In the face of death...

...people do different things. What is it that drives some to live life to the fullest, some to party harder, some to become philanthropic, some to repent, some to work harder than they have ever worked before...?

According to The New York Times, the actor Patrick Swayze (Dirty Dancing, Ghost) has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Seemingly, the thing that drives him is finishing the role that he plays in his current TV show "The Beast" where he is playing a wise older cop with a sketchy past. Swayze says that his character in the show is "multilayered, unpredictable, and downright entertaining" and he indicated that he had been searching for this type of character for a long time. He is leaving his doctors at Stanford and traveling accross the country to film the show.

What drives this man? Is it a lasting impression? A namesake? A genuine love of acting? Certainly his desire to work and produce good drama until his death is admirable, but something in his attitude makes me uncomfortable. He says, "I'm in great condition. I'm a cowboy. I'm a dancer. I'll beat this."

I'm glad he is not "eating and drinking for tomorrow we die," but is there any time for reflection of purpose, for reconcilliation, for repentance (no knowledge of his spiritual state). This might be the very last thing he ever does. Indeed, it may kill him. The "Living like you're dying" sentiment is an interesting one and I'm not sure that it is biblical, but you have to wonder what he is thinking. Don't you?

I felt like I was in an Indie film

Our department at the Lincoln Journal Star handles the obituaries among other things. I had a really interesting moment the other day with a middle-aged lady who writes obituaries for us. I was standing beside the fax machine waiting for a copy and she came up beside me.

Obit Lady: "I am a horrible person"


Me: " Why?"


OL: "Because I get these obituary requests, and I just laugh at them. I mean, I laugh at these dead people."

Me: "oh"

OL: "I mean, just the other day. I got an obit for a lady with the last name "Coffin" and I just couldn't stop laughing. I just kept laughin' and laughin' "


Me: "Oh...really" (seriously, what do you say?)


OL: "And then there is this" (she shows me a picture of a lady, recently deceased. It was an obit that I had just handed her from the fax machine.) "Look at this lady, she has this ridiculous red lipstick on....(she trails off) I mean she looks like my Grandma."


Then she sat back down at her desk.

Life as a tragicomedy. This lady works full time with us, so she is writing about dead people, seeing their pictures, and talking to their families for 40 hours every week. Her situation is understandable, she must find humor in her everyday life just like the rest of us. In general, though, its strange how the things that hurt us the most also have the ability to make us laugh the hardest. Some people say that we have to laugh to shield ourselves from the reality of completely harsh world. Obviously, I don't think that our situation is that hopeless. But the reality is that we live in a broken world, so I can certainly relate.

Indecision

Most of my friends are reactionary people.  When it comes to theology, they are reactionary theologians.  This doesn't necessarily  mean that they are reckless or whimsical.  What I mean is that they inundate themselves with a steady flow of ideas and immediately or almost immediately react with either a positive or negative response.  They almost always end up qualifying their first reaction or sometimes completely abandon it, but in the short term, they readjust the lens of their worldview to reflect their new ideas.  In other words, they quickly resort to a decision about a given topic.

I am not this way.  I seem to almost always fall back to indecision.  I'm a perpetual fence rider.  I have been identified as the "middle man" in countless of my friends' religious and political discussions.  Lately, I have been thinking that I need to be more reactionary.  I do think that indecision does have benefits.  It helps you lead a more careful life, and keeps you from often making your brothers and sisters stumble.  But leading a life that is characterized by indecision has at least a couple of negative side effects:

1. It makes the world impossibly complex.  I sometimes feel like I am unqualified to talk about anything because I have not read every book on the subject.  My typical way of approaching theological issues is that I must read at least one book on each side of an argument.  Then I need to talk to pastors on the varying sides and see what they agree and disagree about.  This is certainly a wise choice of action in some very important matters, but if your life is characterized by this method of research, you will drown in a sea of complexity-- never feeling any accomplishment.

2. It leads to a kind of pride.  I don't like being wrong.  I often feel uncertain about saying something because I might change my mind in the months that follow and feel foolish that I identified myself with the wrong group.  Their is safety in indecision, no one thinks that you went out on a limb.

Once again, I am not saying that we should be carried away by every wind of doctrine.  I just think that we can interface with this Christian life a lot better if we allow ourselves to take hold of a new ideas and quickly categorize them.  Then we are free to move on with our lives while slowly digesting the decisions we have made. 

Quick thought

If a garden was the image of a perfect relationship with God before sin entered the world and a city (New Jerusalem in Rev. 21) is the image of that harmonious relationship restored in Christ, is the Bible encouraging the building of cities? Is urbanization a means by which we further the Kingdom on earth?

hmmm...