Is it not interesting how at cross purposes with himself modern man is? You would think that with all of the many wonderful technological gadgets man has invented, and is able to deal with and “fix” so many of life’s seemingly intransigent problems, that he would have been able on some level at least to “fix” himself so that he is not so entirely fouled up, as he so often is, and ever has been. Someone has said that we live in the age of “anxiety and aspirin” in that man is confronted with so many headaches that seem unsolvable that his frustration reaches to the highest of the heavens. That point is incontrovertible. Some people may be able to sleep well in spite of it. But many others cannot. These difficulties are not assuaged by intellectual explanation alone, although that certainly enters into the resolution of them; but something seems to lie out beyond what man is able to observe outside of himself, analyze, and struggle to comprehend and to explain in physical terms exclusively.

Francis A. Schaeffer in his book True Spirituality (Tyndale House, 1971) addressed this issue in a way that is very helpful to those of us who see such matters in terms of the divine/human dilemma rather than with respect to the crashing in of an old way of thinking and the supplanting of it with a new one, as some modern philosophers might wish to characterize it. He wrote:

Let us think of this in two areas: on the one hand, the area of rationality. In this area man tends, and never more so than in our own generation, to rely on a leap of absolute mysticism for the real answers, such as the unity of the whole and the purpose of man. He says on the one hand, “Why does existence have to be seen rationally?” “Why not just accept it as irrational?” Yet he is damned by himself. By the way God has made him he understands that there must be some unity. So every man has the tension within himself, brought about by what God has made him as a rational man. In contrast to the animals and machines, he is rational and his very rationality damns him. Beginning by not bowing to God, with a loud shout of rationality he ends with a jump in the dark. Yet as he jumps in the dark his own rationality is always there to demand a basic answer to the unity of the detail, and thus he is constantly embarrassed, constantly torn within himself. It is not enough for him to begin with himself and work outward. This demands an infinite rationality. So the point I am making here is that in the area of rationality there is a natural separation of man within himself.

In the area of morality we find exactly the same thing. Man cannot escape the fact of the motions of a true right and wrong in himself: not just a sociological or hedonistic morality, but true morality, true right and true wrong. And yet beginning with himself he cannot bring forth absolute standards and cannot even keep the poor relative ones he has set up. Thus in the area of morality, as in rationality, trying to be what he is not, as he was made to be in relationship to God, he is crushed and damned by what he is (pp. 126, 127).

There is nothing at all new in any of this. From ancient times men have struggled with making some sense of all of this. It is just that one would think that with all of man’s modernity and sophistication, technologically and otherwise, he would have come to terms with it, figured it all out, and resolved his inner turmoil once and for all — assuming of course that it is feasible for him to do so. But clearly he has not, and it does not appear he will ever do so without some input from an external source.

The book of Ecclesiastes on one level wrestles with some of these issues, and assuming that Solomon wrote that work of literature this represents a date of approximately 950 B.C., nearly three thousand years ago! The frustrated wise man observed that “All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not satisfied. For what more has the wise man than the fool? What does the poor man have, who knows how to walk before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind” (6:7-9). In the end he concluded that the conclusion of “the whole matter” is to fear God and keep his commandments, “for this is man’s all” (12:13 NKJV).

Paul also has a description of the struggle within man’s soul to make sense of life, rationally and morally, and come to grips with human failings in this regard. He said,

I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law in my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:22-25a).

In both of these cases, the inspired writer says God is the only answer to this perennial struggle inside of a man’s soul. God is the answer, and so he has the answer. The Christian man or woman does not have to live this way, torn and demented by puzzles and mysteries without any solid clues or earthly resolutions. God has revealed the solutions. And they are all summed up in one name: Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ has the answer because he is the answer. Every one of our questions are replied to in him. He is the divine response to our struggles, the summation of God’s rejoinder to our problems. Get to know him today and you will know fulfillment as never before! He said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). Abundant life is at your fingertips. Stop fighting with yourself and within yourself. With Jesus the war is over. Peace that passes understanding is yours to have (Philippians 4:7) also, but Jesus is the only path to it.