We've all heard someone say it.
Strangely, after hearing someone prodded towards a particular decision with this phrase, I got lost in my own world of wondering why we say that so flippantly, whether we really believe it and if it was really true, how our lives would be so drastically different.
You only live once.
If people really believed that there is nothing after death, then yes, do what you want, try new things, take risks (calculated ones—don't want to accidentally end it too early), because we live one life and then we die. Others of us believe there is, in fact, something after death, another life. So, we shouldn't use the phrase, technically, because we're advocating behavior based on something that we don't actually believe. Am I splitting hairs? Or do we, in practice, show that we don't really believe as confidently as we'd like to? Or that the life to come is somehow going to be limited or diminished in its potential for Life, resulting in an urgency to try things and do things in the moment in this life, since the opportunity in the next won't be there? Do we think it will be boring? Or has this phrase just come to embody the warning against procrastination that means we may miss opportunities in this life that won't repeat themselves? That's probably it, though you would think we'd come up with a different phrase, like, "Chances don't come twice." or something like that. We tie it to living and imply that after death, live won't be as vibrant or exciting.
You only live once.
I guess it just gets me, because I rarely think about heaven. Do you? Do any of us who profess to be Christians? Is it just wishful-thinking for the oppressed and suffering? I don't think it is. I think there is something True behind our desires for peace, and love and the absence of pain and suffering, etc. Our desire for perfection and our sense of the way things ought to be, I believe, does, in fact, come from a time and reality somehow outside our own in which all things are set right and made to be as they should be. I guess that's why that phrase, "You only live once" got under my skin tonight. This life is hard. It's complex, painful and confusing. And that phrase just sounds like grabbing at what little happiness you can get in the moment, because, despite all the pain, this life is our only shot at feeling alive and whatever comes after won't really live up to our expectations. Certain seasons of life make it hard to take your eyes off yourself to see what's going on around you, let alone what might go on after we die.
As a Christian, technically I believe we live twice. We don't know exactly what the next life will be like. A long boring church service? Floating through white, puffy clouds? Playing football and golf forever? A big, happy family reunion? Procreating with virgins to fill our own planet? A happily ever after where we know and feel and experience the deep, abiding love of our Creator and Savior and Lover and King that never wavers, in which we are utterly free with child-like wonder to explore and learn and grow and create and love with no bounds and no worries and no fears and no pain?...
If we really believe that last picture of heaven is mostly accurate, shouldn't it affect our lives more? It doesn't seem to, at least not in our daily actions and interactions. Is that a unfair expectation (I realize I have a lot of those when it comes to spiritual things...)? Why do we live with such a limited, near-sighted vision of this life and the one to come? I would think, if we truly believed heaven to be all the good, beauty and truth that this life has to offer only more so and perfected experience, we would live differently. Obviously, like Paul said, it would be better to be with Jesus, but killing ourselves to get there earlier seems... counter-intuitive or sabotaging... leaving the option of living THIS life in a particular way. What way? What is the proper way to live this life that is an appropriate response to the desire and hope of the better life to come?
Perhaps that's where C.S. Lewis' observation rings true, that with every decision, we are becoming a creature more fit for heaven or a creature more fit for hell... So, as I anxiously await that happily ever after, is the point of this life to teach us how live within heaven's kingdom? Or simply for us to tell other people to cry out to Jesus to save them so they can go there, too, leaving us scurrying for converts so we can feel like we're succeeding?
I am currently wrestling with finding some purpose in life, if you can't tell =)
It's late. Thanks for reading... Goodnight!
No comments:
Post a Comment