…because I am King, I was born and entered the world so that I could witness to the truth. – John 18:37
...the food that keeps me going is that I do the will of the One who sent me, finishing the work He started. – John 4:34 (References from THE MESSAGE BIBLE)
We were hewn out of God by God Himself, and therefore, possess His creative power to execute His specific and personalized assignments for us. In contemporary terms, we all have a purpose. PURPOSE is a buzzword today, and there are numerous Christian and Business publications addressing this critical issue from multiple perspectives. The use of this word has increasingly become pervasive, such that we now reference it as some sort of automated mechanism that once acquired and deployed, makes success inevitable. Make no mistake about the fact that not understanding the purpose of a thing eventually results in undermining it, but I would like us to explore deeper beyond the realm of ‘purpose’.
Ammunition and sophisticated combat equipment (such as warheads and F-18s) could be kept in some military base, and their purpose and applications could be well understood (such as for protecting civilians, combating crime, training military personnel, or even entertainment in the form of air shows). Because their purpose is well understood, there may be no case of misuse. A radically different scenario is one in which these items are strategically deployed to combat and defeat enemy forces in an actual war-front, in order to secure or recover lost territory, and subject same to their own sovereign laws. Now that’s a classic instance of what I would refer to as Ammo deployed on Assignment! Let us refer to the duration within which this ‘war’ was planned and waged as a CYCLE. Think of this CYCLE as your LIFE-TIME. Without intending to play with words, I’m convinced that there’s a difference between YOUR PURPOSE & YOUR ASSIGNMENT.
There’s an epidemic of purposeful people who seem not to have a clue as to what their specific Assignment entails. The subject of Purpose has a tendency to be occasionally vague, but make no mistake, assignments are always highly specific. The responsibility lies with every man to take the initiative, and actively seek to discover and subsequently execute his assignment.
(…a bit of Digression)
The purpose of attending a formal arrangement called a graduate or business school is to learn, but more importantly, learn how to learn. (We ought to go to school to learn the skill and discipline of how to keep ourselves relevant and informed throughout life! The process is more important than the outcome. I studied computing in school, but that isn’t sufficient indication that I would run a software firm. The process of learning computing in school has helped me acquire the critical skills and discipline of applying myself to actionable knowledge. I have since leveraged these skills in developing additional competencies (informally) that are necessary for executing my assignment (in national planning and reformation, strategy and execution). This process would certainly result in my attaining a higher level of effectiveness than many persons that actually studied to acquire these competencies in formal arrangements! This does not undermine the importance of formal arrangements, as they are very critical for aggregating/harvesting knowledge for human development.)
This publication doesn’t particularly address purpose, passion or preferences. However, all of these are prime pointers to what this article addresses, which is your assignment! I’ve decided to look beyond “Purpose” in this publication, for the purpose of charting new frontiers and developing a radically different perspective of approaching life. This message is intended to be life-transforming and at the same time, life-constraining. When one man refuses to execute his assignment, the often result is that it is merged with another man’s assignment, and this second man automatically receives the reward of executing that assignment, in addition to the reward of executing his own original assignment.
This truth is Life-transforming because it ought to change our lives completely, and help us effect a fundamental shift. It should pierce into the very depths of our souls and completely change our views and perspectives about life, assignments and death (in that order because our assignments start at birth, and end with our transition into the reward-zone). We build our lives upon foundational/fundamental perspectives that we form, and occasionally reconstruct over our life-times. These constructions, deconstructions and re-constructions are influenced by a myriad of factors, chief of which is the environment, culture and family values. (Huntington and Harrison addressed this extensively in “Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress”). On this background, I still firmly believe that the concept of right and wrong foundations is not subject to the theory of relativism.
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set ye free!
This doesn’t sound like a negotiation! It’s cast in diamond-stone. There is the right foundation. There is the truth. There is the right way to do things. There is the right way to train a child. There is the right way to lead a country. And then what you have left is everything else - Counterfeits!
Though we were brought up in different societies, with varying income-groups, different cultures with different histories, different methods of getting things done and even still, different standards of measuring success, there remains nevertheless, the right foundation, irrespective of our circumstances. Therefore, we must accept this fundamental truth that life is all about assignments, and these assignments can only be successfully executed on the right foundation, knowing that everything else about our lives revolves around our Assignments.
This truth is "Life-constraining" because everything is subject to the theory of constraints. Everything (except one) has its own boundaries. Even though boundaries have the ability to be extended and pushed out, they would always remain. Therefore, life ought to be lived in such a way that limits it to certain boundaries, which when violated will spontaneously ignite the law of diminishing returns. Let us recognize that our limited cognitive and intuitive abilities are the reasons we invented what we call infinitesimal quantities. The fact that we cannot measure some quantities accurately, or estimate the dimensions of certain elements of nature does not make these elements infinite from the point of view of the Original Intelligent Designer.
We humans are the ones who by reason of boundaries and limitations, lack the ability to measure these seemingly immeasurable quantities. We must therefore recognize that our Assignments are always applicable within specified contexts. When we stray beyond our allocated layouts, that basic law of economics (diminishing returns) sets in. In a few words, our assignments demand that we limit ourselves to the relevant and most critical things. Allocating our limited resources to none value-adding or conflicting activities would significantly compromise our ability to execute our assignments.
END OF Part 1
