The Selfless Act of Living
Both Jonah and Paul want to die in our Old Testament and New Testament readings this week. While Jonah may simply be engaging in some over-dramatic, childish pouting, Paul appears to be genuine. To die would mean going to be with Christ, freedom from not only his current imprisonment, but also from a life full of hardship and suffering in general. Paul wants to be with Christ in bliss and joy for all time. He considers it “far better” to “depart and be with Christ” than to continue living. However, he is confident that he will continue his mortal work. The reason for this confidence is stated in Philippians 1:24. Paul remaining alive is necessary for his audience. He will go on living, despite his suffering and imprisonment because his life is good for other people.
I remember being a little kid and having a conversation with my parents that would sound crazy today. As a child, first wrapping my head around heaven, I thought I wanted to go there as soon as possible. It sounds great, no getting sick, no getting hurt, just happiness and joy all the time. We can see relatives we have lost. No one gets old. No one dies. Most importantly, God is there. Heaven sounds like an excellent place to be, and if that is the case, why not skip through all the earthly struggles and go there quickly? If Heaven is really so good, why would we sit around here and get hurt, sick, mocked by peers, fight wars, pay taxes, get hungry and thirsty, and all the other things that make life hard?
To be clear, I was not contemplating suicide. I wasn’t a miserable kid, and I didn’t want to hurt myself. Rather, I was just excited to be in Heaven. Of course, my parents didn’t really like this train of thought. They lovingly countered that being in Heaven might be really nice for me, but they would be sad if I were gone. And, as a child, that was pretty convincing. I didn’t want to make my parents sad.
As a child, I had wild aspirations, but none of them were really grounded in reality. Sure, I wanted to be the President of the United States, but I didn’t know how to do it or even what it really meant to hold the office. I believed I could help people and make the world a better place simply because I had been told so by trusted adults. I didn’t actually have any idea how to achieve that goal aside from being nice to people and maybe picking up trash that I found along the side of the street.
As an adult, I see things much more clearly. I have an actual practical idea about how I could make the world a better place. I’m probably never going to become the President or have anywhere near that kind of power, but I do have a better idea of how I can make a difference on a local level. I suspect the same is true for most people, but if you are having trouble articulating what good you can do for the world, consider talking to your pastor about it. Hopefully they can help you discern what God is calling you to do. You may find that you are already doing it and simply aren’t giving yourself enough credit. Or, you may be surprised to find that God wants you to go to seminary and become a pastor or deacon yourself. Whatever the case, as adults, we should be able to see the paths we can take to make the world a better place. Therefore, the argument should stand that we ought not try to hurry to Heaven, nor engage in self-destructive behavior, nor do anything that could harm ourselves. We are living for the good we can do for the world, and we still have work to do.
While this argument might make sense intellectually and we might even value the premises on which it is based, it runs into trouble when we consider depression, trauma, and mental health problems in general. For some people, the pain of existing in this life is greater than any hope they could help the world. Some people feel like they are spinning their wheels and not moving. Some people find certain situations so anxiety inducing and stressful that they cannot function normally. They feel trapped in their own thoughts because anyone who doesn’t share their trauma couldn’t possibly understand what they are going through no matter how much they talk about it, which just further perpetuates the grinding cycle of isolation.
I sincerely hope that everyone who bears these burdens finds ways to navigate life as healthfully as possible, whether that means therapy, support groups, antidepressants, religion, or any other healthy choice. However, I also acknowledge that sometimes, the only way a person can find to deal with their problems is to escape them. I want to make this perfectly clear. Suicide is a tragedy, a failure of society to care for people, not a failure of a person to force down their own despair. We should not refer to it as a selfish or cowardly act, but we should do everything we can to prevent it.
That being said, I think that the selflessness in Paul’s reason to live shouldn’t be seen in opposition to preferring to die. Rather, it should be contrasted with a more selfish way of living. Paul views his life as good not for himself, but for others. He is so tied to his ministry, his mission, his God-given purpose, that he sees his life as serving his churches, not himself. This might be an extreme way to look at call, but it also might be helpful for us today.
There is tremendous social pressure on many of us to win in arbitrary competitions with others. We want the best job, house, car, bank account, vacation, family, etc. Not only are we “Keeping Up with the Joneses” competing with each other for the best stuff to show our economic class, but we are also trying to be the most involved, the best parents, the healthiest, and everything else. Society has imprinted competition into almost every thought. Of course, this can have a good impact, driving us to work harder and improve ourselves and the world, but it also has diminishing returns. We are left frantically trying to improve things, doing work that goes nowhere simply for the sake of staying busy, and ultimately feeling overwhelmed when everyone seems to pass us by. Naturally, we can only see their public lives, what they show the world, while we see all the gritty challenges we face in our private lives. It isn’t really fair to compare. And yet we do compare. We obsess over the comparison. We derive our own value from it, and we are anxiously concerned with that value. I myself need to be at least as useful as my neighbor or I will be left behind.
Of course, this way of thinking is paradoxically selfish. We are so concerned with whether our work measures up to that of our neighbor, that we don’t actually think about the other people who receive the benefit of our work. It isn’t for us. It is for them. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t keep working on self-improvement. Grow and develop your skills so that you may better serve your neighbor, but if your skills are the ultimate goal rather than the well-being of your neighbor, then your priorities are misplaced. We don’t need to be on top of the world to serve it. Paul wrote letters from prison, trusting that God would do something with them, and we are still reading Philippians today. Maybe we can focus less on how well we personally measure up, and focus more on those receiving our care. In a society that is obsessed with asking whether or not you are perfect, instead ask how your neighbor is doing. That is why you are here. Like Paul, your life is good for other people.
