a musing ames

Figures of history have gripped my imagination and retained my wonder since I was a little girl.  A character didn’t have to do much to interest me.  The very fact that people remember them piqued my curiosity.  People like Abraham Lincoln, the Pharohs, Annie Oakley.  People who existed before modern postal systems, let alone the Google age of information sharing.  Yet somehow, there was something about each of them, that over the decades, centuries, millennia between when they stopped walking this earth and I began to, people have found a need to not only preserve their memory but pass it to the next generation.

So I majored in history in college, to learn more about these people and why we remember them.  Maybe the hidden motivation of my heart was to find out how to make sure history remembers me too.

This week I bought a book at Barnes and Noble, The Sabbath, by Abraham Joshua Heschel.  A friend recommended the author, the topic always interests me, and I was looking for a distraction from Tort Law.  It’s the perfect distraction.  Easy to read yet profound, I often find myself picking it up instead of my textbooks, to read just a chapter to rest my mind for a bit.

In the book I recently read an allegory of a rabbi critical of the Roman rule of Israel, not just because they were oppressive rulers, but because of their very approach to life.  Emphasis on space, on grandour.  As Heschel analyzed the rabbi, compared him and his philosophy for living to the Roman approach, he indicated that there are two concepts of eternity competing with each other illustrated here.

The first is the Roman perspective.  To live eternally is to live on in history, to live your life in such a way that you will be remembered for eternity, even after you die.  That was the only Roman concept of the afterlife.

The second is the rabbi’s perspective.  To live as one aspiring for eternal life.

Two completely different lifestyles pursue these perspectives.  Both perspectives require intentionality on the part of the actor.  They way you view eternity determines the way you live your life.  If you are living your life to be remembered for eternity, you may be disqualifying yourself from living eternally.

Which makes me examine my own life. Am I living my life simply to be remembered for eternity but not to live eternally?  Because if that is the case, I have little hope.  This earth will only last so long, and even as long as it does, the Bible is clear.  “For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten.”  Ecclesiastes 2:16.

Yet, I can’t help but think that there’s nothing wrong with the desire to live a life that is remembered by history.  “…Also, He has put eternity into man’s heart…”  Ecclesiastes 3:11.  “I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before Him.”  Ecclesiastes 3:14.

Because we are created in the image of God, and what God makes lasts forever, it only seems natural as His children that we have the hope and expectation that what we do, what we make, what we say, will have an impact and be remembered.

I think it goes back to the CS Lewis quote from my last post.  Aim at heaven, you get the earth thrown in.  Aim at the earth, and you get neither.  Aim at the history books, and you may not even make it in there.  Aim for that relationship with God, where He gives eternal life, and He will make your life one that will impact others, maybe one that will even make the history books.

I don’t just want to be remembered by history.  I want to live for eternity.

“I am the bread of life.”  John 6:48.

I imagine it like this:  The next morning, people’s growling stomachs began to wake them up.  If they were anything like me, the first thing they thought about was the last thing they had to eat.  For them it was a feast…of fish, and bread.  Jesus fed them…all of them…well over 5000 (they only counted the men).  And there were leftovers!  Perhaps one by one, or in family units, or within groups of friends, they began to think, “if He could feed us all yesterday, why not today?  Let’s go ask for more.  Hey, where’d He go?”

The search began.  And continued.  They finally found him on the other side of the sea.  Perhaps nearly forgetting the original reason they sought him out they asked, “Rabbi, When did you come here?”  John 6:25.

His response both reminded them of the reason they searched for Him and surprised them, cutting them to their core:  “…you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.  Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you…” John 6: 26,27.

He’s telling them, “You’re looking for Me because you are hungry.  But you’re looking for Me for the wrong reasons.”

It’s something like this.  There is one nice Italian restaurant in the town that I’m living in.  Nice is an understatement.  It makes Oliver Garden look like Fazoli’s.  The tables have real linens, the host pulls the chair out for you, the waiters wear vests and bow ties, and the food is not affordable on a graduate student’s budget.  Now, if you go in there, you sit down, and when the waiter takes your order you ask for some Chef Boyardee, you have completely missed the point of going to that restaurant.

It’s the same with Jesus.  He doesn’t just want us to search for Him because He can keep our stomachs from growling.  Or so we can get good grades.  Or so we can attain any of those earthly things that we think will keep us satisfied with life.

Can He provide those things?  Of course.  “For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”  Matthew 6:32.

But He doesn’t just want to feed us.  He wants us to seek Him for the right reasons, reasons based on who He is and what He really has to offer.  Eternal things.  Life.  “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  Matthew 6:33.

C.S. Lewis put it this way, “It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.  Aim at Heaven and you will get the earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and will get neither.”

So my question is this:  Why are you, why am I, seeking Jesus?  For just a temporal fix?  A loaf of bread?  A job?  Or even world peace?  If that’s it, we’re missing the point.  He has more to give.  Seek Jesus simply because He’s Jesus, and He has life to give, and He wants to have a real relationship with you. He’ll thrown the rest in.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse.  That is a rule of our criminal justice system.  Even if you do not know that the over the counter drug that you purchased in state X is illegal in state Y, if you bring it into state Y you are guilty of breaking the law.

Why?  Because criminal law supposes that you know the law.  You know that what you are doing is wrong. that is why society decides to make these actions criminally punishable to discourage people from engaging in certain behavior and punishing them according to their desert.  With some of the newer crimes, this doesn’t quite make sense.  How are you supposed to “know” in state Y that having a certain amount of pseudoephedrine is criminal, even though it is not in state X?  But the doctrine of no excuse for mistake of law came into play before these types of crimes.  When crimes were limited to things like murder, rape, robbery.  You know those things are wrong.  You just know.

Really?  I can’t believe my ears when I hear the professor say this.  That the reason we punish some behavior so harshly is because we know that it is wrong.  It is amoral.  And part of the reason we have law is to codify the moral intuitions we share to bring order to our society.

The more I hear things like this, the more I study the law, the more convinced I am: there has to be such thing as moral absolutes.  Truth.  Objective Law.  I wonder if my professors realize it.  I feel like they must.  Then again, I wonder how scientists can study the natural world so closely and not see the fingerprints of a loving Creator everywhere they look.  But I digress.

Even though they aren’t coming out and saying it, my professors every day pay homage to the fact that there must be some objective moral standard, one that we can’t quite get at perfectly with our laws, but we try, because we realize this is how we must govern our lives.  Some great Law, out there, somewhere, that we all some how know, down here.  I wonder where they think this Law comes from.  It has to come from somewhere.  Rather, it has to come from Someone.

“For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.  They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.”  Romans 2:14-16

Ignorance of God’s law is no excuse.  Why?  Because we know it.  Because He wrote it on our hearts.