Why does blues music make me happy?

Why are red grapes purple?

Why does strawberry rhubarb taste nothing like strawberry?

Why do some people get such joy out of being joyless?

Why does comeback sauce make me just want to go away?

Why are so many of my questions here about food? 

So much of the human existence is spent asking questions and looking for answers. Sometimes it’s grabbing onto an answer and looking for the right question to ask.

We ask much deeper questions than those above — deeper than why people park on driveways and drive on parkways, sit in the stands, or put mayonnaise on anything. We ask questions like why we’re alive, what our purpose is, why bad things happen to good people or good things happen to bad people, or bad grammar happens to otherwise good social media posts. 

I’m a firm believer that life has a purpose — life in general, and each of our lives specifically. 

God exists, and He made mankind in His own likeness. We were made to bring Him glory, both as a race of people and as individuals. We can only do that if we are in a right relationship with Him. We are messed up — don’t question that, you know it — and so God gave us His Son, Jesus. 

According to the Bible, Jesus is the perfect (non-messed-up) Son of God and God-Man, and substituted Himself to pay the price God’s justice demanded for our sins (the messed up stuff we have all done). If we allow that payment to apply to ourselves, we enter into the right relationship we need with God. 

From that point, we’re supposed to obey God and prepare for eternity. But when you love someone, it’s not a burden to live in a way to try and please them. 

I think the reason most people don’t want to have anything to do with God is they are too disappointed in or angered by the actions and words of people who claim to know Him already. 

I have on several occasions had the embarrassing experience of talking to someone I thought I knew, only to realize later I had not been talking with the person I thought it was. Have you ever been talking with someone about a subject or person they claim to be knowledgeable of, only to discover as they speak that they know very little to nothing about it/them? It becomes obvious at some point.

It’s the same way with people who claim to know and love God. Do their words and actions prove it? If not, then don’t assume it’s God who’s the problem. Assume it’s the person who claims to be close to Him but isn’t. 

Don’t blame God for the person who claims His name but doesn’t know Him.

You probably have already had a lot of questions to answer today — like, Why did I come into this room? — and maybe some of them are foundational, like what your purpose is. Let me assure you, you have a purpose, and a Designer, Creator God who loves you. You can trust that, even if you can’t trust me to remember who you are, how we know each other, or why I came into this room, either. 

Some things are sure, and trustworthy.

And some things are just weird. Like comeback sauce.

Editor Brett Campbell can be reached at brett.campbell@dailyleader.com