If you are a Christian you know that everything will be OK……. in the end. This is a promise……..straight from God.
So…….. if everything isn’t OK in your life………if everything isn’t ok in your world……….then this isn’t the end.
This is all about trust and patience. We tend to ask God for something and expect him to give it to us right now. We forget that God operates on a different time frame, sometimes an eternal time frame.
One of my sons was paralysed in a motorcycle accident. He was “learning how to walk again” and was outside a restaurant on crutches. A young, well intentioned, Christian offered to heal him. This kid said a brief prayer then said “Throw down your crutches and walk!” My son couldn’t. The kid, in so many words, said “It’s your fault because your faith is inadequate.” This is, at best, misguided theology. The kid expected God to follow the kid’s instructions right here and right now. FWIW……My son now walks……. and he has since given me an adorable granddaughter. God answered that kid’s prayer……..and then some. The kid threw my son…… and God …….under the bus because the kid insisted that God follow the kid’s orders……… right now. The kid demanded that God operate on the kid’s schedule.
A husband and wife missionary team worked their entire lives in a small village in Africa. They retired and were flying back to the States………. coach. It turned out that the ambassador to the country had also retired and was on the same plane……. first class.
They landed and everybody in coach was told to wait while the ambassador deplaned. There was a red carpet, a 21 gun salute, speeches, and then a big limo took the ambassador away.
The exhausted missionaries headed for baggage claim. The wife said, “Why do they throw a big party when the ambassador comes home and after a lifetime of serving God, we come home and we get nothing?”
The husband replied “Because we’re not home yet.”
If you get discouraged…… if things are falling apart in your world…….if you think things aren’t fair…. if your prayer hasn’t been answered……..just remember……. you aren’t home yet.
Just remember…….. things will be OK……….. in the end.
Whether you are liberal or conservative…….. today’s post is going to annoy you. You may even refuse to accept parts of it…. So please bear with me.
The great intractable arguments of our age usually drag on because either the two sides are talking about different things…….or because both sides are wrong.
With GW……… both sides are wrong. Since you are probably on one side or the other…….. You too are wrong.
Conservatives are wrong because they argue that it is not happening. Well, it is. The glaciers are melting, the weather is getting warmer, we have a 100 year flood every 10 years, etc. Conservatives say that this is temporary….. statistical noise…….. that things will ultimately cool back down. I’ll concede that they are right if and when the planet cools back down. But, I’ll bet a six pack that I will never see it in my lifetime.
Liberals are wrong because they propose a laundry list of expensive, “big government” solutions that are futile…… All to be paid for by some, as yet to be named, “rich guy”. There is no serious proposal on the table that will fix GW by cooling the planet down to 1950 temperatures. The most comprehensive “fix” that has been proposed, the Paris Accord has, as it’s goal, merely slowing GW down. And even that is failing. In essence, liberals say we should spend enormous sums of money on various projects so that we might delay the consequences of GW…… the flooding of Miami for example…….by a few decades. And all of their plans ignore the fact that the population of the earth will double…… again…….in my grandchildren’s lifetimes. Do you really believe that we can double the number of people running air conditioners and eating hamburgers and cut our carbon emissions?
Theoretically, if you give enough monkeys enough paper, enough typewriters, and enough time……… they will type the Bible.
Theoretically, there are fixes that might reverse……might “cure” GW.
Completely outlaw burning fossil fuels and eating meat worldwide, today.
A 30 year ban on having children followed by a strict one child per family limit worldwide until the population of the earth drops to 4 billion.
Outlaw cutting trees and require every human to plant and nurture 100 trees.
If we did those kinds of things, we might fix GW……. in about a century. But, of course we won’t. And even if the US did, China, India, Brazil, and the developing world will not. In essence, we are asking the developing world to throw itself under the bus by not doing exactly those things that America has been doing for the last 200 years.
In a word………. practically speaking…….attempting to “cure” global warming is futile.
Here is the sad truth.
We have overpopulated and then poisoned the planet. We are not going to fix it. Southern California and the great plains will revert to desert. Much of Florida will flood. Drought and hurricanes will become more severe and more frequent. We will face water shortages and food shortages. In addition to refugees fleeing Central America, we will have refugees fleeing southern California, Florida, Arizona, Kansas, and Nebraska. It is not a question of “if these things will happen”, but rather of “when”. Will they happen to me, to my children, or to my grandchildren?
Enough.
Our current debate on GW is a bit like a man who has jumped off of a 100 story building and is plummeting to the sidewalk. He passes the 75th floor and a Republican sticks his head out of the window and says, “nothing to worry about………it’s a temporary statistical hiccough……. keep doing what you’re doing…. It’ll be Ok.”. He passes the 65th floor and a Democrat sticks his head out of the window and says, “flap your arms……..it’ll slow you down.”. And yet the sidewalk is still racing up to meet him.
Pretty depressing………… So why does this mess belong in a Christian blog?
It has to do with hope…… hope for me, for my children, and for my grandchildren. If I am a secular humanist, I have to tell my children that my generation, and my parent’s generation, have poisoned the planet, it’s going to get ugly for them and then they will die and that’s it. Tough luck for you. As a Christian, I will tell them that yes, we have poisoned the planet and it’s going to get ugly for them…….but then, after they die, they will go to a place that hasn’t been poisoned…….a place where all of the bad things in this world have been dealt with…….a place of love, joy, and peace. And Jesus will be there waiting for them. I’ll be waiting for them too.
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Spoiler alert…….. Today I may step on some toes. What I am suggesting here can be done by many families……… but, perhaps not by all.
I know a family. Mom and Dad both worked low wage, maybe even minimum wage jobs. They had a child and Mom decided to stay home and be a full time at-home mother. I looked at their financial situation……I thought that they were insane. The numbers just didn’t work according to my vision of what a modern family should have and be. They struggled for years. They did without things that we all take for granted. And…… in the process…… they raised a really fine son and he is now starting his family. They made a choice. They gave up a lot of material stuff and raised their son themselves. I’ve changed my mind. Looking back, their decision is one of the wisest and most unselfish I have ever seen. They chose relationship and family over stuff.
I grew up in the 50’s. My family, in retrospect, was comfortably middle class. I thought we were wealthy because we lived in a stone house. Go figure. We had a used car that ran most of the time, one black and white tv that worked most of the time, one room in the house that had air conditioning that worked most of the time, and 15 year old appliances. My dad worked and my mom stayed at home and raised me and my siblings. Today, a family living the way we did would be considered poor. Maybe………. but we were very happy……..we were rich.
The tv tells us that we “need” all kinds of stuff: 2 flat screen tv’s, two or three late model cars, 3 or 4 $500 cell phones, internet, cable tv, health club membership, membership on a “select soccer team”…… you get the drift. Having these things is the new “normal”. But, having these things usually requires a 2 income family. In other words, we have bought into society’s standard for a “comfortable” life and have accepted the 2 income budget that goes with it. In order to support this modern lifestyle, mom and dad both have to work….. often long hours….. often more than one job. In short, we have turned the job of raising our children over to strangers…..or worse…..to machines in order to have more and better stuff. But, I doubt that our modern families are any happier than the 1950’s family that I grew up in.
We talk about giving our kids “quality time”. But the truth is that we don’t get to plan what will become “quality time”. Our children will look back 10, 20 years from now and decide what the quality time was. And it won’t be the big party, the trip to Disney world, or the lavish Christmas. It will be the conversation at dinner, sitting in the back yard one summer evening, being there after the big breakup, the wordless hug, that first ten minutes after a disastrous day at school.
We can’t plan out an hour or two of “quality time” from 7 to 8pm on Tuesday night and execute the plan. The best we can do is give our kids a large amount of time and hope that some of it…… when they look back at what shaped them into adults ……. will have been “quality time”. This means that either mom or dad has to BE there…….a lot. I don’t think that it is critical which one. The work of “being there” is hard work…….it is emotionally taxing ….. and our society places no value on it.
We can’t give our children “quality time”, but we can give them “quantity time”……and some of it will turn out to be quality time. The truth is that the secret of creating quality time is to give our kids lots of time……lots of us. This job cannot be farmed out to a nanny or a day care………or a video game.
Greed is a prejudicial term. We usually apply it to people whose lifestyle is well above our own. Greedy people are bad…..right? But, there is a low level of greed that has become normal. Our very high, now normal, expectations of the stuff we should have has led us to also accept as normal the idea of turning the raising of our children over to strangers. We take ourselves out of our children’s lives so we can work, so we can fill our children’s lives with stuff.
New definitions:
Love your neighbor………. give your children your time and attention by raising them yourselves……… be there when they get off of the bus after a disastrous day at school. Talk to them more than the tv does. Throw large amounts of “quantity time” at them………. they will find the “quality time” in it.
Greed……….. give your kid a car….. give them the latest video game and a state of the art cell phone…..and throw in an hour of yourself………. from 7-8pm……. on Tuesday evening.
“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.
Jesus, NIV
Thank you Cindy…….. for the sacrifices that you made…….to give our sons your time……yourself…… both quantity time…….and quality time.
Oh, I can come up with a long list of nice things that I have done. But, there’s another list that I don’t talk about so much……and it gets updated just about every day.
Even though I don’t share this list with others, I am acutely aware of it. I know that I have fallen short…….. today………and I will fall short again tomorrow. Any of this sound familiar?
As you probably guessed……we’re all in the same boat. Measured on God’s scale there really isn’t much difference between us. So………I don’t get to congratulate myself because I was nice for a while today……..and I don’t have to beat myself up because I was bad. Being a mess is normal. Being a mess is actually not the problem.
The real problem with being a mess is that we can start to feel unworthy. Oh, we won’t run around telling everybody how rotten we are. It’s much more subtle than that. Instead, we wonder if we really stack up…..if we even belong with all of those really great Christians we run into. We wonder if we will “fit in” in paradise……..even worse………we wonder if we will even enjoy paradise……. sitting around all day playing a harp.
Here are some facts to help you.
Those really great Christians…..you probably already guessed…… they’re a mess too. Don’t worry if their lists are better or worse than yours………there is no meaningful difference.
You will “fit in” in paradise because it’s going to be full of people just like you……. forgiven sinners.
Finally……. and best of all……paradise is going to be a lot of fun. I’m not a Bible scholar…….this is my best guess. You probably won’t have a harp…….a white gown…..a halo. You won’t spend your day sitting on a cloud singing hymns……although you will spend time praising God……..out of sincere gratitude and love. You will have a physical body and you will be in your prime……maybe in your 20’s. You will have a home. You will probably have a job………one that you really enjoy. But, most of all you will experience the joy of doing the one thing that you were designed for…… spending time with your creator.
I’m retired. As I write this, I’m sitting on my front porch. It’s a cool summer morning. Humidity is uncharacteristically low for Kentucky. There is a blue sky with white clouds. There is a nest of warblers singing away about 12 feet from me. All I can see is grass, trees, flowers, sky, and Jet…….the best Labrador on the planet. In a little while, I’ll put down my coffee, wander over to my shop, and build a table. I think that paradise must be something like this morning……..only better.
When I get there, I don’t know if I will still be a mess……..I think probably not. But, even if I am it will not be a big problem. I am so looking forward to it. If you are not looking forward to paradise, maybe you are carrying around the wrong picture of eternity.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
This post is not suitable for your children and grandchildren. It may be disturbing if you are a secular humanist or an atheist, especially if you are under 30 years old. As they say “Parental supervision is recommended”.
Here goes.
We live in a world that is increasingly secular. This is especially true in the more “sophisticated” countries ……think Europe. Things are less secular in the “third world”. In his book “The God Delusion” Dawkins tells us that the really smart people are atheists…….and he has the numbers to prove it.
So…… I’ve been thinking about “what is the difference between Christians and our secular friends and neighbors”. I think that the difference boils down to hope.
For the Christian, I have heard it said that “we know how it ends”. It ends in paradise, living in a close relationship with a creator who loves us deeply. It ends with us living in a place where we just fit in, a place that we were specifically designed for. It ends in a place where we will finally…….. for the first time in our lives……. be completely satisfied.
In a word, we believe that a loving father…….the one who created us……the one who loves us just as any parent does…….. has us covered.
More and more though, the secular humanist, the atheist, also knows how it ends…… though most don’t think it through to its logical conclusion. The population of earth will double in 60 years to about 15 billion. The earth can only produce enough food to feed about 10 billion (and that is only if we all become vegans). The earth will continue to warm and Florida will flood. Our oceans will fill with trash and contaminated fish. Our groundwater will dry up. Southern California, the great plains and all of the other currently irrigated deserts of the world (the places that produce most of our food) will return to their natural states. And so it ends………with overpopulation, inadequate food supply, lack of clean water, starvation, drug resistant bacteria, pandemic, contaminated air, global warming, flooding, weather related catastrophes, widespread extinction, mass migration, wars over resources, and more…………all of this in spite of our best efforts as a species. Current science tiptoes around the fact that these things are, from a practical perspective, unavoidable….. that we are past the “tipping point”. And, believe it or not……… the horrors described above are the “best possible case scenario”. If you want the “worst possible case”, it could be something like instant sterilization of the planet by nuclear holocaust……or even worse………lingering death in a soup of nuclear contamination or some other form of contamination (carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, fracked groundwater, micro-plastics………you choose) . For the secular humanist, the best possible outcome is global pandemic…………to die before “it all hits the fan”. But where does this leave his children……… her grandchildren?
The secular humanist will say that some (as yet unknown) technological breakthrough will save us. But this is a pretty thin reed……..and time is running out.
So……what is the difference between the Christian and the secular humanist?
I think it is the difference between hope and dispair. I hate to put words into the other guy’s mouth…….and to make broad generalizations. But, if you look around us, the angry people demonstrating in our cities are disproportionately secular. The people singing in our churches are disproportionately Christian. More and more, it seems as though the Christians are happy and hopeful, and the secular humanists are unhappy and worried about the future.
I took my granddaughter to the park. She is an only child and loves to get a chance to play with other kids. She picks out a playmate and addresses him or her as “friend” all afternoon. She is….of course…..absolutely adorable.
This afternoon was unusual. There was a birthday party. All of the kids there were mentally handicapped. I met a guy named Gary. We tried to have a conversation but it was tough. His handicap was pretty severe. He kept trying to tell me something about a broken TV. It sounded like he broke it and needed to get to Best Buy.
I am getting old and am starting to notice physical limitations myself. Pretty much everybody in my family has one handicap or another. The scene got me thinking about paradise and the promise of eternity with a “perfected” body. Eternal youth, no aches, no pains, no glasses……plenty of hair. Up until today, my vision of our bodies in paradise has been focused on my “perfected body” and how great it will be to be able to run again, to see clearly, sleep soundly, and to hear well. My vision of paradise has pretty much been focused on me.
But then it occurred to me. Gary will have a perfected body too. Gary will have a normal mind. He will be able to tell me his name, walk normally, play and work…….he won’t drool anymore. He will be able to tell a joke…….and enjoy one. The human being who has been locked up inside of a broken mind for a lifetime will be set free.
I want to live my life in such a manner that I can be sure that when Gary gets to paradise he will remember me as somebody who treated him with dignity and respect while he was trapped…..in a broken body……here in this world.
My challenge today is for all of us to treat the weakest, the most marginalized members of our community, those who cannot speak for themselves with dignity and respect…….and this includes the unborn………..so that when we meet them in paradise they will greet us with a hug……..and say “do you remember the day when you sat down and had a conversation with a guy who was broken…….a guy who was pretty much helpless, a guy who could offer you nothing?
I want to be worthy to be Gary’s friend in paradise.
We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting ?”
I recently heard a speaker, I’m not really sure where. He said “Don’t ever pray for justice.” I went back to my morning prayer list…….and there it was……a prayer for justice. My first reaction was that this guy is nuts………justice is a good thing…….a great goal. But then I thought about it for a bit. I realized that when I pray for “justice” what I am usually praying is for something good for me……….and a lightning bolt for the other guy. What I am praying for is my brand of justice……reward for me and revenge against the other guy. God’s will……..God’s justice is far from my mind.
If we make an honest searching inventory of the bad things that we have done……..and that would include every act in our lives that wasn’t love centered……..we would have to conclude that if there was true justice…….God’s justice, each of us would have been reduced to a smoking smudge on the turf a long time ago.
But, you say, I’ve done a lot of good. On average, if you add it all up, I’m a pretty good person…….and I’m way better than (fill in the blank). The trouble is that when you talk about justice, the good thing that you did last week won’t get you out of today’s speeding ticket. The fact that you were just passed by somebody going even faster won’t help either. In a completely just world, each act is rewarded or punished on it’s own merits. Each act is weighed on God’s spectrum of righteousness……..and that means that we are in big trouble. We just aren’t ready for justice……..and we never will be. The speaker was right. If we pray for justice…..and God if answers that prayer…….then there will be nothing left but a couple of billion little scorched spots.
I dropped the prayer for justice from my prayer list. In its place, I am reminded of the “Prayer of Jabez”
“bless me indeed and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from the evil one”
Jabez, NIV
This is, at its heart, a prayer for blessing and for mercy.
So instead of praying for justice, I added a prayer for mercy. This changes the entire focus of the prayer……..now rather that praying for God to zap the other guy for his misdeeds, I am praying for God to forgive me for mine. I am still trying to level the field; not by taking down the other guy but rather by changing my behaviour. I am focusing on improving myself rather than wrecking the other guy. This seems a lot more in line with the command to love others.
Focus not on punishment for the other guy but on forgiveness for yourself.
Focus not on the crimes of others but rather on your own failures. After all the only thing that you can control…….is what you do.
“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
You may not be old………..yet. But, you are certainly older than you were last week. This is one of the greatest truths…..one of the most pressing realities of our lives. Yet, oddly, we give it little thought. This is probably because of where it leads……..physical deterioration and death.
We live in a society that worships youth. When the TV wants to sell you something, they show you somebody 45 or younger enjoying it. Have you ever seen a soap commercial featuring an 85 year old in a wheelchair? Have you ever seen, on TV, an 85 year old in a wheelchair enjoying anything? 85 doesn’t look like any fun at all………if the TV is telling us the truth. And yet, old is where we are headed…….all of us. The only way to avoid 85………is to die young……….swell. A famous musician summed it up pretty well when he said, “Nobody gets out alive”.
Our culture’s solution to this “unhappy ending” is surprising in its simplicity………we ignore it. “Eat, drink, and be merry…….” But, generally speaking, ignoring the truth is not a good plan. I once went to a surgeon to get something fixed. In the course of our conversation, he said,
“You’re going to get old, and you’re going to die, and it’s going to be ugly”.
That was uplifting……….and yet every word was true.
So……..how do I get up and face the day………face my future……..face 85 in a wheelchair? Well, I start out slowly. I let the stiffness and the dizziness settle down. Then I sit up, put my feet on the floor and get going.
I look a little further ahead than my TV does. I look out of my back window at this amazing beautiful world. I consider how it came to be.The most popular explanation of the world today is Darwinism. Boiled down, Darwin tells us that everything we see is just an accident……actually trillions upon trillions of consecutive, additive, positively adaptive accidents. The trouble with Darwin is that I’ve seen enough accidents to know that after an accident, things get worse not better….things become more random, not more organized. Darwinism is a little like believing that the way to improve your old car is to plow it into a tree. (OK, that was cheap……the car isn’t alive so Darwin doesn’t apply).
So, I choose a less popular world view…….intelligent design. This tells me that behind it all is a creative intelligence. I think that the best candidate for this intelligence is God/Jesus/Spirit……a benevolent creator who cares for me personally. This is good and bad (from a secular perspective). The creator promises life after old age……after 85 in a wheelchair……after death. But, the creator also has expectations of us…….expectations of me………before 85. This world view is humbling because we are moved down the chain of command from the greatest intellect in the cosmos to a fairly small cog in a very large machine. We are not in charge. And we, as humans, do not like the whole humble thing. We like believing that we are in charge. Even though…….by any measure……..we have made a mess of things.
So, how do I face my day……today…….at 65? I take the long view. I look ahead to paradise where I get to spend time with the guy who made me………to spend time with friends and family. I accept that while 85 in a wheelchair is going to be a temporary setback…….there is something much better ahead. I am not clear on all of the details, but I suspect that it will involve friends, a satisfying job, and a body that works the way God intended it to. Until then, I will focus on living up to my creator’s expectations of me………today.
His expectations? Pretty simple.
Love
Love God and love my fellow man. That should keep me busy……..for the next 20 years or so.
“Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
There are very few true leaders out there. The funny part of this is that we don’t realize this basic truth in our lives. We each like to believe that we are independent thinkers, the captain of our fate. But…..for better or worse…….this is just not true. For almost all of us there is a single idea, person, or thing that we follow. We tell ourselves that we have chosen our leader because the person, thing, or idea is somehow good. But, the truth is that we will follow even when our leader, our boss, is clearly doing something bad. The further along we go, the more rigid we become. We stop hearing anybody but our boss. We discard any idea that the boss doesn’t like. We only watch Fox news…..or CNN. This is how people who are fundamentally good and smart wind up in a crowd following someone who is clearly evil……..think Hitler. FWIW this post is not about Trump and Pelosi. I don’t want you to focus on the “evil” person or idea that the other guy is following……..I want you to critically examine the boss whom you are following. Most of us have never done this. For most of us, we live our lives walking down a path that has been laid out by another. A great many of us get to the end of that path and ask “how in the world did I wind up here?” It’s pretty simple……you got “here” because the boss you were following led you here…… and he did it for his, her, or its purpose. In order to avoid future disappointment or worse……..you need to know who is leading you……you need to have an idea of where they are taking you.
So who…..or what …….are you following?
Here are some candidates:
The Republican party
The Democratic party
Your job
Addiction
Money
Status
Fame
Hatred
Pleasure
Fitness
God
Satan
It can be surprisingly difficult to know who is at the head of the line you are in. Fact is, most of us have never even looked onto it. But, rest assured, as long as you stay in line, you will wind up exactly where THEY want you to go.
The best way to know whom you are following is to examine the forks in your path. Look back at choices that you have made…..especially grey zone choices. You might even make a list. Look down the list and ask what authority informed your choice. Why did you make the decision that you made?
Here are examples of “forks in the road”:
Who did you marry?
What job did you take?
Who did you vote for?
The last lie that you told
Your last act of kindness
The last thing that you did or didn’t steal (ever heard of the “use tax”…….its the sales tax that you are supposed to pay on things you order on the internet…….and that you probably don’t report on your state income tax form)
Last Sunday……..did you relax with your family…..or work
Are gun control and abortion right or wrong?
Look at these decisions. In particular, consider the ones that made you just a little uncomfortable. Those are the forks where you followed the boss…….and they are the key to your leader’s identity.
Once you have identified your leader, then you can get an idea of what destination he has chosen…….for you. Then, you can decide if that is the destination that you would choose.
If you don’t like what you see…….watch for the next fork in the road. Decide based on a new leader. The old leader will tug at you, but at each subsequent fork, choosing the new path……following your new leader will get easier.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
God, NIV
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”
Jesus, NIV
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Christians and secular humanists butt heads all of the time. Abortion, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, LGBT issues…….you name it…….we probably disagree about it. The gap between us is wide and seems to be getting wider.
If you trace this gap back to the basics, it seems like the heart of it comes down to our understanding of what “life” is.
So, what do we mean when we talk about life…….in particular our life…….my life?
To the secular humanist, our life is the time from birth to death. Everything fits into this span of time. We look at our life experiences and they are rich and colorful. Life is long and full and beautiful. There is nothing meaningful before our birth or after our death. Others lived before us and others will live after us, but; in a very real sense, their lives are theirs…….and they are irrelevant to us. We have about 80 years to do it all……to experience it all. 80 years is a lot of time but we have a lot to experience. So…..we each develop a code that we live by and we design that code, that set of rules, to maximize the quality of our 80 years. We do contribute to our families and to a lesser extent to the communities that will outlive us, but these are secondary. The further removed they are from our 80 years, the less attention they receive. If you don’t believe this……look at where you spend your money. This is the reason why global warming just hasn’t gained much traction……even among secular humanists. Our secular code tells us, “eat, drink, and be merry…….for tomorrow you will die”. And that code works very well…….for our 80 years. That is the primary meaning of life for the secular humanist.
To the Christian, life has a very different meaning……even though most Christians don’t give this a lot of thought. In fact, most Christians spend most of their time living as though they were secular humanists. In a word, we spend six days and change as secular humanists and then become Christians for a few hours on Sunday. If you really think about it, life, for a Christian, has 3 phases……..eternity past, this world, and eternity future. We know a little about history but, eternity past is largely hidden. We know more about eternity future from the Bible; but, realistically, our vision of eternity future is a little foggy too. The one thing that I can say with certainty is that our 80 years in this world is a tiny sliver of time wedged between these two eternities. Our life seems very important from where we stand today; but, if you back off and look at the big picture, our 80 years here is extremely short……….and inconsequential. This can be sad or joyous.
It all hinges on what eternity future looks like.
As Christians we are given 2 visions of eternity future…….”paradise future”……..and “not paradise future”. As I said before, the descriptions that we have are a bit foggy. I tend to think of these as “nice eternity” and “not nice eternity”. There is little value in speculating about the details…….will there be a Starbucks? BUT……..eternity is a long time……and “nice” is better than “not nice”. And, as it turns out, the choice between “nice eternity” and “not nice eternity”………..is entirely up to us. Accepting Christ gets you “nice eternity”, denying him gets you “not nice eternity”. This is true regardless of whether you are a Christian or a secular humanist.
So……..back to the original question………..what is the meaning of life? Why does God bother with our tiny sliver of time? What are we supposed to do with our 80 years? I believe that we are here primarily for one purpose……..to decide……to accept Christ or to deny him……in a word, to choose between “nice eternity” and “not nice eternity”. Everything that enters and leaves your life is there to shape that decision: your wife’s laughter, your marriage, your granddaughter’s hug, addiction, your cancer, the death of your child. All of it…..good or bad………it all shapes you……it all contributes to your decision. We all respond differently to our world. Maybe God sent you a great spouse to lead you to him. Maybe he sent you pain…….for the very same reason. I believe that God, like any parent, is willing to expose his child to brief pain in order to preserve his child’s future.
So…….. the meaning of life for a Christian?
All of it………the joy and the pain……..is there to lead you past a fork in the road………accept or deny.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, “Mountain Interval”
I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
