Come on now, little man...

My pen name here is "Anselm's Apprentice." St. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury in the eleventh century, had the kind of God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion that I'm looking for.

Anselm had a passion to know God. He said:

Come on now little man, get away from your worldly occupations for a while, escape from your tumultuous thoughts. Lay aside your burdensome cares and put off your laborious exertions. Give yourself over to God for a little while, and rest for a while in Him. Enter into the cell of your mind, shut out everything except God and whatever helps you to seek Him once the door is shut. Speak now, my heart, and say to God, "I seek your face; your face, Lord, I seek."

Anselm's imagination took him past anything the Church had come up with in the ten centuries before him. He asked why God became a man and helped form the substitutionary theory of the Atonement (a foundation of Catholic and Protestant thinking ever since). He is best known for his "ontological proof of the existence of God," which depends expressly on "what can be imagined."

My passion is "imagination"--but is it the kind of God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated imagination Anselm had?

Don't Waste Your Life

John Piper says that tragedy is when an couple retires to sail their 30 foot sloop, play softball, and collect shells on the beach. That's a tragedy because they have wasted their life. In Don't Waste Your Life, Piper begs us to seek better things.

Whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.

I know what I am passionate about. Since I was thirteen, I have been actively probing the edges of what humans can know--doing my first science project on relativity, taking nuclear physics in high school, diving into philosophy in college. I can't say that it has been a God-centered or Christ-exalting or Bible-saturated passion--much of it has been driven by my human cravings. I want people to be impressed at my knowledge or intelligence.

I know now that I felt rejected and self-pity tempted me to seek and show off knowledge. My heart said, "Someday they will see that I was right!" It took me a long time to realize how misguided that conviction was--there is a Day coming when every eye will see Jesus.

Any God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion will triumph on that Day.