Earn It

Yesterday, I finally got around to watching "Saving Private Ryan." The film is deeply moving, and the ending is especially memorable.
"Earn it," are the final words of John Hamilton to Private Ryan as he lay dying.

The movie later shows Ryan in his old age, tormented by this final demand. He turns to his wife, "Am I a good man? Have I lived well? Did I earn it?"

And it struck me that the very thing that Hamilton had wanted was corrupted by his own demand.
He wanted the lives of several men who had died to save Ryan to be consummated in one life.
Ryan's life.
He wanted Private Ryan to earn something which he could not earn and made him, instead of a man who gave back to society with no restraint, a man eternally tormented by his inability to do so...

Thank the Lord that He has not asked us to earn His love or even His physical sacrifice.
He hasn't asked us to earn one another's lives either but to, with gladness and of our own choice, relinquish our lives unto each other and ultimately unto Him.
And this is not just a demand for the dying, but even more for the living. Sacrificial deaths are always preceded by sacrificial lives.

But really, there is nothing so opposite of the world's mandate to "earn" our place than God's call to die; this is even more far reaching than the aforementioned point describes.

In the course of man's life, the world's sacred song tells us to find our greatest personal happiness, survive and thrive as long as we can and our health allows and to pursue our passions for which we lust with reckless abandon.
God says, "Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me."
Read the last two sentences again until you can see the direct contradictions (which I did not even attempt to articulate in my first draft). Let their implications sink in...

...But all of this is hopeful rather than despairing, because it means all we have to do is relinquish that which is so greatly over-esteemed but which is truly worthless for that which nobody desires but is actually beyond price...

Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge illustrates this far better than I:

How can I ever explain to those who insist that we must believe in the world to love it that it is because I disbelieve in the world that I love every breath I take, look forward with ever greater delight to the coming of each spring, rejoice evermore in the companionship of my fellow-humans, to no single one of whom, searching my heart, do I wish ill, and of no single one of whom do I wish to separate myself, in word or thought or deed, or in some prospect of some other existence beyond the ticking of the clocks, the vista of the hills, the bounds and dimensions of our earthly hopes and distress? To accept the world as a destination rather than a staging-post, and the experience of living in it as life's full significance, would seem to me to reduce life to something far to banal and trivial to be taken seriously or held in esteem... In other words, the Christian proposition that he who lives his life in this world shall lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will see it projected unto eternity, is for living, not dying.

-Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, Chronicle 1: The Green Stick

I love pondering this quote because it is full of the life, worth and wealth of the gospel of which the New Testament implodes and of which modern apologetics is notoriously lacking. It is time that we stopped talking with such lengthy despondency about all we have had to sell or burn in order to pave the road for Christ and began talking of the precious jewel that is eternally ours.

Do It for You

As someone who loves to write, I've often heard the advise from fellow enthusiasts, "You have to write as if you were the only one ever going to see your work; if you keep thinking about how other people will feel about what you're writing, you are never going to love it and neither will anyone else" or some variation of this.

I think this statement is true- but it's only partially true. I've wrestled with this a whole lot because it's a statement I've always felt my gut react too; I've always felt that it wasn't fully true, but I could never say why...

The only way I can think to communicate this is with the example of physical art: It's widely accepted for an artist to feel that "it's just them and their piece, nothing else matters." This is the equivalent to an author thinking only about how she feels about her story. But here's the issue: the world is bigger than you and I. Our message, whether communicated through art or words, should be bigger than ourselves too, shouldn't it?

We must think of those receiving our work. We must consider if it will move them to action or only entertain them; we must ask ourselves if our stories are ringing true to life or if they are our own fabricated fairytale endings; we must be bold with the truth.

If our stories or art pieces are so hovered over and coddled by our personal feelings and intuition, then all we have accomplished is a work which is for us a reminder of our intrinsic flaws and for others, we've only confused or misled.

Our lives are not, in fact, individual. Neither is God's plan for us. We are unique, yes, but God doesn't have a specific plan for my life because I'm so different and talented and "shaped from a different mold." His specific plan is to bring the Gospel into every corner of the world and He will use my unique personality because He is gracious and not because I am the answer to the world's crisis.

If I am so caught up in my uniqueness that I refuse to let the Lord mold and shape me into a new being, I will never be useful to my Master. I will never be a brick who fits into His spiritual house of which Christ is the Cornerstone. My story will stay a story about self and will say nothing to the world of redemption.

So by all means, write. Write a story, even your own! But don't make it about you. Don't shield yourself from your own criticism or cleanse yourself of flaws. Don't refuse to be a Christian who confesses their sin before others: believe me, it's already known.  Every Christian's story, if truthfully told, begins with the awful, gut-wrenching reality of sin and is somewhere intercepted by the unbelievable, life-changing, reality of a Babe born in a stable.

If you don't spell out your life in terms of reality no one will ever stick with you until you reach the part about redemption...