Life’s tough. It’s not only about books. Requirements to complete. Research to be done. Suitable and willing patients to look for. Appointments to arrange. Reminders to send. Motivating the unmotivated. Setting up teeth. Messing around with gypsum. Waxing up full wax anatomical features. Being polite with the unreasonable. Managing the difficult, including professors. All in a day’s work of a dental student. Seems difficult to manage. Perhaps even impossible without Jesus. Maybe not.
It isn’t just about academics in school. If it were so, life would be a lot easier, since I never had much to struggle with academics for the past 12 years of formal education. If it were only academics, studying would suffice. It’s a whole new ball game now. The equation isn’t as simple as before. One plus one would not give you two. There’s a whole lot of other dependant variables, some within your control, and most not. I guess that’s the reality of life in the real world, when you’re finally out of school.
The usual advice given would be ‘You’ll need Jesus to help you out here. Without Christ, you simply can’t get by’. Well, perhaps the goody two shoed Christian in me would have to agree with those statements. But when I look at life, I can’t agree with it. Not that I don’t trust those people, they are, perhaps, the most sincere and genuine people I’ve ever met and have come to trust. But the pagans do get through school fine too. They seem to be able to manage without God, and oftentimes, even better than some of us Christians. Perhaps, the truth is, I don’t really need Jesus for all that.
Good grades. Healing. Job promotion. Restored relationships. Newfound wealth. Miraculous provision. We often hear testimonies about such things, and how, perhaps, if we have a lack in those areas, we probably need to come to Jesus. But do we really need to go to Jesus for these things? Or, did He really come to us to work out those things?
Try telling someone he needs Jesus for those things. Try telling someone from my class he needs Jesus for those things. Most are just average people who do not have much difficulties in life. Grades certainly have never been an issue for them. Try telling them that they need Jesus for those things and that without Jesus, they can’t make it in their lives. Truth is, they don’t need Jesus for those things, and neither do I.
What I’ve come to realise is that I need Jesus because of my sin, my wilful rebellion against God. And while school may be tough, I have to remind myself that I don’t need God just to fix my problems in school. Rather, I need Christ’s mercy to remind me that the dread of work is a result of sin, that perhaps I’m not enjoying my work as I have been created to do because of sin. And though I am still a young healthy lad who probably isn’t suffering from any major debilitating disease now, I don’t need God just to fix some disease that may plague me in my old age. Rather, I need more of His mercy and grace to remind me that death and decay are all just but ramifications of sin. Faced with tensions in relationships, I don’t need God just to fix the other party. Rather, I need Him to remind me how conflicts arise because we have decided to put ourselves as king over our lives, independent of God, which also is, sin.
Yes, God can and will heal, comfort, restore and provide, but those acts aren’t the basis and aim of the Gospel. They happen only to point us to what is to come, the restoration of all things under and in Jesus Christ. They point us to what ought to be and will be in a world without sin, the world that is to be realised in Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t come for all these reasons. The Gospel isn’t about these things. Jesus came to be a ransom for our sins. The Gospel is about God’s plan to restore all things in Jesus Christ.
I guess you can never come to Jesus Christ if you came to Him for the reasons He didn’t come for. When we come to Him only in troubled times, we probably haven’t really realised what sin is. We probably don’t really know why we need Jesus. We probably think that sin really isn’t an issue. We probably think that we don’t need Jesus for that at all.
Seriously, I don’t need God for all those reasons. I only need Jesus because I am a sinner.
