A different kind of question for a different way of thinking and living …

At some point as a child, someone probably asked you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

What they really meant was, what do you want to do; the person was, in fact, inquiring of a child or adolescent what their career aspirations were, as if that could be well-formed and known at such an age!

But we had some dreams as kids, didn’t we?

To “be” an astronaut.

To “be” a ballerina.

To “be” a fireman.

To “be” a scientist.

To “be” an architect.

To “be” a truck driver.

To “be” a nurse.

To “be” a doctor.

To “be” a reporter.

For some time, I wanted to “be” a detective.

There are variations of that question, like what do you want to do, or what do you want to achieve, or even what do you want to have, but the forms all relate to a similar idea of what we desire and long for. It’s a type of question that follows you right into your college years. V.C. Grounds tells how some college students were presented with an assignment that, basically, was this same question asked of children, but it worked out like this:

When Thomas Naylor was teaching business management at Duke University, he asked his students to draft a personal strate­gic plan. He reports that “with few exceptions, what they wanted fell into three categories: money, power, and things — very big things, including vacation homes, expensive foreign automo­biles, yachts, and even airplanes.” This was their request of the faculty: “Teach me how to be a money-making machine.”

That’s not exactly an exalted ambition! No thought of humanitarian service and no thought of spiritual values! Yet, what those students wanted was what many people want — maybe what most people want.

The Apostle Paul’s great ambition was something radically different; his greatest passion in life wasn’t to “be” anything, but rather, to know someone:

“Though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ — yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead,” Philippians 3:4-11.

In one sense, Paul had become his initial version of “successful” — he was a very well-educated, zealous Pharisee, which is what he first sought to “be.”

But then he met Jesus Christ.

After that first encounter, everything changed. Paul’s life no longer was about “being” anyone but became entirely about knowing Someone; and by knowing that One, Paul would, through that relationship, become who God desired him to be.

For Paul, knowing Jesus Christ was the priceless experience of his life, with such great “surpassing worth” of anything he may have ever wanted to be or achieve, that knowing Jesus became his great passion and focus of life.

Maybe, in our own lives, we should change the question from what is it we want to be, or what is it we want to achieve, or what is it we want to have, to who is it we want to know?

How would making knowing Jesus Christ your great passion and pursuit change your life?

Scotty