’s saying is, “Mommy, prove to me it’s worth going out into the world and getting hurt.” – R. Ankenman

Those without love are painfully aware that love provides the energy and courage to face a world of uncertainty, and they’re crippled without it:

Consider a home where there isn’t this kind of nurturing love. Here’s where the little boy makes noise and the mom watching TV is always saying, “Shutup!” Do you think Johnny wants to go out into that big world full of nasty dogs? No sir! “Those dogs scare me!” He has no security. A stranger walks into the room and he heads to the corner…He’s afraid and doesn’t have motivation to go anywhere. He needs to feel loved and it must be emotional, or else he’ll feel angry, negative emotions instead. – bibtex:Ankenman-Disturbance

Uranium

Love relationships deliver energy and motivation.

Uranium delivers an atomic blast when it reaches critical mass. Only when highly compressed does uranium gain enough critical mass to release its energy. It’s a picturesque analogy of the unbelievable power of love, because when people draw closer together, the significance of their relationships increase the emotional yield, and more emotional yield means greater motivation to engage other people, which of course means building even greater significance. So it grows and grows: love is a dynamic force that yields more dynamic force.

This increasing momentum and output of love is the heartbeat of Christian sanctification, and also our greatest difficulty. It requires spiritual strength:

and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you;
1 Thessalonians 3:12 (NASB)

This is why relationships often require time and effort before they become rewarding. Until the relationship becomes significant, the emotional reward is minimal. When a stranger says, “I love you, brother,” it not only sounds weird, it also feels weird, unlike love. But investment greatly increases the significance of a relationship – as it does with almost anything.

When relationships fail to deliver on the promise of large emotional returns, it means a greater investment of time and effort is required. People often take the opposite tact: if a relationship is not rewarding, it’s time to move along and start fresh. But a new relationship lacks significance and can’t possibly yield the emotional impact required by God’s blueprints for our hearts. Relationship-hoppers must sooner or later grow depressed and worn-out from relationships.

How foolishly people get sucked into Hollywood fantasies of easy, automatic love! Can anything free and easy have any significance? It should be obvious that only significant relationships deliver significant impact, but somehow Hollywood seems to snare a lot of victims. “Free and easy” describes dreams, not relationships. The young and naive tend to live floating on dream-clouds, but unfortunately modern culture is breeding a growing population of naive older people.

Paul was a master-builder of significant relationships, and watch what he did:

We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too…Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children. – 1 Thessalonians 2:8,11

As a result of this extensive (even painful!) investment, watch Paul describe the emotional impact:

For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming? For you are our glory and joy. – 1 Thessalonians 2:19–20 (NASB)

The investment made in love delivers significance and impact not only today (“you are our glory and joy”), but the future looks nice and bright as well (“in the presence of our Lord”), which also delivers immediate emotional impact (“Who is [now/today] our hope or joy…?”). Love is incredible in the way it builds and builds emotional energy.

Depleted Uranium

These emotional reserves deliver the emotional capacity to handle stress, adversity and the energy to delve into someone’s life with genuine concern. But that last thing—loving someone else—requires more energy than the stress of the workplace. It is possible to leave work at the office, but emotional ties cannot be cut so easily. People are immensely difficult. They resist or react so strongly they suck the life straight out of a relationship. Some people live in marriages fueled by depleted uranium, which is quite different from the explosive type, and so very poisonous!

It happens this way: lacking emotional reserves—or to conserve emotional energy—people relate with a token, incredibly trite or sterile effort which sets a pattern in-motion. It means emotional reserves are low and getting lower while fuel is spent. The more someone withdraws relationally, the more insignificant relationships become. Insignificant relationships deliver less emotional punch, which means dwindling emotional reserves, which means more withdrawal, which explains someone like Willy Lomax. He ended up in emotional bankruptcy and a very fragile world.

The absence of these emotional reserves is called depression. It often hits a young adult when they move out of the house and try to live on their own, or even earlier if their home life suddenly collapses, as when a divorce splits the home:

Depression is when a car runs out of gas. Way back when cars first appeared an old-timer cowboy might buy one, and when it runs out of gas he kicks it with his spurs, but it doesn’t work. This is like someone depending on their old emotional life [from growing up] which used to work, but doesn’t anymore. – bibtex:Ankenman-Interview

When “a car runs out of gas” a solution is needed before all initiative gets arrested. People find other ways to build significance without having to depend on anyone:

What’s the worse negative emotion to feel? Depression. It’s the ultimate of miseries…There’s two forms of depression: I don’t feel anything and I don’t have anything. Temporary depression comes from things like mourning or grieving over someone’s death…You’re missing someone. This is temporary, however, because there’s something permanent underneath this feeling. The worse kind is the deep depression, which says, “There isn’t anyone who cares for me.” We’ll do anything to keep from going there. Always consider this: what is this person doing to keep from falling into depression? – Ankenman-Terms

What do people do to keep from falling into depression?