Worldviews: Destiny

"Human life and consciousness requires, by its very nature, a projected future." -Dallas Willard

The fourth question that we will look at in this series is that of Destiny: What does our future hold? It is essential to our existence that we hold onto a vision of what is to come. You could say that we are obsessed with the future, always moving and acting in response to what we believe lies ahead. The future is what gives meaning to our daily actions, its what enlivens and empowers us to continue and persist. It gives us hope. But there is seemingly an end point for each one of us, a finish line for our life. We call this death. The question is, if death is the absolute end for each one of us how can we possibly live with the knowledge that there ultimately is no future for us? We will look at three different ways that we can approach this:

The first is that we can simply ignore it. We can disregard the fact that we will ever die, we can remove it from our thinking. We can live as if this life will go on for eternity, as if death is so far away that it is infinitely minute and thus worthless to even consider. But this won't change the fact that death is coming, and there will most likely come a point where we must consider it and despair is sure to follow. The following excerpt from Jean-Paul Sartre's The Wall (can find it here - http://faculty.risd.edu/dkeefer/pod/wall.pdf) illustrates this point very well - this is from a man who is going to be executed the following day:

"At that moment I felt that I had my whole life in front of me and I thought, "It's a damned lie." It was worth nothing because it was finished. I wondered how I'd been able to walk, to laugh with the girls: I wouldn't have moved so much as my little finger if I had only imagined I would die like this. My life was in front of me, shut, closed, like a bag and yet everything inside of it was unfinished. For an instant I tried to judge it. I wanted to tell myself, this is a beautiful life. But I couldn't pass judgment on it; it was only a sketch; I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity, I had understood nothing. I missed nothing: there were so many things I could have missed, the taste of manzanilla or the baths I took in summer in a little creek near Cadiz; but death had disenchanted everything."

However, there is another option if we don't want to simply ignore it. We can vicariously continue through our fellow man. We can take "my future" and move it to "our future". The future of man or the future of this earth. Yes we will die but the human race will remain and go on to multiply and flourish. We can take heart that our race will not die out and we can do our part to ensure that it continues. But even here, the despair will set in when we realize that our race and our universe has an expiration date - eventually everything will collapse and there will be nothing left of any of us.

Is it inevitable then? Are we doomed to live in the dread and despair that death brings?

 

Absolutely not! There is third option that does not end in despair but in joy and it comes when we place our trust in the only person to ever defeat death, that is Jesus Christ who has "abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." He says that "Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die." Jesus Christ ensures our future and by doing so he gives meaning and hope to us right now. And when we die we will enter into the "joy of our Lord" (Matt 25:21), our bodies will be transformed into glorious ones (Phil 3:21), and we will rule with Him forever and ever (Rev 2:26, 3:21).

As such the follower of Christ is not afraid of death as others are (see http://www.dennyburk.com/chavezs-last-words-and-yours/) but can experience death with confidence knowing that better things await and can presently live a life full of love, joy, and hope that is only found in the one and only eternal God.

Worldviews, Morality: What is good?

In Plato's dialogue, Euthyphro, Socrates asks the title character whether that which is pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or whether it is pious because it is loved by the gods. In other words, Socrates wishes to know if something is pious merely because the gods have ordained and determined it to be pious or is there actually a universal understanding of piety that the gods recognize and thus love.

I would say the same question could be asked of morality. Is something good, or evil, because God has stated that it is good, or was it good to begin with, and thus God recognizes and supports its goodness?

Morality in a Post-Modern World

The prevailing belief in our post-modern culture supports the latter proposition: Good exists in and of itself, and if there is a god, that being must recognize and support the existence of that good. Defining good, however, is much more difficult. In fact, this worldview has often refused to define that which is good, and instead chosen to focus on decrying that which is evil. Evil, of course, would be anything that harms or injures another individual who did not deserve to have that harm occur. Evil would include murders, thefts, assaults, defrauding, and a host of actions which cause pain and hardship to those who are undeserving. Good, as an undefined opposite, is simply everything else; those actions that do not directly cause harm or injury to other individuals. Thus, in popular culture, good is often left undefined, and in our increasingly post-modern culture, is a decision of each individual's conscience.

Religious Morality

In opposition, the vast majority of world religions would say that good does not exist in and of itself, but instead, by the decrees and determinations of God. That means that something that is good is only that which God has determined and decreed to be good; that which is evil is that which God has determined and decreed to be evil. In this worldview, there is a strict code of morality. There is no room for personal determinations or decisions on conscience. Instead, there is only a clearly defined code of moral law.

The Biblical View of Morality

However, God's view of good is starkly different from both of these views. The Bible doesn't tell us that something is good because God determined it to be so or because it was good and God recognized it as so. Instead, the Bible simply tells us that God -IS- good. In other words, that which is good is that which is from God, serves God, and pleases God.

For example, when the rich young ruler addressed Christ as "good teacher," and asked Him how to inherit eternal life, Christ's first response was, "Why do you call me good? No one is good - except God alone." (Luke 18:19) In this passage, Christ did not deny his deity. Instead, he merely refuted the young man's statement. The young man believed that Christ was good because of his value and wisdom as a teacher. Essentially, he believed that Christ was good because He could discern the moral code that would grant eternal life. But Christ's initial response was simple: there is no good, except for God. It's fitting, then, that Christ answered the young man's question with the simple command to "Follow Me."

Therefore, to be good, something must be related to or in service of God. In Romans, Paul quotes the Psalmist as saying, "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God ... there is no one who does good, not even one." (Romans 3:10-12) Simply put, Paul recognizes that no one is good, and no one does good, because no one seeks after God. Goodness, then, is not something that can tangibly be pursued. It is not something that can be reached or obtained. Instead, goodness is the result of pursuing the will of the only One who is good, God. To be good, then, means to follow and seek after God. It means to obey His will, purposefully and devotedly.