A Magnificent Obsession

God's obsession with humanity has led God to mix with the rabble of the earth and the rubble of human disobedience. Perhaps it is time to make God our "magnificent obsession.

God has a problem ... us. God won't rest content until we are living the truth. What if we were to make God our obsession?

Did you see Jack Nicholson in his Oscar-winning role in As Good As It Gets? He was suffering from an "obsessive-compulsive disorder" where he couldn't step on cracks in the sidewalk and had to go through a specific set of acts when locking the door. He also suffered a fairly common cleanliness compulsion which drove him to use one bar of Neutrogena per handwashing, and which drives others to wash their hands, their doorknobs, anything they might touch, over and over again. The brain is so obsessed that no amount of this focused-on behavior is ever enough.

Someone caught in the grip of obsessive-compulsive disorder gets fixated on one idea, one notion, one motion, and is unable to banish it from his or her mind. CAT scans reveal that, physiologically, one area of the brain seems to get stuck in the "on" position -- refiring the same synapse over and over again,...