Christian Living

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Larry Lilly’s Letter Tuesday January 8, 2008

Sunday past I gave my congregants the opportunity to feast on my grand sermon, (Mom’s description) The Stewardship of Life. The scriptures use the term life 431 times and it is always contextually dealing with losing, wasting, enjoying or using it for the benefit of others. The brevity and fragility of life is attested to many times, thus urging all who read to get with the business of truly living the life abundant.

There are many ideas about life’s purpose floating around all of which can be reduced to two; number one in popularity: “Life is all about me.” Number two: “Life makes demands of me.” Each of these ideas about life can be expressed in religious terms, but the truth is they are there whether you are religious or not. President Kennedy expressed it in one of his speeches when he said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather ask; what can I do for my country.” He understood the difference.

That the clergy has failed in communicating the difference in these two competing philosophies about life is attested to by the groups who are saying “this is what God says, adjust,” and the other group which is saying, “Sure God said that, but what do you think and how do you ‘feel’ about it.” You can have a “feel good” philosophy about life and come to place where you realize the ultimate emptiness.

When I was young I read a book by a man who had survived the concentration camp in Germany. He was a Jewish man and during his imprisonment his young wife was interred in the adjoining camp and one day the smoke from her burning body went up the chimney. I have made a habit of re-reading “Man’s Search For Meaning” once a year for fifty years. One passage from Viktor Frankl’s classic on life says this:

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

The idea of refusing to blame life or God for a lousy life is not new with Frankl, but I often use his book to help Christians who should already know most of what he teaches from their study of the Bible come to grips with the true Christian perspective on life that we are not to permit circumstances to determine the quality of our inner life, but to develop the mature faith that believes what is going on inside of me is vastly more important than what is going on around me. As a Christian I use WHO, meaning Christ, going on inside of me. Commenting on this Frankl said, “We have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”

So, honestly, what is life expecting of you, today?

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2008 Use with credit.

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