The Goal: Every Moment(.) On Purpose

…partially prompted by Charles L.’s recent post, though it’s been sitting in my “to_blog.txt” file for a while.

Not to bore you, but I recently found these poems that I wrote in 2001, which will be my artistic introduction:

i finally have the right perspective of life
i did yesterday
tomorrow is a new day
i wonder if i will finally have the right perspective of life tomorrow

today it’s not that hard to live
i just need to be patient
i’ll just roll with life until the end
until i’m in heaven, where i don’t need a perspective

yesterday i need to spread the gospel
so that more people can go to heaven
i should spend all my time investing in other souls
that way less people are wasted

tomorrow is always in the future
God is sovereign, a choice made by me
i wonder if i will finally have the right perspective of life tomorrow
i wonder if tomorrow will ever come

and

she looks the same as she ever did
when she smiles
or was i not paying enough attention to the way she used to smile?
i can’t see the lies, pain, guilt
the only reason i can imagine them there is because i know they exist

ah, well. life goes on for me
it doesn’t for others
whenever it doesn’t for me
it does for others
it shouldn’t for me
or should, if it did for others

you should let life go on so that you can get to heaven
regardless
of who you think might go to hell
you can’t give up your place for someone else
like you can here

Childhood: The story I believed (my ‘framing story’) was that there was a place in the infinite afterlife called Heaven, and God controlled who did and did not enter, and Heaven was (much) better than Earth. I remember coming up with a plan when I was, oh, younger than 8, in which I would drop out of school, lock myself in my bedroom with a Bible for a few years, and once I’d become as holy as I thought necessary, I’d kill myself for a straight route to heaven. Very logical, actually, if you think about it.

Adolescence: I resented being alive while there was a better place reserved for me upon death. I really couldn’t fathom the point of sticking around on Earth. I thought God had made a stupid system.

Young-adulthood: Martyrdom sounded like a noble career path. Obviously I was more interested in leaving my world than being truly pious towards God. Somewhere along the line, my logic concluded that evangelism was the sole point of living, because within this framing story, it’s the only logical reason why humans don’t die once they place allegiance in God’s way. This grieved me, because of all things, evangelism as I knew it took the spark and substance right out of life. 1) I’m an introvert, and 2) I hate sales. I hated the point of life.

As much as I seek truth, I began (since childhood, I’m sure) to piece together other possible scenarios. Other framing stories. Ones that would fit better with the life that I’ve experienced. The unaddressed questions kept nagging at me (”Why does history tell us that individuals and groups of people aligned their allegiance with God before the idea of Heaven existed?” and et cetera, not to mention any of my questions about Hell), until I stopped practicing belief in the matter. I’d usually skirt the issue in conversation or when ministering.

I think throughout the American Christian culture there was a broad spirit of discontent about the notion of Heaven and the popular Christian amount of emphasis placed on it, because eventually, I found out I was far from being the only one having these problems with Heaven. As quickly as I heard others’ voices on the matter (oh, three years ago or so), my discontent was legitimized and I was on my way to a new framing story, which is something like

I think Jesus was inviting people to participate in a new kind of Kingdom that was to actively participate in the world of the now with the things that resonate close to the heart of God.

(I think my jump to the quote might need the context of the rest of Charles’ post. I depends on how much you’re already in this… conversation).

Beirut - Scenic World (Lyrics). (Beirut won over Death Cab’s “I Will Follow You into the Dark” and Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth”)

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.