I am finishing a book by Nelson DeMille about an Army investigation into what might have been a massacre that happened in Vietnam 18 years earlier. The main character, Tyson, was the officer in charge of a platoon that is implicated in the massacre. Tyson is called back into active duty to face a court martial for the event.

What struck me in the book was Tyson’s reaction to facing the court martial. He really doesn’t fight the Army on his recall to active duty to defend himself against the charge of murder. Up to this point, he is a happily married middle age man with a family. He is an executive at a firm in Manhattan, and by all outward appearances is living the American Dream. He works, makes a lot of money, has a nice wife, and is a member of a Country Club and vacations in a summer home in Sag Harbor.

In the months leading up to the trial, it is as if Tyson is transformed. His lawyer asks him about it one day, and the answer he gives is telling. Basically, he says that his life had become predictable, almost purposeless. He has no adventure, nothing to really fight for, no great cause and now he is honed—body and soul—for the fight of his life. How can it be that when you have the American Dream you could still feel something like ennui, a sort of purposelessness?  It seems to me that it has something to do with our DNA. If you look at God’s purposes for his fallen world, here is what you find. God’s purpose for this world is to heal all the brokenness in it. If you look at the Bible, the plot is basically this. God created a world to reflect his glory, and to magnify his excellencies. He made creatures in his image, and he put his DNA in them—they can commune with him, work, create culture and reflect his glory back to him. But then it is all in ruins after sin happens. The rest of the Bible is God’s plan to heal all that went wrong in Eden. God is so committed to healing all the brokenness in this world, all the alienation, all the curses that abound, that he actually comes into his creation to heal it. Love compels him to come to his alienated planet. Love compels him to bless, heal, and redeem all that is broken around him. For all the good he does, for all his loving of sinners, for all his investment in spreading the love of his Father, it gets him nailed to the cross. But alas, even this is God’s plan, for in his living and dying, he is taking away our curse.

God’s redemption was finished in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Jesus’ love for his friends who betrayed him was so transforming that from 120 people who gathered together to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit, the gospel has literally spread throughout the world. That happened because God’s people were so stirred, so overwhelmed, by the love of God for them, that God’s purpose became theirs. Salvation meant having God’s purposes as their purpose. Salvation for these new believers meant the fulfillment of promises God made to Abraham centuries earlier—that God was going to bless Abraham and that he would then be a blessing everywhere he went. In other words, the purpose in salvation that God has for every believer is they are to be a blessing to those around them.

What does that mean? It means salvation answers the call deep in our DNA that our life is an adventure. We were made for adventure. We can’t explain what it means to be human apart from adventure. The more we are on this adventure of blessing those around us, of intentionally seeing the world as a lost place that needs the blessing of salvation, the happier and more fulfilled we will be. This has to be why the suburbs are continually the setting of people who, by all measures, are living the American Dream yet fuel TV shows and movies like Wedding Crashers, Fight Club, or Desperate Housewives. Boredom and the realization that the American Dream is not enough; we were built for so much more! Tyson knows that he is built for something more than a nice house and a good job; he is more than a consumer of resources, so that even a seeming tragedy stirs something deep in his DNA of what it means to be human and alive, and it transforms him.

God’s call in salvation is huge and scary, but fulfilling. Salvation means that right now matters for eternity. Right now, our purpose is Jesus’ purpose. John 1:14 say it very concretely and Eugene Peterson’s translation of that verse captures the essence of Jesus’ mission and ours: The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. Jesus moved into the neighborhood and everywhere he went his life had the effect of slowly reversing the alienation and curses that have plagued mankind since the Fall.

Interestingly enough, right before Jesus was going to the cross he prays this for his grieving and struggling disciples: “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”  There is our purpose—sent into the world to be the people that participate in God’s plan to heal all the brokenness of the world around us. Some easy questions to ask to see if your purposes are God’s purposes are these: Do I know my neighbors, the people that live in my neighborhood? Do I bless them; do I go out to them? Do I know and routinely have them in my home? Am I in their homes? Do I routinely find ways to meet and cultivate relationships with those people around me who do not know Jesus? And ask yourself, “Do I have stories to tell of God’s amazing grace to others because I have invested my time, home and resources with the broken around me?”