In my experience, and speaking with other men, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story The Threefold Destiny strikes the three-note chord at the center of every man (in a similar way to It’s a Wonderful Life). I suspect the same chord exists for women, but resonates with a slightly different, harmonizing sound.
The protagonist in the story, Ralph Cranfield, sets out on a world-traveling journey to fulfill a threefold prophetic vision. He saw himself finding his true love wearing a heart-shaped jewel, seated in a place of high influence, and uncovering a buried treasure. He returns home with nothing to show but ten years of age.
Coming back to his small-town home, Ralph rediscovers an etching he made on a tree at his mother’s house, inspired by his vision of buried wealth, where he wrote, “dig here.” He receives a visit from the town’s highest dignitary, offering him the esteemed position of town school teacher. Lastly, he encounters his childhood friend, Faith, who kept a heart-shaped arrowhead Ralph gave her when he left on his search.
He realizes with joy that his threefold destiny is to dig in and work the land around his childhood home to find buried treasure, become the schoolhouse teacher to find influence, and marry his childhood friend to find true love.
Ever since Adam, every man wants to enjoy riches, receive respect, and feel true love. The fear, the haunting dread every man feels is that he will fall short of not just one, but all three of these desires. Men commit suicide, have affairs, forego family, commit fraud and turn to violence in desperate hope that they can fulfill maybe just one of those desires before they die.
Hawthorne tells a version of the answer the Bible gives: it’s all right in front of you. It always has been. The Bible does not redefine as much as recalibrates our desires. The word recalibrate (as guys will appreciate) comes from guns and bullets. It was originally an Arabic word for the casing (caliber) a bullet needs to fit the gun precisely. It made its way into English and French to talk about fine-tuning all kinds of machines and instruments, which get out of alignment.
A man’s desires for riches, respect, and love are God-given. They’re out of alignment. The recalibrating question is: What would hitting the target look like? The internet has not done men any favors. You don’t need to go on a ten-year journey to despair of finding what you’re looking for; you need ten seconds on your phone. It’s all out there. A better job, a more lucrative investment, a more attractive partner. Yet grasping any of these desires is as real as grabbing the internet by the throat. Existential despair hits a man sooner and harder as the ethereal wisps of unreal visions are no longer something he needs to travel the world to vainly pursue. Instead, they bombard him from near childhood.
What if… What if what you’ve been seeking at the core of your soul has been right in front of you the whole time? The riches of your comfy apartment and old Ford F-150? The influence of the position you have and the work others depend on you to do? The love of the family and friends around you?
I think sometimes about the life of Baruch, Jeremiah’s understudy-scribe. He’s one of the Bible’s persecuted good guys. He lived 2600 years ago. Not bad for enduring influence. But that wasn’t his felt experience. His brother Seriah served as a high ranking official in the crumbling kingdom of Zedekiah. In other words, Baruch came from privilege and had good reason to expect great things. Yet he was hated, hounded, and rejected his whole life.
His frustrated desires, the life he could have lived but never did, ate at him. God’s response wasn’t, “Chill out, you’re getting a good spot in the Bible.” He says, “Do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not…But I will give you your life as a prize of war in all places to which you may go” (Jeremiah 45:5). In other words, “Your destiny is to be with me. Don’t worry about the transient credit or quality-of-life the world promises. Stay faithful and trust that I’ll watch over you as you pass through this world. That’s enough. That’s what matters.”
The demonic and impossible lie of our digital age is that you should never settle. It’s a half-truth. The Bible never tells men to settle, but it counsels that the fulfillment you’re looking for comes in discovering more of what you already have in Christ. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work to provide and be generous, move on from a bad-fit relationship, or strive for a better-fit position. It means trying to win the comparison game will never satisfy your core desires. To be happy, at some point you must “settle” on enjoying what you have.
In I Corinthians, Paul assures Christians in a culture frothing with elbows to the face: “Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you!” (I Corinthians 4:8) “It’s all in front of you,” he’s saying. You’re reigning with Jesus now and the world is your inheritance (I Corinthians 3:21).
God wants you to set out on a lifelong journey to discover all the ways He satisfies your desires. He wants you to know the “immeasurable riches of his grace to you in Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). He wants you to enter into the thrilling influence, high stakes, and eternal impact of serving his kingdom (Matthew 25:14-30). He wants you to grow in grasping the height, depth, breadth, and length of his love for you in Christ, so you can be filled with a love that surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:17-18). The three things you desire most—they’re all right in front of you.
Intrigued by Nathaniel Hawthorne? Read Identity & Literature: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Gentle Boy & The Two Sides of Religious Zeal
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