I put all the questions left in this session here because I will be out of town for the rest of the week. Hope all will make sense to you. Deb I am enjoying your comments. they really make me think.
I wonder if anyone else is reading and not posting or if you and I are the only ones reading? Oh well, happy studying. WaynO

3. Is it not possible to achieve meaning, purpose, and peace through two avenues at the same time—accumulating wealth and serving God? Why, or why not?
4. Do you know people who seem to have found the meaning and purpose the rich young ruler who talked to Jesus was seeking? If so. describe their thinking and behavior patterns.
5. In what ways do churches offer opportunities for finding meaning and purpose? Do some congregations offer more of these opportunities than others? If so. what makes the difference?
6. Are there sections in this chapter with which you strongly disagree? Why?
7. Did one of the ideas in this chapter grab your attention as an important insight for you to consider in your own spiritual growth journey?

The Proteus Pressure
The Greeks, not having the benefit of modern psychology, explained many of life's complexities through mythology. Among their many gods was one named Proteus, who could change himself into any shape to meet any situation. If you could hang on to him. he would grant you any wish. But one moment he was a raging bull and the next a flame of fire, so he was not a reliable God. On our way to find meaning and purpose, we all meet Proteus. He offers us a turnoff that looks like an interstate highway but leads into a meaningless marsh. Paul, like Jesus. warned us about Proteus: "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves toward the goal of true maturity" (Romans 12:2. J.B. Phillips).
When the empire he had built on fraud was starting to collapse. Billy Sol Estes told a friend that he had made a deal with God at the start of his business career. He had promised to do everything for God's glory, but he had broken his part of the deal and his world was falling apart.16 Shortly. Estes went to prison for life. For most of us. however, the Proteus temptation is not that obvious. Our choices are seldom between extreme good and extreme evil. Few of us are tempted to rob a bank or commit computer larceny. Rather, we are tempted to settle for a good thing instead of the best thing. We are tempted to become good money managers rather than good life managers.
Bishop Gerald Kennedy said that the great heresy of our time is the belief that getting can substitute for being. He noted that our heroes are not philosophers but manipulators who help us believe that if we can get enough "stuff together, we can do without character.' When that procedure fails, as it always does, we try to arrest our long fall into the pit of despair with a net of alcohol, or cocaine, or Xanax. or work. Defining our major problem as stress—pain coming from outside ourselves—can be an unconscious way of denying that we have a spiritual thirst that money cannot assuage.
The friend of a pastor scoffed at the pastor's stupidity in deciding to spend his life serving others. Years later, someone heard the friend, who became quite wealthy through his business successes, say at the pastor's funeral. "Oh. God. I have worked for the wrong world! I wish I had seen it sooner!" The British wit Oscar Wilde was expressing the same truth when he noted that two tragedies can befall us—not to get what we want, or to get it.
Proteus helps us get what we want. But if what we want ends up being the wrong thing. Proteus cannot help us fix it.
We often think that if we could get out of debt and have enough security to face the future without fear, we would feel that we "have it made." But would we?
C. William Nichols suggests that most of us need to take a warning from the rich young ruler, whose estate was enormous but who one day found himself "running after a penniless vagabond preacher, confessing that his life was empty." In our sober moments, between the frequent times when we are preoccupied with responding to pressures from Proteus, many of us know that feeling.
The Yearning to Be Free
Despite the temptation to make ourselves number one, rather than God, the evidence indicates that we know there is a better way. The rich young ruler's instinct is still alive among us. Studies by the Gallup Poll and other research institutions during the past several years indicate an intensified search for meaning in life. Materialism, while still a god, has been tested by many and found to be an insufficient God. Volunteerism is on the increase among Americans. We are finding better ways to express our personalities than through accumulating money. The fact that a method of stewardship called "Miracle Sunday" has during recent years raised more than a million dollars on one Sunday for renovation projects in large churches across the country and more than one hundred thousand dollars on one Sunday for renovation projects in several smalltown congregations across the country tells us that people want to give their lives to something besides a bank account.""
Deep within us all is the growing recognition that we are spiritual beings whose hunger for spiritual realities defies all efforts to crush it or feed it with houses, cars, gadgets, or trinkets. A lot of people have seen the bluebird of happiness up close. They enjoy a swimming pool, an expensive car. and the other amenities of a high standard of living. But after the new car smell wears off. life goes on. with the same emptiness as before. They see that a love affair with consumerism is not enough to fill the void. A religion of the mall is not the answer. And they ask themselves. "What is?
Breaking Out of the Proteus Prison
Jesus said an amazing thing on his way to Easter Sunday: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26).
This is a hard saying, isn't it'? What can Jesus possibly mean? He made this statement just a few days before Palm Sunday. At the height of his career, the multitudes were following him everywhere, hanging on his every word. He was a famous man, drawing the kinds of crowds that world leaders do today. Everything was going right for him. But Jesus, who seems to have been seated at that moment at a dinner table where he had been invited by a wealthy Pharisee, said to his followers that if they wanted to be his disciples, they would have to hate the members of their family. How could Christ, a compassionate, loving man, be telling us not to love our family?
A story from several years ago pictures two little boys standing on the shore of a lake watching the first water skier they had ever seen. As the man sped across the lake behind the boat. Bobby said to the other boy. "Why does that boat go so fast?" His companion gave a logical answer: "I guess the man on the rope is chasin' him." What kind of relationship does a water skier have to the boat he or she follows? A good water skier gives total attention to the boat. Any distraction preventing the skier from seeing where the boat is going and following it must be rejected and hated. This is not because the distractions are bad in and of themselves—but because they could make the skier fall. If the skier waves too long at a friend on the beach, then looks around to see that the boat turned right a long way back, the skier could end up face-to-face with a cedar tree on a sandbar. That is surely what Jesus was getting at with his amazing remark. He was saying that if you let important responsibilities like family and work and money become the center of your attention instead of God—if you concentrate on them too much and too long—you will soon lose your ability to relate to God, and life will become meaningless.
This is surely one of the biggest problems Christians have today—not the temptation to reject Christ altogether, but the temptation to proclaim Jesus as Lord and Savior, then promptly substitute something else as the matter of first importance in their lives. Our problem is not that of the Jewish religious leaders, who rejected Jesus outright and tried to kill him. Our problem is that of the "almost disciples" who followed him gladly at the height of his career. They listened eagerly to his seashore sermons and after-dinner speeches, but promptly had other things to do when he asked them to become real disciples.
When Jesus walked out of the tomb on Easter morning, he brought into our lives a whole new set of possibilities. He brought us the opportunity to live a life that transcends death, but also the possibility of living a life that transcends life as we know it. A pastor says that in younger years he always preached Easter sermons that tried to prove Jesus really is alive. In more recent years he has realized that this is not the question. Enough people have met Jesus face to face in the quiet Emmaus roads of their own lives that we know he is alive. The real question is? "How do I find that newness of life in my life that he made possible by his life?" "Follow me?" he said (Matthew 4:19). Will I? "Then give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's," he said (Luke 20:25). Will I?