“No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.” (2 Tim. 2:4)
The American Dream…in modern terms might be defined to include things like going to the finest college, earning an advanced degree, getting a high-paying job we enjoy working at, having a happy marriage, successfully raising a family, buying a large mansion in a great location, driving a Bentley or Aston Martin convertible automobile, having good friends, enjoying hobbies, playing sports, having good health and a long life, sending our children to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Oxford, or other prestigious colleges, having a healthy stock portfolio, taking European vacations, enjoying our grandchildren, and having a secure retirement.
What could outwardly appear to be more popularly sensible…more conventionally appealing as goals, dreams, and aspirations for life…than the list of things described above?
Yet the narrative stories of faith in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are entirely different…in terms of goals, dreams, and aspirations…from any imaginable ancient version of the American Dream translated back in time.
This is one of the unique facts about the Bible that argues for its divine origin…because this transcendence above popular conventional thinking…would never originate from popular conventional thinking.
This observation…counter-intuitively…is one of the most positive features of the biblical gospel message of God’s very real and very rational offer to us of an alternative choice…into an elevated, purposeful life on a higher moral, ethical, and spiritual plane…to become a willing enlistee of God into a divinely-composed journey of faith life-script…full of risk and adventure…having the most profound meaning, purpose, and fulfillment imaginable for human beings.
Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and life (Jn. 14:6)…not only because He is the Savior, Redeemer, and Light of the world…but also and of equal importance…Jesus Christ is the only person in all of existence who can compose divinely-crafted journey of faith life-scripts for every believer in the Old Testament…in the New Testament…and for Christians today…that are an attractive, alternative option that transcends above popular conventionality…yet may encompass some of the goals of the otherwise commendable American Dream list described above.
One of the key biblical concepts that is still missing today in contemporary orthodox Christianity…that has not yet been fully recovered following the Protestant Reformation…is that the narrative stories of faith recorded in the Bible…have little or nothing at all to do with the American Dream.
The calling of Abraham the “father of faith” as long ago in history as 2,200 B.C., recorded as beginning in the 12th chapter of Genesis…the first book in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament…as well as the callings of Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David…all the way through the Bible to the calling and ministry of the Apostle Paul…are not anything like the America Dream as outlined above.
As Abraham walks from the city of Haran to the Promised Land of Canaan…with each step he takes God is displacing whatever conventionally normal life Abraham might have lived in Haran…with a completely different, elevated life based not upon the American Dream…but upon an entirely unique walk of grace-through-faith…that opens up the context in which to get to know the real living God on a personal basis.
Instead of becoming the city mayor of Haran, or becoming its international trade ambassador, or serving on the school board, or coaching an ancient version of a youth soccer team…and thereby exiting quietly from history as an unexceptional person living an unexceptional life…Abraham’s calling and life-mission as brilliantly composed by God…was to become the singular “father of faith” example of an elevated life…that has had a huge and beneficially incalculable impact upon human history for thousands of years…to our present day.
This is the common through-line theme of every biblical story of faith…repeated in variations of the storyline for the benefit of multiple generations…and for our benefit…as the new normal for all relationships between people and the living God…starting with Abraham’s walk of faith.
The narrative stories of faith…as recorded in the Bible…are so different from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…that they invent an entirely new frame-of-reference for human life.
This frame-of-reference has as its goal the establishment of a personal relationship…between people and God…set-up through the creative mind of God…and on His terms…that must be the new reality if our life-stories are to be elevated up and out of worldly conventional, popular normalcy and thinking (Jn. 8:36).
The biblical narrative stories of faith are not for or against the tenets and aspirations of ancient and contemporary versions of the American Dream.
The biblical narrative stories of faith simply transcend above these universally popular goals, dreams, and aspirations in a way that makes them curiously inapplicable, unimportant, and no longer the chief desire of our hearts and minds.
The life events and circumstances…the goals…and the end-point outcomes in the storylines of the biblical people of faith…have nothing to do with making a success of ourselves in terms of worldly conventional standards…according to the American Dream as translated backwards into every century of time and every cultural setting from the ancient books of Genesis through Acts…in the Bible.
From A Popular Defense of the Bible and Christianity
The Cross in the Christian Life 