Five Lessons for Everyone (Part 2)

Your Life is Not About You

I know this sounds like something straight out of Dr. Phil’s mouth, but it’s not. It dovetails nicely off of the preceding idea that we aren’t that important. Our over-privileged society has ingrained in us and (unfortunately) our children (might be my fault, too) the idea that everything is centered on us. We are an ego-centric culture. We are crazy over ourselves, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs (assuming that we are a chocolaty breakfast puff that turns milk brown and sludgy, of course). It is a nasty reality to face when a teenager, or maybe even worse, an adult, discovers that life is not about them and they have to come to grips with a new reality that doesn’t focus on them. It is a nasty reality, but on the other side of that awakening, that “death to the false self,” is a beautiful resurrection of Christ- and others-centeredness. How different would our world be if humanity understood this lesson, if we died to our own self and turned outward towards a much larger world than we first imagined it to be? 

You Are Not In Control

How much do you and I hate this one? Seriously, is there a more helpless feeling than to be out of control? Yes, there is. To realize you are out of control and there is nothing you can do about it. This is a terrifying prospect for us control freaks. Life is beyond anything we can get our arms around. Walk in a hospital’s cancer ward or a funeral home and ask the people there if life is in their control. Better yet, walk into an AA meeting and ask an alcoholic if they feel like life is in their control. You’re not in control. Learn this lesson with the reality that life is hard. The two go hand-in-hand. We need to be okay with this. Not happy about it necessarily, but okay with it. We have to be willing to learn from what life hands us. The message of the cross is that God, in his infinite love, is willing to give up control, “put himself out there,” to us. Jesus, according to Philippians 2, “became nothing,” that is, gave up control of his rights as God, humbling himself and dying. God: willing to be out of control. Can we be as willing to give up control as well? Dag Hammerskjold, former U.N. Secretary-General said, “At some moment I did answer Yes to Someone--or Something--and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life in self-surrender had a goal.”

You Are Going to Die

It’s amazing how many people just can’t seem to accept this fact. Last time I checked the death rate was still 100% among every living thing on earth. An old Hindu saying says, “The surprise of surprises is that although everybody who has ever lived in this world has died, for some reason, we think we won’t.” Dr. Ira Byock writes, “Death is not primarily a medical event. Death is a personal and spiritual event, yet we are largely concerned about preparing for the medical.” There is an great line from Dr. Cox in an episode of Scrubs where he tells J.D. that everything that they do as doctors is, at best, a stall for the inevitable. You are going to die. If we cannot accept our own death then we cannot truly live, because we live in fear of the inevitable end that could come at any moment. Jesus said that not one of us can add a single minute to his or her life by worrying. I used to spend a lot of time worrying about my own death. I didn’t want to die. Who does? But worry and fear turn into anxiety, which can be debilitating and life-stealing. We have to come to terms with our own fear over the unknowable. No one knows what happens at death, which is partly why we fear it so much. No one likes the unknown. If we can live in the reality of the kingdom understanding of death, that it is not final, does not have the last word, that, as Paul writes, it has lost its sting, that on the other side is glorious resurrection and the continuance of an eternal life already begun in the present, then we might be able to acknowledge the reality that we are going to die. And then we might be able to truly live. 

shalom, matt