It is amazing how important the future is to us. If we see no good future for ourselves, we either become depressed, nihilistic, or try to carve out a new future.
What vision of the cosmos do we buy in to?
Viktor Frankl based a whole psychology on the idea that we need our stories, or lives to have a point. Logotherapy was created by Frankl while he was in a Nazi concentration camp. He noticed that prisoners who had nothing to look forward to died, whereas those who persevered had something to look forward to.
Now, it would be wrong for us to have some vision for our future that does not fit into the bigger picture of the entire cosmos and all of history (taking for granted that it can really be seen as a fairly coherent whole).
Dostoyevsky was getting at the same thing when he wrote nihilists who committed murder, because they had no reason not to, and some reasons that they thought were good. If there is nothing to live for, why care about life?
Aristotle made an entire ethic focussed around this idea.
Perhaps our society is losing or has lost a good vision for the future...perhaps we will see more and more nihilist literature.
"You cannot have hopeful and responsible action without some vision of a possible future. To put it in another way, if there is no point in the story as a whole, there is no point in my own action. If the story is meaningless, any action of mine is meaningless. The loss of a vision for the future necessarily produces that typical phenomenon of our society which the sociologists call anomie, a state in which publicly accepted norms and values have disappeared."
-Lesslie Newbigin in The Gospel In A Pluralist Society.
Looking into the future, the Apostle John wrote (Revelation 21.1-4):
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed awa, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I hear a loud voice from the throne saying, 'See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."
Now that is a vision of the future that moves to action and to life.
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2 comments:
Yes, it's truly important to have a view of that future that relates to how we fit into the cosmos.
And yes, nihilism eventually leads to suicide as the only viable option.
But can we really, honestly see a place with no tears, death, mourning, crying? Can we even conceptualize a place where God will actually dwell with us, be with us? We can't - it's too far beyond all we've known on earth. How can we really put ourselves into that perspective? How can this be enough to settle the anxiety of the future?
For me, I'm not sure it is.
The only thing that will settle my anxiety is living with a purposeful drive of life that powers on, a constant crescendo of positive momentum patterned after Christ that starts now and climaxes at the end of my life.
If I can get that on track, the future becomes an opportunity instead of a gloomy cloud of uncertainty.
Matters, I see your point.
But there are some big questions that you have left unanswered. For instance: Why are you patterning your life on Christ? Also, what did Jesus look forward to? did he come to redeem all men and is/did he come to establish his kingdom, his perfect kingdom that will, in fact be without tears, death, or mourning?
If you are patterning your life on Christ, do you trust his vision? are you longing for the same as he longs for?
To answer one of your main questions regarding us being able to conceptualize this perfect place, this New Jerusalem: Do we long for perfect leaders? Do we hope to be without fear or anxiety? Do we long for stability and yet adventure? I would say that these are powerful conceptions that are by nature -or so I think- in us. Do they allow us to see with clear vision what Eternal LIfe looks like, or how it will feel? Not perfectly, but I wouldn't disregard them. Also, there are times of joy and glee and happiness and there are "nearly perfect" times during our lives. These also help us to grasp what God has in store for us.
And we cannot discount this hope that we have, for it is the virtue that the Apostles (who patterned their lives on Jesus) encouraged over and over again as early Christians struggled with the pains of life. This vision of Eternal Life, of seeing God as he is, of being made whole, of living in the New Jerusalem is what the Apostles urged their readers/listeners to grasp on to.
How can we hope to increase in passion without this vision - or a vision similar to it - without that vision of Christ, who, for the joy set before him endure the pain of the cross?
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