If you’re the kind of person who likes accomplishing things – particularly accomplishing things of value: raising children and grandchildren; passing on your faith and beliefs and knowledge to others; building businesses and organizations and buildings; changing communities and society; making art; making science; creating any kind of legacy – if you’re that kind of person, you’ve probably complained…a lot…about how “there just isn’t enough time!”
Life is short. Indeed, life is too short. The things we want to accomplish, the things that are really meaningful are things that take several lifetimes to do and to do well. And not only do we notice this in our personal lives, but history is littered with the detritus of crumbling edifices and collapsing empires. History is full of things that were never accomplished. Not only history, but all wise philosophers have recognized this reality and many have commented on it – one of my favorite expressions is the pithy Latin “ars longa; vita brevis” (art is long; life is short). God Himself comments on the importance of recognizing our own ability, or inability, to actually accomplish the things we set out to do!
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ Luke 14:28-30 (NIV)
And there is a part of us that recognizes that the inability to complete the tasks that we’ve set is one of the great indignities of mortality. The fact that we are time-bound and time-limited means that if we have great objects we wish to achieve there is a very high likelihood that we will fail – or at least that we’ll die before we see the completion of our aims.
People who spend their lives doing meaningful work that is of consequence, recognize that, frankly, life is too short. People who float through life like turds in the sewer, they don’t seem to take stock of their mortality or its import or the limitations it brings – one sewer drain looks much like unto another drain. People with no grand objects in life blithely accept each day as it comes and are unbothered by the fact that their time is limited.
Perhaps they are bothered in the sense that the Hedonist is troubled by death – it means the end (or the potential end) of sensual pleasures and the possibility of coming pain…or nothingness. But this is angst of another kind from the anxiety caused by time limitations for those who want to do something with their lives.
By the way, this is related to the reason why the incidence of suicide is so high in decadent and wealthy societies and so low in impoverished places. Decadence breeds purposelessness – poverty breeds industry, or at least it motivates motivation. The decadent slob and the slumdog look at life very differently. The slumdog wants to improve his life and the life of his family. He has an object. And while his object of improving from making $1 a day to $1.35 per diem doesn’t seem very important to us, it is to him because that might mean the difference between social stasis and upwards mobility. In a few generations his family might move out of the slums. That extra dime and a quarter might mean that he can lend money and make more money – just a little excess income in the hands of the industrious can make all the difference. Because, the thing is, the person living in the slums has massive existential motivations to NOT live in the slums. The decadent slob has no motivation to do anything at all – ever. An object at rest tends to stay at rest.
The appetite of laborers works for them; their hunger drives them on. Proverbs 16:26 (NIV)
So, the decadent slob has no real motivation. Life holds no meaning aside from the immediate pleasures to be gained. If the pleasures cease to please why go on living? If you wake up of a morning and the coffee isn’t as robust and the sausages aren’t as savory and the porn isn’t as titillating and the video games aren’t as exciting then why go on living? I have much more to say on this topic, especially the anthropology of gaming, but that’s another issue altogether.
The point is this people trying to get somewhere know that life is not long enough. And Christians, pastors and theologians, and parents and teachers, they all know, from moms to missionaries, that life is not long enough to do everything that needs doing – and what’s more, life is so crudely and rudely interrupted by the need to sleep and eat and poop and bathe and exercise and rest and relax and have play time, and nap time, and sexy time.
There is a big part of us that resents that we’re not robots.
Or at least that’s the contemporary theological interpretation. Late stage capitalism, social fragmentation, and the consumerist mindset have made people to view themselves as workers with souls rather than souls who work. Now, here’s where I could give a schmaltzy little talk about how wrestling with your kids, and going for walks, and taking hot showers, and having sexy times with your husband are what really make life worth living and that’s what it’s all about. But I’m not going to do that. One, because that’s not the point, and Two because the creation mandate is for us to make the world Eden. That’s a kind of work. Now, making the world Eden means making the world a place where parents wrestle with their kids, and people go for walks, and spouses copulate. The whole idea of separating work from everything else seems like a false dichotomy – but again, that’s another essay for another day.
But I’m not sure that the problem of wanting to be workers with souls instead of souls who work is the result of capitalism and Americanism more broadly. This is a problem that seems to precede America. Moreover, it’s a problem that is attested to in the Bible. Ecclesiastes is essentially a prolonged discourse on this and similar topics: the impact and import of mortality on one’s work and worldview.
I think there are two reasons why we resist our work being cut short by death.
First, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. We were made for forever. God has put eternity in our hearts and 3 score and 10 is a far cry from forever.
Second, we don’t want to be robots. Not we ourselves. We may want others to be robots, but not ourselves. No, we want to be Gods. We chafe against limitations. We want total power to do whatever whim we want and we want it now. We hate that it takes time to do the things we want. We hate that we cannot speak things into existence. We hate our finitude. We hate our finitude because we lack an appropriate awe of God. Instead of our limitations redounding to the glory of God, they gin up rebellion. Our finitude doesn’t foment faith it trains us into treachery.
Now, don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with wanting to do great things. I believe that all Christians should pray that they would believe great things of God, desire great things from God, and attempt great things for God. But wanting to do great things and wanting to be great are different. And even the desire to be great isn’t entirely wrong. But our conception of greatness might be. Jesus says that whoever wants to be great should be the slave of all. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be great – I think too many Christians attempt to avoid pride through worm theology – which is just another form of narcissism. We should desire to be great, for God’s sake (I’m being literal here, not blasphemous) for God’s sake, we’re being transformed into a kingdom of priests and are going to be given authority over angels! But wanting to be a great servant and wanting to knock the king off the throne are different. And there’s all the difference in the world between a Christian who wants to greatly serve God and a Christian who wants to be God.
Life is too short to do all we want. And that’s both good and bad. It’s good because we live in a fallen world and a world where Stalin lives forever is a horrifying place. It’s good because it reminds us that we’re not God. It’s good because it teaches us to place value and to discern and distinguish bad from good, good from better, and better from best.
It’s bad because, of course, it means that we live in a fallen world and that living in a fallen world means living with disappointment. It means failure – even of good men and good motives. It means that the righteous perish and their plans with them. It means that all sorts of things only get half-done with no one to pick up the tools and complete things. It means that the world will be broken as long as it’s fallen.
The solution is not to stop trying to do great things. The solution is NOT to not attempt to begin things that will take generations to do. Everyone who shares the Gospel of Jesus Christ with someone else is participating in creating something that will outlast us and that we will never be able to complete. We can’t finish the work of building the Church. But we can rejoice in being a part of it.
I think that the solution – at least theologically and anthropologically – is to rejoice in the work we can do and to strive to choose the most meaningful work that will most glorify Christ and will most benefit others that will most satisfy us and to thanks God that we get to participate in meaningful work!
So much of life is repeating. My wife and I do dishes every day, we wash diapers (almost) every day, we cook 3 meals a day, we pick up toys every day, we shovel snow, we exercise, we play with the kids and eachother, we do the same tasks over and over and over without end. I think there’s a deep theology there – that in a fallen world most of our time is spent in just putting things back in order, it takes most of our time just to keep everything from going to Hell, literally and figuratively. And in many ways, doing this work is meaningful to our kids, and someday our grandkids. Being the kind of people who keep things in order creates a theology of life and of work that says that maintaining order matters. Preaching every week matters. Writing essays matters (I think…). Feeding our special needs son and calming him from his screaming 5 or 6 times a day matters.
Housework, yardwork, gardening, parenting, writing, studying, preaching – they’re all jobs that will never be done and they all are creating a world that hopefully will be better and other than the world we live in. And we should continue to do it knowing, KNOWING, that we will not complete our work. And moreover, we should rejoice that we won’t complete it, because that means that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, something so big that it takes God and His saints generations to do it.
I pray that when I get frustrated that I’m not getting the things done that I want, I will ask myself: have you prioritized the right things? If so, then why am I mad? Because I’m not God? Because I’m not indulging myself by engaging in my own selfish passions?
My work in preaching and teaching and writing will never be done. But I can pray by God’s grace that I can train one or several good and godly men and women to do what I’ve done – better. The best that 99.999999999% of pastors can ever hope for is for us to keep the orthodox faith and to train up others to keep the orthodox faith – to hand off the torch. The best that 99.9999999999% of Christians can do is to keep the orthodox faith and train up others to keep the orthodox faith – to hand off the torch. Recognize that if you’re faithful, God will give you as much work as He needs you to do to do what He desires you to do in this world. No more, no less. If our priorities are right, and we’re seeking to love God and love our neighbors – then live without concern that the work will go unfinished. If it’s meaningful work it will never be finished by us anyways. And if it CAN be finished by us, then it isn’t important enough to worry about finishing anyways.
By God’s grace I’ll stop saying “Life’s too short” and getting depressed, but I’ll say “Life’s short” and get motivated.