God

We don't all want the same things. 

Not everyone wants to be happy, not everyone wants to be loved, not everyone wants to be good. Many of us do; but not all. Why there are some that don't is not our focus. The kind of people who come to articles like this usually resonate with the following  desire:

I want to be better.

Whether you subscribe to Jesus as your saviour or not, can we agree that you want to be better? Better is an interesting word. It isn't always moral. You can be better at many things and in many ways that have no moral bearing. However, when we say it as I have quoted it above, there is a moral tone to it. What we "feel" when we express this sentiment has a moral texture:

It is a desire for goodness

We are selfish, we are wicked, we are profane, we are... human. God knows that we live with this tension - what we should be is not what we are. 

God wants us to be whole. 

There are parents who want to be better for the sake of their children, business people who want to be better for the sake of their consciences, students who want to better, spouses who want to be better, leaders who want to be better... All with a sense within themselves that there is a standard they fall below, a height of character that they fail to reach. [This is not the same as a condition where within one's self, one cannot celebrate any good. This condition is rooted in pride and will not be satisfied until it is better than others]. 

God had two problems - We could not be whole outside of His life within us, and We could not have His life within us because sin had claim over our lives. The purpose of the life God wants to give us is so that we might live, but sin was in the way and the only way to take it out of the way was... there wasn't one. Sin was a lifetime condition. (Well, technically, it ends in death; but that's not very helpful because, well, you're dead.) 

God solved both problems through one man. In this man he put our life - human life. In this man he put His life - eternal life. This man entered the earth as a type of representative human. That is, he is given the right to represent all human life. In dying the death all humanity deserved to die he absorbed all our guilt and condemnation and nailed it to the cross he was crucified on. The second problem is solved. We can all now reckon ourselves as having died in him. This frees us and God to solve the first problem. To do this God raised this representative human from the dead. All who believe in him not only participate in his death, but also participate in his resurrection. Eternal life is all that's left.

We are now free.

This is a gift that has been given to the whole world. Not knowing about it doesn't change that. Knowing about it and rejecting it doesn't change that. The gift is here and the gift is ours. We all died. We all have forgiveness of sins. A most curious thing though: God has tied the experience of all that has been done for humanity to believing it is so. In His wisdom, we only experience it as we believe it.

But make no mistake. we are free.

All the goodness we could ever dream of - and beyond what we know - is in the one who saved us. Whoever believes in him to unlock their best selves will never be put to shame. Whoever tries to do it by themselves (in their own strength) is taking their freedom and betting on their willpower. Others have taken their freedom and parked it right back in the prison of sin - but the freedom remains. It is ours. We have true, unadulterated, choice.

And there we have it! That desire for goodness that we all feel is in fact a call that rings out through time to us, beckoning us home. We have thought that we were looking for God all this time when in fact, God is looking for us! Looking for us to come home to Him - to receive the eternal life that is ours; to take the holiness that has been prepared for us. 

This tension that we feel between who we want to be and who we are is the echo of a life long gone. It is amplified by our preoccupation with external evidence over internal realities. We are not trapped in the Matrix as it were. We are trapped with "thinking" we are in the Matrix. We are free. Believe me. Believe God. 

Go and win.