What I believe, part 8
The Way of Life
We can all agree that the teachings of Christ would work in the world today if everyone obeyed them. But what can one person do in a world where others do not act on Christ's law? One person cannot go against the whole world. This argument says, "If I alone try to obey Christ, if I give away what I have, turn the other cheek, say that I will not go to war and will not make promises to obey my country, and if I do not stop others from taking things from me, I will end up being killed, put in prison, or dead from hunger. I will have lost my life for nothing."
I myself agreed with this line of reasoning until I started to understand the full meaning of Christ's teaching about life. He came with a teaching to save us from a life without meaning, a life that goes to no place. And then we tell him that we would be happy to follow his teaching if it were not that it will destroy our life without meaning! Christ teaches us how to bring meaning to our life and we argue that we cannot let go of our empty lives to find his meaning. By doing this, we are saying that we think the life we have without him is worth holding to. We are saying that we think we own this life and that we can keep it for ourselves. How wrong can we be! Christ could see that people had this wrong understanding about life, and he used many stories and teachings to point out to them that they do not, in truth, have a life without him.
We can, as Pascal put it, try to protect ourselves from death by running toward it with a shield in front of us, but it will do no good. We are all dying, day by day. Without faith and without God, life has no meaning that will live on after death. All that we do with our time becomes a joke when we breathe our last.
So, to understand Christ's teaching, we need to first "turn around" (metanoia in the Greek) and face death. That is the word that John the Coverer said as he prepared people for Christ, and that is what Christ started his preaching with. Turn around and stop running from the truth that you are going to die one day, and from the truth that all that you are doing now will be only a cruel joke without faith and God. In Luke 8:1-5, Christ talked about some people who had been killed by Pilate, and he said, "Do you think these men were worse sinners than anyone else because they were killed by Pilate? No, if you do not turn around, you will all die as they have died. Or those eighteen people that a building fell on and were killed… Do you think they were worse than anyone else who lived in Jerusalem? No, if you do not turn around, you will all die as they have."
We oooh and ahhh over the deaths of people in very big accidents, but what happens to them is what happens to us all in the end. We all die. And if we do not find something that lives on after death, then we are no better off than all of the others who have died before us. Christ says, in Luke 12:54-57, "When you see a cloud in the west, you know that rain is coming, and when you feel a south wind blowing, you know it will be hot. How is it that you can understand the weather, but you do not understand time?"
We have learned how to look ahead in every part of our lives; but we do not look ahead to where life itself is leading us. You may do all that you can to protect yourself from danger and sickness, but in the end a building will fall on you, or a king will have you killed, or you will simply die in your bed with few people taking any interest in it. Plan ahead, as anyone does who is going to put up a building or go to war or do anything that is important.
Luke 14:28-31: "Which of you, wanting to put up a building does not first sit down and count the cost, to see if you have enough to finish it? If you do not do this, you will have started something that you cannot finish, and everyone who sees you will laugh at you, saying, 'This person started to build and was not able to finish!' Or what king, when faced with another king in a war, does not sit down first and think about it, to see if he can find a way with ten thousand soldiers to stop the king who is coming against him with twenty thousand soldiers?"
Can you see how stupid it is to work at something that you know you cannot finish? Death will always come before your house of happiness here on earth is finished. And if you know before time that all your strength will not be enough to win the war against death, wouldn't it be better to change now and use your life for something that will not be destroyed by death?
Luke 12:22-27: He said to his disciples, "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat; and do not worry about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food and the body is more than clothes. Look at the birds! They do not plant seeds, or make buildings to hold their food; yet God feeds them. And aren't you much more important to God than birds? Which of you, through worrying, can add an hour to your life? If you cannot do this little thing, why do you worry at all? Look at the flowers, how they grow. They have no jobs, and they do not make cloth, but even King Solomon with all his wealth was not dressed as beautifully as one of these."
All the time and worry that we put into having good food and good clothes is a waste if we are going to die in the end anyway. Isn't it better to put our time into something that will go on living after this body dies? Can you see how stupid it is to think that wealth will protect you from death?
The meaning of life, Christ says, does not come from the things we can buy. It must come from something else.
He says (Luke 12:15-21) "A person's life is not measured by the size of his wealth. A rich man grew so much grain that he had to take down his buildings and make bigger ones to hold it all. The man said to himself, 'I have enough wealth to live for many years now.' But God said, 'How foolish! Tonight you will die, and then what will become of all the grain that you wasted your time on?' And that is how it is for people who make wealth for themselves and not for God."
Death is always there, standing over you. And because of that (Luke 7:35-40): "Keep your pants on and your candles burning, and act like people who are looking for their lord to return from the wedding; so that when he comes and knocks, you can quickly open the door for him. If he comes at nine at night or at midnight or at three in the morning or at six in the morning, and finds you waiting, he will be very pleased with you. Remember this, if the owner of a house could know when a robber was going to come, he would be there waiting for him to protect his house. You too should be ready, because you do not know when the Son of man will come."
The story of the women waiting for their husband, and about the end of time, and about the day when God judges the earth – all of these are talking about death, as well as talking about the end of the world. The experts agree on this.
Death… death… death… It's out there waiting for you every second. You go through your whole life with death all around you. At the same time that you work and plan for your future, you know that the only thing you can be sure of for the future is – death. And that death will destroy all that you work for. Because of this, life for yourself can have no meaning. If there is a meaning to life it will not come in a life that is lived without faith and without God. To live a life with meaning, you must live a life that is not destroyed by death.
Luke 10:41: "Martha, you are worried and go quickly about doing many things, but you have not remembered the most important thing." All the many things that we do for our own future are not the important things. It is all a lie that we trick ourselves with. Only one thing is important.
From the day you are born, death is out there waiting. Your life will have no meaning and your death will have no meaning if you do not find the one thing that you need for true life. And it is the very thing that Christ came to give. He says that life for yourself is a lie, but there is a life that is not a lie, and it is the only life with meaning.
In the story of the men who were left by the owner to run his vineyard for him (Matthew 21:33-42) Christ shows what hides the truth from people, and what leads to them thinking that the false life (the one they live for themselves) is the real life.
In the story, men living in a house on a beautiful vineyard started to believe that they owned the house and the vineyard. From this false belief came a long list of stupid and cruel actions that ended in them being forced out of the life that they had. In the same way, we have each been tricked into believing we own our lives and we can do with them as we please. Another long list of stupid and cruel actions has been the effect of this false belief, leading to our death. The men in the vineyard believed that the more cruel their actions were (that is, killing the people the owner sent to them, and in the end even killing the owner's son), the stronger would be their hold on the life that they were living. And we too have been tricked into doing very cruel things to make our life better and safer.
The men in the vineyard would not give up their wealth to the owner. Because of this, they were forced out of the vineyard. So too will be the end of those who think that living life for themselves is what real life is all about. Death destroys life only because we do not understand life, and because we hold to the false life when we could have the real thing. The men in the vineyard did not remember that the vineyard itself had come to them from God, that others had worked so that they could have it, and that it was their job to think of others who would come after them, and to work for both God and others in the time that they had in this life. In doing this, they could have found true life… a life that would not be destroyed by death.
This change in our understanding of life, this turning around (metanoia) is the corner stone of Christ's teaching, as he said at the end of that story. The workers in the vineyard should have understood that they owed more to the owner than they could ever pay. And we should remember, from the day we are born to the day that we die, that we owe all that we have to God and to others. If we do not remember this, and if we try to keep our lives for ourselves, we destroy our lives, as Christ so often said. True life only comes by turning loose of the false life. To be a part of the true life, we must turn loose of our will, and do the will of the Father of life, for he is the one who gives this life to the Son of man.
In John 8:34-35, Christ says the slave of sin, who does his own will and not the will of the master will not live in the house for ever. Only the son, who does the will of the Father lives there for ever. The will of the Father of life is not the life of one person doing what he or she wants. The Father's will is that we use our lives to help others. In Matthew 25:31-46, Christ says that we will be rewarded for helping others, because when we do that we are helping him. The Son of man will say, like a king, "Come, you who have been blessed by my Father. Come and receive the kingdom; because you gave me food and drink, clothes, and a place to sleep, and you showed kindness to me. For when you helped others you helped me. Now you can have eternal life."
Far from having nothing to do with eternal life, our physical life, and what we do with it, is where eternal life starts. Christ did not talk of going to heaven after we die. He said the kingdom of heaven starts right here on earth.
There is a big difference between the so-called Christian understanding of life and that of the Jews (who did not not have a clear teaching about life after death). The (false) Christian teaching about physical life on earth is that it has been destroyed so much by Adam's sin that it can never be fixed; God has stopped trying to fix it. But the Jewish understanding was that physical life comes to us from God. What we do with it is all-important. Our physical life must be lived in line with the will of God.
Christ built on the Jewish understanding of life when he taught about true or eternal life. "You look through the holy writings," he said to the Jews (John 5:39), "because you think that in them you have eternal life."
A young Jew asked Christ (Matthew 19:16) how to find eternal life, and Christ answered, "If you want to find life, obey the rules." He says the same to the lawyer who wants to find eternal life (Luke 10:28): "Do this and you will live." He was saying to the Jews what had so often been said in their law, and that is that obeying God is eternal life. The only difference is that now we follow the higher understanding of God's will that has come to us through Christ, and not the understanding of God that came through the law of Moses. In obeying Christ we find eternal life.
People may not agree about what happens after death, but we must agree that the only way we can be saved is by following the will of the Father and Maker of life. And we cannot give any better meaning to life and death than the meaning which Christ gave. Any meaning to life that does not have us loving God and others will simply not work. We must agree that our physical life will end, but that the life of the Father will not. Only by becoming one with the Father can we have eternal life.
So, knowing this, what am I to do? Should I live like everyone around me, or should I obey the teachings of Christ? I have understood that his law is the will of God. I have understood that I will be lost if I do not do the will of God. So how can I turn away from the only hope I have of being saved?
If I follow those around me, I will not be helping others and I will not be doing the will of the Father of life. But if I do what Christ teaches, I will be helping others, and I will be doing the will of the one who made me. I will be doing what alone can save me.
There is a fire in a room full of people. They all run to get out, pushing against the door that opens in. Someone says, "You must move back from the door. You must turn around. If you push you will never be saved." Even if the others do not hear; even if the others hear but do not obey, what is important is that I have heard and there is only one thing for me to do now, and that is to move back and call on others to do the same. They may not move back, and they may kill me, but I cannot join with them in doing what I know can only destroy us all in the end.
I know that there is no hope of being saved without obeying the law of Christ. I am not afraid of this bringing me pain or death, because I know that pain and death are in front of me even if I do not try to obey Christ.
Death without meaning is the stupidest choice. So I choose death with meaning. It may come sooner or it may come later. I will die as all do; but my life and my death will have meaning now, and that is what is most important. That is the way to life that Christ taught.