Guidelines For Living

Narrator: Take a break from your busy schedule and join Harold Sala for Guidelines For Living.

Harold Sala: When a young man lost his way and ended up having squandered the inheritance he'd received from his father, he came to his senses and said, "I'm starving here. I'm going home to Dad." Jesus told the story. We call it the parable or the story of the lost son, the prodigal. Frankly, nothing much really changes. There are thousands today who have lost their way and when they hit the bottom they begin asking, "How did I get here anyway? And is there a way out of my distress?" They want to know if God is really there and how they can gain some purpose to life.

Frankly, if I were at that point in my life as perhaps you may be, there are some questions I would ask myself. First, I would like to ask, who put this longing in my heart to know God? Now the very thought tells me I am not merely homo sapiens and an animal, perhaps a bit more highly developed than most mammals, but a person. The Bible says I was created in the image of God. People from every culture which anthropologists have studied have believed in some kind of a God somewhere.

Question number two, I would also ask, who created this beautiful world anyway? Anselm, an 11th-century Benedictine monk, argued strongly that one of the evidences for God—proofs is too strong a word—is that the order and symmetry of our world demands a creator. A watch with its intricate mechanism bears witness that some intelligence put it together. Today, even scientists who don't believe in God recognize the intelligent design of our world, a position that has a trail leading from it to the creator himself.

Question number three, I would also ask, who gave me the intelligence and the emotions to reason, think, and to love? The human body is an amazingly complex mechanism. The interface of the brain with your nervous system, the ability of your heart to sustain life, the composition of the blood which carries oxygen to your heart, and the complexity of your emotions which gives vent to strong feelings which paint the landscape of life with vivid colors.

Question four, I would ask myself, is there an opposite to what I abhor in life? Now, most people never ask the question involving opposites. It's important to do so though. Day is balanced by night, heat by cold, strength by weakness, good by evil. While God often gets the blame for the evil, there has to be an opposite which accounts for evil in our world. Dr. C.E.M. Joad headed the department of philosophy at Birkbeck College, London. He was a psychologist, philosopher, and thinker. He was also an agnostic. Following the end of World War II, Joad entered some of the concentration camps of Europe.

What he saw was abhorrent beyond description. He couldn't believe that anyone would treat his fellow man as the Nazis treated the Jews and the others. He began thinking that this horrible evil which he saw in humankind had to have an opposite. He reasoned there must be a God there who stands in opposition to all that he saw, and he set out to find him. He did, embracing Jesus Christ as God's Son.

Finally, I would ask myself, who is this Jesus Christ? John says that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son to be the savior of the world. I would want to know, was he God? And if so, did he die for my sins and my failure? The prodigal, the young man who lost his way, came to his senses. And that's what you too must do if you would find your way back home.

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