“For it is a sin against the reason to tell men that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive; and when once they believe it, they travel hopefully no longer.” C. K. Chesterton
The modern concept of a journey’s purpose being the journey itself is a bunch of BS. This kind of thinking has helped to diminish Christianity and Western Culture and turn everything inward, without an endpoint or true purpose.
It has also turned Christian discipleship inward and made it ineffectual, making the process the purpose rather than becoming transformed and holy before God.
We have become a generation of wanderers who no longer have striving to capture the prize as our objective. Instead we pat ourselves on the back for trying and tell ourselves that to experience the journey was the real purpose of our effort. No wonder we can no longer find true leaders and great men in our culture.
Oh my goodness, thank you. Long have I been vexed by “It’s not about the destination, it’s the journey.”
Particularly speaking from experience as one who had to sit in a tiny plane seat from Detroit to St. Lucia (not being a large woman by any means). ;D
Sincerely, though, isn’t it the eternity in which we will be able to see Jesus and God face-to-face, walk the fields and talk with them in person? The journey is preparation and thus important, to be sure, but without a certain end…what’s the point? It would all be futile…or, as someone else said, vanity.
Hope you are doing well. Good to hear you popping in again. 🙂
William,
I agree and have posted as much about the “emerging churches” visible lack of emphasis on “last things” or what theologians call eschatology. The postmodern dismissal of a teleos, of a Biblical rather than culturally defined and motivated goal will be it’s undoing.
Having said that, I would like to add a point I think you would agree with.
Let me give a homely example I used in a recent sermon on the parable of the sower and the seed, which does make your point…we are meant to bear fruit as the result or end of the life cycle. Who plants without expecting and working toward a harvest? Only the foolish .
However, there are many character lessons learned in picking grapes all day, ones that go beyond the harvest of the crop itself.
Without keeping this principle in mind, many continually seek short cuts to achieve the goal, ones that do not require earning our bread by the sweat of our brow. (Genesis 3.19)
(I am not talking about salvation by our good works here, but a salvation that results in good works)
One of the reasons for my blog name, The Jericho Road, has to do with the failure of Jesus’ disciples at the end of the journey in Jerusalem because they did not heed the lessons on the road that led there.
I think Jen makes the same qualification in seeing the journey as preparation.