No politics, attacks against the religious right, or words about a dying America in this one...sorry if you are disappointed.
I really just wanted to use the medium of the internet to answer a question an old friend of mine posed to me recently, that question being:
How am I supposed to live life?
While that is quite possibly the vaguest question I have ever heard, I will attempt to answer it here.
This question has potential to be answered dozens of different ways. One can look at it from a religious, moral, positive, legalistic, spiritual, personal, thoughtful, public, silent, negative, how-to-save-the-world, political, glass half full, physical, hole in the donut, or environmentally-safe standpoint...
Sarcastically speaking, basing my life choices around the concept of recycling and global warming seems slightly ridiculous to me. My sincerest apologies to Mr. Al Gore...
But back to the question my good friend asked me...
How am I supposed to live my life?
I guess I am not going to waste your time by answering the question everyone asks at some point in their lives in such a way that would represent one of the options I listed above.
The best way to answer that question is not a one-sentence answer, it is not a certain set of rules to live by, it is not found in taking a stand for something, it is not found in selfishness...it is not found in millions of things, although some of these things are consequences of living life a certain way.
You see, many people think living life a certain way means taking a stand for something, living for yourself, or for whatever...
I think are culture has the wrong concept of the question "How am I supposed to live my life?"
Culture thinks that living for something is the way you are supposed to live your life...I think that is a grey area leaning closer to the black side of the spectrum.
We do not do the things we do because we are living for something, we do what we do because of the idea or belief behind what we live for.
For example, my amazing girlfriend Taryn works with mentally retarded teens at Youth Villages. Many of these kids have bad family backgrounds and other major issues that I can not even imagine. The majority of society has kicked them aside and doesn't give a crap about them, all except for a small group, which includes Taryn.
Now, Taryn does not work with those kids just for a paycheck, although that is a plus with the job. She doesn't help them just because she looks down on them and feels sorry for them. She doesn't help them just because she went to school and trained to help them. No, there is something deeper behind that, it is the reason why she helps them....
She helps them because she is called to it and because she knows it is the right thing to do.
It's not so different from the consequences from my beliefs, which include an anti-genocide website, a small group of people that have become interested in Darfur, and thousands of dollars in aid making a difference in Sudan.
But back to Taryn...
My point is that Taryn doesn't do what she does because she is living for helping disabled kids. The fact that she works with them is a consequence of a belief she has. She lives for the belief, and that has consequences. In her case, its a dozen or so kids who have never been loved finding out that somebody cares about them. God's providence placed her in their lives, not Taryn's view on how to live life.
Now, I have not answered the question yet because I hoped to show that to answer that question, we need to understand what the question means.
How am I supposed to live my life?
That question isn't asking FOR WHAT I should live my life, the question is asking HOW...
Taryn's life is a perfect example of that. She doesn't live for the kids she works with, she lives for the BELIEF that has led her to helping those kids.
You see, beliefs have consequences...
So, hopefully you understand the question better now, unnamed friend...
But now it is time to answer your conundrum...
And for that, and please do not laugh, I would like to go to the movie Troy...
While Brad Pitt is not my favorite person in the world, he plays a brilliant role in a brilliant film. If there is anything that can answer the question of how we are to live, it is films like Troy that can tell us...
The film opens up with the narrator, Odysseus, setting the stage for the movie. In essence, he asks the very question every human beings asks themselves, whether it is knowingly or unknowingly, at some point in their existence:
"Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves: will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved?"
Odysseus, in so many words, is generally asking our question at hand.
"How am I supposed to live my life?"
Odysseus asks this question. Men that believe in something seem to be the ones that are remembered, at least it appears that way to Odysseus.
But what Odysseus does not understand is that he answered his own question when he asked it. Let me explain...
Please look closely at his last line from this quote:
"Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved?"
Odysseus answers his own question before he is even done asking. And the answer is surprisingly simple:
Allow whatever it is that driving you to light your heart, mind, and soul on fire.
Odysseus wants to know if strangers centuries from him will remember the men of his time, and indeed we do! We remember them because of how they lived:
Everything they did we remember because of how they lived...they loved fiercely and they fought bravely because of their driving ideas and beliefs.
So, application time...
"How am I supposed to live life?"
Live as the men of Odysseus' time did:
Love fiercely, fight bravely, stand your ground, achieve the unachievable, and go past your own abilities...
The perfect example of a man who did that is Christ Jesus...and the world is far better off because of His willingness to do what no one else could or would...
So, to wrap things up, I would like to end with another quote from Troy, this one from the hero Achilles:
" We men are wretched things. "
We are to live as Odysseus suggested, but we also live with the understanding that we will sometimes fail. Achilles was right, "we men are wretched things."
We must live honestly with ourselves; that is, with the understanding that this world is screwed up. We are bound to lose battles because our fallenness has bound us to failure.
But, that is the beauty of true Christianity. We know we will sometimes fail, but we do what we do anyways because of what is driving us: Christ's redemptive work.
That is how we are supposed to live: we are to live like Achilles, who stormed the beaches of Troy with only 50 men, we are to fight fiercely like Odysseus, who captured Troy with his whit, we are to love fiercely like Hector loved his wife and country, and we are to sacrifice unconditionally like Christ did, even if it means giving up the very breath in our lungs.
If anyone can think of a better way to live, let me know...
But I am 100% certain that living life as an emissary, soldier, and son/daughter of Christ is the most honorable and highest calling any mere mortal could ask for.
In Christ,
Hackett
