Jay’s Blog – Life: It Matters, but Maybe Not in the Way You Think
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A few weeks ago, I wrote about living life in light of death. In doing the work of a head of school as long as I have, I’m not a stranger to death. The head of school role is a pastoral gig, and our school community has been gracious to welcome me into their lives and their grief as they have walked through death with loved ones.
I’ve seen death come suddenly, the result of a heart attack, an aneurysm, or the unexplained tragedy of one taking their own life. I’ve seen it at the end of the long-term illness of an adult and even in children. As I watch my friends walk through the death of their parents and experience that pain myself, and even watch my own friends pass away, I feel like one of those lemmings, the birds that inexplicably, voluntarily plunge off the cliff to their deaths, all lined up. I have more in line behind me now than ahead of me.
When I was younger, I didn’t think much of death, and if you’re younger and reading this, you may think two blogs on this topic in a short period of time is uncomfortably morbid. But I don’t see it that way. The older I get, the more eternity becomes real for me; being together with Christ seems an attractive prospect, and earth is nothing more than the uncomfortable doorway to all that good stuff.
Arthur Brooks, who I’ve quoted before, says that to truly live the second half of life well, you should mentally rehearse your death. Meaning, think about growing older—your body starting to fail, your mind not being as sharp as it was before, your friends dying—the whole bit. The idea behind it is that if you rehearse it, you won’t fear it, and if you don’t fear it, you can embrace and enjoy life in the light of death.
I have tried this exercise, and I’m not sure it necessarily makes me feel any better about the process of death. Death is unnatural and not the way it’s supposed to be, and I’m not sure any of us should be excited about it. But I do find that contemplating it (without obsessing about it—that would entail writing a third blog about it) has given me a few insights that make living life in the here and now more meaningful:
Relationships matter more than things or accomplishments. We all know this, but do we really? Meaning, do we live as if we know it? Would someone believe we believe it by watching us live? My mom and dad were divorced when I was five years old. My dad remarried shortly thereafter. To my five-year-old self, it felt as though my father had rejected our family and chosen another. As an adult, with 50-plus years of grace-filled sanctification and forgiveness behind me, I know that was not true. And yet, most of my life was marked by the desire to achieve, to accomplish things, and to demonstrate to this imagined image of my father that he had chosen incorrectly. If there’s an idol I’ve struggled with in my life over the years, it’s this idea of always feeling as though I have to prove myself.
Whether rooted in our past, our need for self-worth, or cultural narratives that equate ambition and material possessions with success, we are driven by accomplishment and doing things. Many of us do achieve what we set out to do, as evidenced by our society’s overall wealth. Yet all that achievement comes at a cost, and it’s almost always a relational one. Our marriages are filled with tension; we don’t spend as much time with our kids as we should; we’re hard-pressed to name more than one or two people we’d truly consider friends, and that’s if we’re particularly blessed. We’re either not investing in relationships with people God has placed in our paths, or we’re oblivious to God placing them there.
If I’m describing you, you should go to more funerals. I attend a lot of them in this job, and unless you die young and still on the job, here’s the thing: when you’re dead, no one cares what you did for a living. No one cares, or even talks about, what you accomplished professionally. I’ve spent nearly 25 years building this school, and if I live to be 75 or 80, do you know what they’ll talk about at my funeral? My grandkids (if God is gracious enough to let me have them) will talk about how Poppy used to take them to Dairy Queen for ice cream and how sweet he was to them. That’s it.
Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt. 6:19-21). This is only one of many places in Scripture that essentially says, “Stuff isn’t important; people are.”
Henri Nouwen, whom I quote all the time because I’m reading his devotional this year, says, “Love between people, when given by God, is stronger than death. In this sense, true friendships continue beyond the boundary of death. When you have loved deeply that love can grow even stronger after the death of the person you love. This is the core message of Jesus.”
Stuff and achievements burn up; you and your people last forever. Where do you want to spend your time?
The holiness of God is paramount. I recently read a story about a famous televangelist pastor everyone would know, who became famous for sharing the gospel in the media. He had an affair, embezzled from the ministry, and went to prison for it. The Lord led him to repentance in prison and healed him there. When asked, “When did you stop loving Jesus and begin to drift into sin?” his response was, “I never stopped loving Jesus. I just stopped fearing Him.”
I’ve been reading “The Awe of God” by John Bevere lately, and it’s been convicting me. How many of us really do love Jesus but don’t fear Him, don’t live in awe of Him, and don’t respect His holiness? 2 Corinthians 10 reminds us that “we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” Likewise, Romans 14:10 says, “We will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” These verses are written to believers, Jesus’ disciples, not unbelievers. The blood of Jesus keeps us out of hell, but it doesn’t keep us from judgment. How we live matters to a holy, just God. As Bevere says, you can’t make God love you any more or less, but you do control how pleased with you He is.” Like a loving parent, He can be angry with you. And we will be rewarded or not in the New Jerusalem for eternity for how we live here.
We may believe that in our heads, but again, do we live it? Or do we think we can just say whatever we want, fantasize about what we want, and post what we want, and that God won’t call us to account for it because we love Him and because Jesus died on the cross for our sins? Ananias and Sapphira, the couple in Acts whom God struck dead because they attempted to defraud the early church by holding back part of their gift and telling the church they had given everything, weren’t unique. The difference between them and us is that they got their judgment immediately. For us, it’s just delayed until our death.
If God isn’t speaking to you, or you don’t feel as though He’s answering your prayers, or you don’t feel His presence in your life, take a look at how you’re living. Are you living a truly holy life in your thoughts, your words, your actions, and in what you haven’t done? Is there something He’s been calling you to do for months that you haven’t done? Our God loves us, but He won’t be ignored or treated flippantly. He is a holy God, and He calls us to unconditional holiness, not because He’s a killjoy, but because He created us so that how He calls us to live will lead to our ultimate joy.
How we live matters today and in the light of eternity. Do you remember what you did on any given Tuesday 25 years ago? If I asked you where you were on October 20, 1995, unless it was your birthday, you got married, or you had a child that day, could you tell me? That one day, in the scope of your entire life, is how significant in time this whole life you’re now living will be in the light of your eternity in the New Jerusalem. And yet, what you do and who you invest in here will matter deeply and profoundly then. We need to choose wisely.
Jay Ferguson, Ph.D., Head of School at Grace Community School, writes regularly on his blog, JaysBlog.org.