What We Do In Life

"Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity." - Maximus Decimus Meridius (Gladiator)

(Might I mention now that if you have not seen the movie Gladiator, make that a #1 on your list of priorities. Thanks!)

My friends,

I believe it fair to say that many hearts have been stirred by these great words delivered by Russell Crowe in Gladiator. There's something somewhat bewitching to think that we have that sort of power. There's something very comforting about imagining that we could move the world, move the cosmos even, by our lives. There's certainly something that calls to us and builds in our imagination a picture of greatness or even of heroism. There may even be a bit of a challenge in our experience of those words, a pondering deep within about our own strength and courage, and if we too could do something that might "echo in eternity."

I have no intention of discrediting the power of that moment or the movie itself (I think it is a very good and dramatic reflection on what it is to be human), but I would like to draw a more universal point from the line. Assuming that one accepts eternal life and the immortality of the human soul (the human being) once in existence, there ought to be a simple question begged by this idea of our actions 'echoing in eternity.' It should be... don't all of our actions echo in eternity, if we are going to look at it in that light? If what we do at some pivotal and dramatic moment will necessarily affect our lives and the lives of countless others and in some way 'echo in eternity,' how could it not be the case that everything we do, at any and every moment, also affects ourselves and others and will have some effect in eternity? Please understand, I am not implying that eternity is what is up for grabs or subject to change here - we will leave that as a fixed mark, as a truth that we will understand in its fullness when our time comes. Yet, as far as we will one day exist in a state that is different and non-temporal, our actions here on earth (while we live this life) do have a relation to life after life.

This could become a very simple argument for "living a good life" so that we can "go to heaven" or so that we do not "end up in hell." Yet, my intention is more than just a moral life, although it does assume a moral life ultimately. The point is that most people in our modern culture can easily understand the separation between action and consequence that we grow up with. It is not that we refuse all responsibility for our actions (though that does happen), but that we seem to have some serious filters keeping our ideals or beliefs trapped in our vocabulary and making them unable to trickle down to our hearts, bodies and whole selves.

For example, there are many who profess to care greatly about health; they eat well, exercise, perhaps they only by farm-fresh produce...yet they engage in sexual activity that endangers them with diseases, or they binge drink on the weekends, or they smoke, etc... A different example could be someone who professes to be Christian (and lives as a Christian) but votes and advocates pro-choice agendas, which is essentially an advocacy for mothers to be able to kill their unborn and innocent children (which is NOT compatible with Christianity). Consider how our standards for movie ratings seem to imply that young people can appropriately view what ought to be deeply private and intimate between a man and a woman (sexual activity in PG-13 movies), but may not be able to appropriately view violence or death (often causes for R ratings for movies). I am not advocating that things in R rated movies ought to be viewed by more people, but rather, there is a disparity in modern culture between what is professed and what is acted out. A disparity between truth and the way we act according to a different set of truths we assume based on convenience or habit. Forgive me, but even the disconnect between a man who is a loving father and husband and the times when he is looking at porn...these examples are realities throughout our modern culture, and the roots are deeper than simply "we ought to be good" or "we ought not to be evil."

In all of these cases, the weight of the immoral or disordered behaviors seems to be lost or forgotten. Men and women seem highly susceptible to misunderstanding how deeply and thoroughly truths run. Our bodies mean something, in the here and now, and also for what will be. Our words also carry a level of profundity. Certainly, we are still mere creatures, and the mercy and love of God has been revealed to be abundant and unconditional, but this should mean that we recognize our need to accept the truth of our world and ourselves and our relationships to and with others, rather than behave as if it is all irrelevant since we can say sorry later. It is hard for me to really grasp the vapors of steam that are rising from my interior when I think about the duplicity we are raised with in society!

Needless to say, double standards exist all around us, and can be sighted quite easily when we open our eyes to them. Yet, the trouble is that so few people seem interested in being able to see anymore. People seem content with blindness, content with living in this limping fashion. But the blind are unable to see how bad the wounds are that they are creating for themselves and others by this kind of living. We are too integrated as human persons, too thoroughly body-soul, to survive this kind of constant tearing apart. We cannot continue to say we love Jesus and then abuse our brothers and sisters in our words and actions. And if "abuse" is too strong a word, than accept "lie." For when we tell someone we love them, or behave in a way that typically implies that we love them (such as sexual activity) whether we love them or not, but we do so while acting other than in true love (which requires a commitment and promise of oneself, a gift of self that can only be given in totality through marriage), than we do lie to them, and we do abuse them in different ways. We also abuse ourselves. This is the thing that I find most astonishing, how little connection we make even within our own interior awareness or self-knowledge. If we are unable to conceive of how we are hurting another whom we ought to treat with respect, we ought to at least realize the damage we are doing to ourselves. But sin has been denied. We will not be rebuked or told that we must behave according to some set of rules, even if they are so natural and inscribed in us that we cannot escape them for all of our refusal to acknowledge them.

Perhaps I am walking too far into the woods of abstract thought. To be concrete, I firmly believe that our lived experience of the world demands that we recognize that how we behave, the actions that we make, will always have some influence and effect on our own person and also on others and the world at large. It is really ridiculous to imagine that creatures who begin existence in-relation to other creatures (aka, no one is born without coming from two parents) could then live life without always being related to other creatures in this same type of constitutive sense. And if we are constituted in relation, than our responses, invitations, participations or refusals will always impact us and others. Sipping your water bottle is clearly less affective of others than it is for yourself, and most likely it is not an action that is in danger of immorality, but it still means something that we choose to sip it or are able to sip it, etc...

At the end of the day, the point is to reconsider how seriously one takes life. Do not give up fun, or laughter, or silliness, or impulsivity. Yet, do not allow yourself to be dominated by impulses that are not guided and ordered by a moral order of love, by the truth. Do not allow the duplicity that meets us at every corner to sink in and take root in your mind and heart. Do not accept that every barely-clothed woman on the cover of a magazine is beautiful simply because she is barely-clothed; she deserves more than that, she is certainly not only her body. You deserve more than that, you should not be in a position where you are only considering her as a body nor should you have it reinforced in your mind that beauty is nothing more than parts that have been emphasized that are really one with a much greater whole. It is the person who is beautiful, but our culture has forgotten what and who people are.

I challenge us all to consider Maxiumus' line once more. We cannot be so simplistic that we really accept that our actions and behavior in life affects only us, and that the affect is only skin deep. No, we feel, deep in our souls, the brokenness we live. We become shaped and formed by the habits we build. We need to sense once more in our hearts the transcendence of the human person. We need to reawaken our sensibility to our relationship to others, the world, and of course, to God. We need to reopen our eyes and ears to understand the depth and breadth of truth and love that order our world. We cannot find fulfillment, happiness, peace, hope, true love, if we will not strive to live as whole people, as truly human. We will never find an end to the restless search if we fail to understand how integrated we are, and how much our behavior can and does mean.

"Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity."