On a throne but discontent

I am not interesting in counting for God anymore.

Most of my life I’ve been consumed, driven, encapsulated by the idea of making my mark in this world. With practically everything I’ve ever done – music, writing, journalism, even my Christian life – I’ve dreamed of making my mark in my profession, making a mark in this world, making a difference, and going down in the history books in some way.

No more.

I don’t know if I’ve inherited this drive from our culture, or if I’m just a naturally ambitious person. But I’ve spent a number of months wrestling through this thing, trying to understand exactly where it comes from, why I’m driven in such a way, why I think like this, and where such thinking is going to take me.

Having the kind of drive I have is supposed to take me to “success”. He who runs hardest wins the race, right? Except when you look back and realise that you’ve achieved none of what you set out to do, it can get pretty depressing. And then all you’ve ever done becomes clouded in a false sense of failure, because the idealistic goals were never realistic anyway.

And you also discover that when you reach the goals that you wanted to reach, you’re still not happy. How many famous people have everything we’re supposed to live our lives for yet are clearly unhappy?

Lest some of my Christian friends think this is all about worldly success, think again. Consider how much we actually promote and live the idea of “making our mark” in the church. We love to hear teaching that’s focused on how we can “make a difference”, how we can be “God’s generals” in this world, how our lives can have purpose and meaning and how we can and should do “great things” for God.

I can produce a number of cliché’s that you hear in church circles and a lot of preaching to this effect. While it all sounds great on the surface, it’s not helping to get to the heart of what is a big secret sin even in the church – the sin of unhealthy, self-focused ambition.

We taint a lot of what we do with this kind of ambition. Think about how we often think – maybe we look at William Wilberforce and his work in abolishing the slave trade and we think to ourselves, “I also want to do something great like that.” Sounds fair, doesn’t it? But actually the focus is wrong. We don’t look to free slaves so that we can do “something great”. We look to free slaves so that slaves may be free. Anything else is a self-focused ambition laced in good-sounding intentions.

So long as our focus is to use that kind of thing to find purpose, we will never actually be content and we probably won’t even achieve the goal. The way I see it now, this thing is driven by the need to find purpose. We feel that if we’re ‘making a difference’ then our lives have meaning and purpose. But is it right that we find purpose in what our hands find to do? Even if we don’t have any intention of “being great”, should we find any meaning in our work at all?

I’ve examined the life of Jesus and noticed that he’s not interested at all in finding purpose in his work. I can’t see anywhere where he exhorts us to either. Why would Jesus need to get meaning and purpose out of his work? Does God find meaning in His work? Surely not. He might find enjoyment, but meaning?

Rather, Jesus finds meaning and purpose in who He is. God finds meaning in who He is. While He creates, he creates out of enjoyment and overflow, not out of finding meaning and purpose or even doing “something great”.

Likewise, I’m not ever meant to find meaning in my work, but rather in who I am, and even more who I am in God – in Jesus. Because ultimately my identity can’t really exist outside of this.

It can, but then I wouldn’t be a Christian, because fundamentally a Christian is one who follows Christ – for the purpose of both knowing Him and becoming like Him. When I became a Christian I laid aside all my own ambitions and plans and my need for purpose in what I do, and I entered into a new life and identity that is in fact based on a life in Jesus.

So, in the church, we can’t have this mix of ambition – where we will ‘make our mark’, be ‘someone who counts for God’  do ‘great things for God’ (insert other such phrases here). All that talk leads to division and nonsense within the church. How many pastors have divided churches out of their own ambitions?

That talk is soul destroying. It puts false ambition into our minds and hearts and has us strive to achieve ‘great things’ that God never even asked us to achieve. It feeds our need to also be great.

It makes loving a labourious task, because we no longer love to love but love ‘to count’ for God. In fact, our relationships start to mean far less because we’re too busy doing other things which we think God views as more important, so we can make our mark and ‘count’ for God. We’re completely sidetracked on some or other mission and those who hold us the most dear suffer for it.

Think about what ‘counting for God’ is actually saying about the Gospel – did Jesus die on the cross so we could strive to ‘count’ for God? Of course not.

While God has prepared good works for us to do, that doesn’t mean He wants us to find meaning and purpose in those good works. Those are natural outflowings of who we actually are, not the other way around. We’re not defined by those good works, be it our job, our profession, or our passions, but are defined by who God is and then who we are in Him.

That means that I’m free to no longer care about whether or not anyone is going to remember me when I pass away. I’m free from this idea of leaving a legacy. I free from having to make a mark.

God never asked me to “count” for Him or “count” for His Kingdom. Why would He need me to count for Him? What for? I can now live free and love free; free from constantly worrying if I’m doing everything right, if I’m counting enough, if I’m doing enough for the Kingdom.

Is that apathetic? Do I lack ambition? Yes, I do. The drive is gone. And so I’m free to love my family and friends and work colleagues and anyone who I’m in contact with. I’m free to go to the nations or help poor people because I’m not longer tied to caring about doing great things. My head space is no longer consumed with how I’m going to get there, to that illusive place, where finally I count. My past now is no longer a list of failures but a life lived. I can be content with it.

And I can be content with who I am. Contentment is worth much, much more than anything my ambitions could ever have given me. Because ultimately everything I thought I wanted would disappoint, and what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul? (Matt 16:26.)

I’m still trying to free myself from the need to count, but I’m getting there. And the process is liberating.

In retrospect, isn’t this the Gospel? The one that says I’m free from law and now living under grace? The one that says God already loved me even before I came to Him? The one that says I no longer need to labour and strive for significance and meaning and purpose and acceptance? Yes, that’s the one. That’s the one I believed from the start.

Rob 'Eyeborg' Spence, real-life cyborg

Artificial hearts with no pulse that keep people alive; augmented vision; cellphone implants; insects controlled with remote control. Does that sound like sci-fi to you? Well, it isn’t.

I wrote on the topic of Cyborg technology today for Telkom Do Gaming.

The heart is an incredibly difficult organ to reproduce artificially because it’s constantly beating. Any artificial materials that will need to go through the work a heart actually does seem to break down very quickly. So the doctors in question have decided to address the beating problem, looking at creating an artificial heart that does the job but doesn’t beat. Rather, it provides a continuous flow throughout the body. And apparently it works.

Read more at Do Gaming

My CV includes some brief writing examples as well.

Download my CV.

Here’s the important stuff so you don’t have to go through all the trouble of downloading it.

CV of Ryan Peter

Why hire me?

• Five years’ experience running my own writing business – web copy, copywriting, PR, SEO, journalism and editing.
• Four years’ experience in running a very successful local website (gaming.do.co.za) as the Deputy Editor. My involvement in the site includes a lot of what an editor would do – strategy, training, and so on. This site is currently South Africa’s largest video game portal.
• Four years’ experience in building, maintaining and strategising for business on Social Media platforms.
• Five years’ experience in helping clients build their own websites and putting in place a content strategy.
• Four years’ experience working for a PR and communications company (Intrinsic Media).
• I have basic HTML coding skills as well as experience in creating WordPress websites.
• One year of experience in radio.
• Eight years’ experience in logistics and the IT industry (working for companies such as HP).
• I’m also a published author in fiction and non-fiction (books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, the iBookstore and several other online retailers).
• I have published opinion pieces in various online and media spaces, for subjects such as politics, philosophy and faith.
• Six years’ experience in the music industry and relevant PR (as a musician).
• Tremendous experience with diverse clients – telecommunications, technology companies, financial institutions, government and small business.

My passions and values 

I believe a good work ethic is as important as experience and I’m highly driven by my values and passions.

• I’m passionate about writing – taking difficult, intricate concepts and translating these into a compelling text that speaks to the normal person. I like to think of it as composing.
• In line with this, I’m passionate about taking a customer’s brand and product, no matter how technical it may be, and finding ways to communicate an evocative message that represents the brand correctly.
• I thoroughly enjoy journalism and use my journalistic techniques in the way I approach my work. This has helped me to be a quick learner and given me the skill to more easily understand concepts and know how to make them understandable to others.
• I am passionate about my work and adding as much value as I can.
• I strive for openness and honesty.
• I like the idea of the “development ethic” – creating sustainable business for the future.
• I believe in creating good relationships in the workplace.
• I believe in having an appropriate balance between work and family time.
• I like strong but flexible leadership and lead in the same way. 

Where am I going?

Ultimately I’m a writer before anything else. My personal aspiration is to develop my writing and competency with the written language to the place that my opinions become sought-after and well respected. Within this I have a long-term goal to build the Ryan Peter brand to the point that my books bring in a decent income.

Download my CV.

My rates

My rates are negotiable and depend on the project, the client and the nature of the work. I am also available for retainer work. My rates hover around R250 ($30) an hour for writing work or R350 ($40) an hour for consulting work, but contact me to discuss your needs and we can work out a pricing that works for you.

Contact me

Get hold of me by emailing ryan (at) ryanpeterwrites (dot) com, or you can use the various social networks on the right of this page, or even get hold of me on Skype.

Alternatively, just use the contact form below.

*(denotes required field)

Name: *

E-Mail Address: *

Phone number

Subject: *

Message: *

CAPTCHA Code: *

My website was always meant to garner business while also showcasing my writing and drawing people towards my fantasy / sci-fi books and my books on my faith. Unfortunately, the previous design just showcased everything on the front page, sending a confusing message to potential clients who are interested in hiring me for their online content and strategy needs. So… I’ve had to look at a slightly more formal design that gives me more flexibility.

A few changes are still to come but WordPress is so fantastic that the changes needn’t take an age and I’ll probably have it all done in a day or two.

Any comments on the new design?

DASO's poster, captioned "in our future you wouldn't look twice"

The most disappointing response for me has to come from the Christian Democratic Party, who immediately stated that the poster ‘clearly’ promotes sexual promiscuity. There are a number of issues, as a serious Christian, I take with such a response:

1) The poster, probably quite deliberately, doesn’t show any ring fingers. These two individuals may very well be married, or they might not. But the fact is that it doesn’t ‘clearly’ promote promiscuity. Having a picture of a couple in an intimate embrace drives home the reality of interracial marriage and love – and certainly drives home the point much better than just having them hold hands. The objective was to talk about interracial love.

2) The poster is actually done better than many pictures we’re subjected to from magazine covers every day at the shop. I don’t look at it and feel tempted to look up porn on the Internet. I can’t say the same for magazine covers at the local petrol station, unfortunately.

3) There is nothing wrong with naked people. God made us naked. The sooner we can understand that nakedness doesn’t equal sex (they’re not the same thing) the better we can actually appreciate God’s beautiful creation called the human body. When God created and called it all good I believe He meant it. That kind of thinking also helps to deal with sexual temptation much more easily. I’m getting this idea from the scriptures, not some liberal hippie wacked out lame idea of supposed “free” love. That nonsense is an entirely different story.

It’s a rather typical stand that Christian political parties seem to take – it seems their mind is ALWAYS in the sexual morality arena. The response shows more of what the Christian Democratic Party is thinking than what anyone else is thinking. I never looked at the poster and thought ‘sexual promiscuity’, I’ll be honest. I thought, interracial love. It annoys me when the best Christian politicians can do is play some moral card of sexual morality when the objective of the poster was to talk around the morality of interracial relationships. What does the Christian Democratic Party have to say about interracial marriage? If reports are to be believed (well, we don’t really have much reason to believe the news have reported the whole story) – nothing. I hope that’s not the case.

It’s been interesting watching the responses from all corners. Good old Malema has been tweeting about it a great deal, others have told the DA that they no longer have their vote. I’m thinking, sheesh dude, the DA has always stood for interracial everything – where have you been? It’s crazy seeing how many people (white, black or other race) don’t stand for interracial marriage – as if it’s immoral to marry someone from a different colour.

Today a poster depicting a white and black man in an embrace (to promote the whole gay thing) was released, but not by the DA – it’s a fake poster, obviously created by some people trying to make their own point. I need to add that to clear up any confusion.