does the world need another book?

I've spent the last 15 months writing what I think is a book (it's 106k words cut up into chapters--surely that's a book?) But not once during that time did I ever ask myself if the world needed it.

I mean, who really operates that way? No one I know. We do whatever we do according to what we most need or desire (there's a refutation of man's so-called "free" will in that sentence if you care to look). But I don't think that's bad. We’re made in God’s image, with a bent toward creativity. Much more than that, we’ve been charged--through the Word, through our dna--to subdue the earth and have dominion over it. So we create because God first created and because God gave a tiny reflection of that ability to us. Yes, we mishandle it, pervert it, twist it to our own evil ends, but the original impulse to build and to bring order out of chaos is a good thing. And no, there's nothing wrong with weighing the merits of our works to be sure they're adding value and benefit to the world around us. But we don't first make those choices based on such value. Rather, we pursue our desires first and then we see how they stack up. As much as we'd like to think it's the other way around, it just ain't.

So when it comes to evaluating our desires, the question does the world need it? is probably the wrong one to ask. A better question is does God's word give us the freedom to pursue it? The world may not have needed another book (it certainly didn't need another blog), but as sure as I need to eat and to procreate--and because I'm free!--I needed to write one.

But if we still want an answer to the what-the-world-needs question, there is one--it's Christ. The world, every corner of it, needs Christ.