Instead of purpose, I can have vanity — what the old Puritans called "vainglory." My career is not my purpose. My purpose may have nothing at all to do with how I earn a living. Purpose involves something far different that strikes at the heart of what I am as a person. So those sorts of perversions of purpose can distract me from my purpose. I may seek the imitation rather than the real thing.

So often we pervert our purpose through pleasure. We want our purpose to be the source of our pleasure when in fact, purpose may bring us pain. Consider Jeremiah, a prophet of God who did not want to be a prophet of God because when he was a prophet of God, nobody liked him. His purpose was to warn Israel of the coming disaster so that they would turn, but Israel did not want to hear that. They had their own wish projection. They did not want to live out their purpose under God; they wanted to be like all the other nations. They were distracted from their purpose. Jeremiah did not like his purpose. It caused him pain. But he followed his purpose.

Jesus came to die for our sins; it was the purpose of His coming into this world. It was painful, and He did not like it, either. The night He was arrested, just before the guards came, He prayed, "If there's any other way we can go about this, let's try Plan B." Fulfilling His purpose involved a choice, and He chose to fulfill His purpose. When Satan offered Him alternatives in the temptations, He had choices. The alternative to being hungry was to turn the stones into bread, then He would not be hungry. Of course, if He could not be hungry, He would not be human.

He could have thrown himself off the temple and let the angels float Him down so He would not get hurt; but then He would not have been human either. Someone who cannot get hurt is not human. Satan kept giving Jesus alternatives to being human, and His purpose in coming was to be human and to die, to share with us all that it means to live.

There are choices all along the way in fulfilling purpose. You do not need the distractions to survive. What brings us pleasure, the things in which we take pride, disappear in a moment. Whether it is money, sex, glory, reputation, or health, they can all go; yet we can survive and even be stronger. The funny thing is that while we have got them, they are never quite enough. They never fulfill when they are the object we pursue. Pleasure and pride distract us from the longing for purpose.

Purpose is not used as a biblical way of talking about people. In this passage from Ephesians it is God who has a purpose in His creation. Purpose in the Bible is so often related to the activity of God as reflected in such passages as "I know the plans I have for you." God has plans for us. That sounds like a parent who says "I know what plans I have for you." It sounds a bit totalitarian, when a parent decides where we are going to school, and what we are going to do for a living, and who we are going to marry.