All of us are driven through life by an innate need to feel justified. The need for justification is at the core of the human psyche and motivates everything we do. And this has always been so.
Each of us needs popularity, or wealth, or power, or genius, or sex appeal, or talent, distinction, honors, fame, a stellar reputation, a stand-out resume, skills, experience, and a winning strategy, a higher-paying job, a trophy spouse, lovers, exotic pets, and a dream house, bigger muscles, bigger breasts, whiter teeth, websites, followers, clicks and tweets, a hot new car, hot new clothes, and altogether the amount of luxury, pleasure, pride, and prestige sufficient to empower us so that whenever we are scrutinized and asked, "How are you?" We can answer, and say, "I am justified, how about you?"
Justify: to show or prove that something is right or reasonable.
We push ourselves and steamroll others not because we care about the reproductive success of our offspring, as Evolutionary Theory proposes (we steamroll our kids like we do to everyone else), but because we care about feeling worthy. We hate to be rejected and we demand to be respected. We don’t want to be successful: we want to feel justified. We don’t want those things, we want that feeling.
But each of us knows we are unworthy of respect in our natural born condition. Respect unto justification must be earned, or won, or acquired somehow. We all understand that in this world we are rejected by default, unless we can prove that we are justifiable, and receive enough positive attention to feel justified. And so that is what we spend all of our lives endeavoring to do: to justify ourselves in a way that a majority of other people will acknowledge and respect.
Show me the money. Why should I respect you? Prove to me that you aren’t a loser. Prove to me that I should care about you. Defend yourself, if you can, against my aspirations to feel justified at your expense by judging you as less justified than me.
Notice how we can mischievously acquire self-justification by pointing out the flaws in others to demote them below ourselves, thereby promoting ourselves in the judges' eyes, relativistically. This proves the point. Worldly justification is driven by the need for a feeling, a feeling of being justified inwardly, because we can boost our perceived level of justification by knocking other people down. This is the easiest way to win in that game; and so a materialistic society will always become cannibalistic. Because, as we struggle in this competition for justification in the world, we intuitively understand that our position in justification is being measured by comparison to the people around us. Therefore, we must not let our neighbors be loved more than we are loved ourselves.
In this carnal competition we kill ourselves. Obviously we aren’t trying to prove that we are most fit for survival. We are trying to prove that we are right and worthwhile. This essential need of our souls finds temporary satiation in material acquisitions, but not for long. We are lured into a vicious cycle, chasing after material rewards in order to obtain spiritual satisfaction. Our perverse logic causes us to hypothesize in a mass hysteria that our hunger for justification will subside when our "quality of life" goes up. We can fill our bellies and think we have filled our souls, and we believe that accumulating lots of partially and temporary fulfilling justifications will add up someday to approximate a total satisfaction.
We notice that we can increase our feeling of justifiability in two ways: not only by taking away the material trophies of others through competition and theft, but also by damaging others' inner feelings of justifiability, making them feel so unjustified that they no longer have the confidence to assert their justifiability against our own. Handicap the enemy, poison and confound your neighbors and your friends, and the judges will reward you for gaining the upper hand, for looking better. Thus the human race becomes one big threshing floor of clucking, brawling, roosters.
This problem is a perversion, the opposite of conversion. We are all susceptible to this delusional behavior because we are shortsighted and intellectually defective. We fail to recognize what the facts and the trends clearly reveal: it actually is not temporal justification that our souls are craving, it is eternal justification. It is not justification of our mortal lives that we need to satisfy our "ego," but rather it is our spirit that is craving justification of our soul. This is the solitary truth underlying all of the reasons why the money is never enough, the power is never secure, the good times never last, the fame is never freedom, the love is never real in the long term, the sex can always get better, the car is always getting old, the doctors get rich, every reputation ends up being hypocrisy, the drugs must always be taken in larger does (and varieties), and there is always more shopping to do, another trend to follow, more friends who need to be impressed, more deals that must be made, and a bigger dream house to dream about. Ultimately, all of these temporal things are only treating the symptoms of our lack of eternal justification, so they don't last, and they don't satisfy. What's worse, meanwhile, is that we are starving ever more desperately inside from the same lack of that same feeling which we have been chasing since day one.
Our outer band-aids are only covering up our inner wound. Our justification games are only distracting us while the time runs out before we die knowing that we never found that perfect satisfaction that we hunger for. As we age, we all feel ourselves falling short of that mysterious "something" that we've been searching for, that we’ve spent our whole lives believing in but never fully identifying or obtaining. We all have faith enough to believe that there is such a thing as satisfaction, but none of us ever figures out what that "something" is which can yield full satisfaction, once and for all, unless and until we come to know the Lord and the Cross: The Gospel.
Only after we are born again in Christ do we know that we have found the hidden prize. He is our justification. He is that satisfaction. And this is only one of the many ways in which Jesus Christ, and he alone, is The Savior.
Job 28:7-23
There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen:
The lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it.
He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks; and his eye seeth every precious thing. He bindeth the floods from overflowing; and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light. But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?
Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.
The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me.
It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.
The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold. Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place of understanding?
Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.
Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.
God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof.
Romans 3:21-26
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
John 14:5-7
Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
Matthew 11:25-30
I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.
All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
All verses taken verbatim from the 1611 King James Bible.
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