The "Problems" of this life
As a young man, I beleive it to quite natural to look at the world, and try to pinpoint the problems. One looks at education, and the amount of money spent on educating the next generation, and he wonders, where is it all going wrong? Or take the whole world (as if that was at all possible), and imagine a world without the violence. Where a man can simply think about another family, not even need to see their faces, or know their story, and wish them well, (as if simply that would be enough).
I'm learning more and more that the problems of this life are tied directly to this life. They are tied to individual aspirations for greatness, which at once looks terrific. Everyone would like a parade in their honor. And at the same time terrible. For we have spent too much on streamers and floats, and now everyone would like a parade, and we are willing for forget that image of another family in need.
And so many of the things in life which give us grief, that we would so like to identify: the bullies (who really is the bully), the greedy businessman, the selfish husband, the reckless wife, the snot-nosed kid, is really just ourselves. Much of greed is drawn from the old man, grasping onto whatever he has left, tired of it all. The kids that I watch in school today, that are ball-hogs, and unkind, and "bullies", that was me. They know no better.
So is this a problem of man's simple darkness. Of our absolute absence of any kind of good without a Maker's hand? Or is all of our good, any kind of (well, not even close to alltruism really) goodness whatsoever simply because their is a God. That the guilt in our hearts is a map to what we crave more than all. More than the parade, the riches, the attention, the "belongingness". That it is indeed a map to be as far from ourselves as possible. To rid ourselves of what is the true bully, the true selfishness, the true recklessness and greed.
I look forward to that Heaven, if that is what it should be. To rid myself of all of that. I am the problem in life.
I'm learning more and more that the problems of this life are tied directly to this life. They are tied to individual aspirations for greatness, which at once looks terrific. Everyone would like a parade in their honor. And at the same time terrible. For we have spent too much on streamers and floats, and now everyone would like a parade, and we are willing for forget that image of another family in need.
And so many of the things in life which give us grief, that we would so like to identify: the bullies (who really is the bully), the greedy businessman, the selfish husband, the reckless wife, the snot-nosed kid, is really just ourselves. Much of greed is drawn from the old man, grasping onto whatever he has left, tired of it all. The kids that I watch in school today, that are ball-hogs, and unkind, and "bullies", that was me. They know no better.
So is this a problem of man's simple darkness. Of our absolute absence of any kind of good without a Maker's hand? Or is all of our good, any kind of (well, not even close to alltruism really) goodness whatsoever simply because their is a God. That the guilt in our hearts is a map to what we crave more than all. More than the parade, the riches, the attention, the "belongingness". That it is indeed a map to be as far from ourselves as possible. To rid ourselves of what is the true bully, the true selfishness, the true recklessness and greed.
I look forward to that Heaven, if that is what it should be. To rid myself of all of that. I am the problem in life.
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