The One Necessary Thing

I recently sent off my DNA to a company that then analyzed it and sent me back a chart showing where I come from in the world. It was no surprise to see that the vast majority of my genes originate in Great Britain; my red hair and near-translucent skin, coupled with a meticulously maintained Welsh genealogy on my father’s side, attest to that. But I was thrilled to see that the next-highest percentage was specifically from Ireland, the land where my soul feels most at home.

Along with these findings, I learned that I have scattered bits of lineage across Europe, from Italy all the way up to Finland. And two percent of my blood is Jewish!

In addition to the chart with my ancestry broken out in percentages, I received a map highlighting the areas where my DNA comes from. As I looked at that huge swathe of land, I thought about the lives of my individual ancestors. I wondered what led them to migrate north or west, how they happened to meet their spouses, and what led them to settle at last in Great Britain.

What I love most about my DNA test is not the knowledge of where I come from but how it shows the unfolding of a long plan. The fact that I exist now, in a certain country, with a certain gender, with a specific set of traits and skills and desires, is no accident of fate. If it is true that God knew me before I was born (Jer. 1:5), then he has been planning me and waiting for me for thousands of years.

In short, I have been purposefully made.

The Purpose-Driven Life has sold…wait for it…40 million copies! It is the best-selling hardback book in history. As in, more hardback copies than the Bible.

The premise of this book is simple, but simply revolutionary for our times: Your life is not just about you; it’s about God and his purpose for making you.

It’s the best-selling hardback in history because purpose is a universal desire. We all know, deep down somewhere, that there should be a purpose to our lives. The lack of it makes people restless – or reckless, even desperate.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow created a famous pyramid called The Hierarchy of Needs. It is a theory of psychological health based on the idea of meeting innate human needs in priority, starting with the need for food and water and culminating in self-actualization. So, then, once basic survival needs are met, people can move up the pyramid to make themselves safer, find love and gain esteem.

Many Westerners mistakenly believe esteem is the ultimate goal. We all want to be famous when we’re young—I was certainly in that group—and some of us never lose that desire. I love Jim Carrey’s informed quote on this subject: “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”

Paul agrees, warning his Ephesian readers:

“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.” (Ephesians 4:17)

The word translated as futility here means “vanity, emptiness, unreality, purposelessness, ineffectiveness, instability, frailty; false religion” [Strong’s] or “aimlessness due to lacking purpose or any meaningful end; nonsense because transitory.”

Gentiles—unbelievers—were thinking in ways that lacked purpose. It was called nonsense because it was transitory; they were focused on things that did not last. Paul insisted that believers must not live like that.

Thomas Merton, in his inimitable way, cut right to the heart of human existence when he wrote,

“For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be.”

Only one thing. That’s all. This is why we exist on Earth: to be and to do what God wants us to be and to do. We are here for God’s pleasure and his purposes.

And I am supremely glad.

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