Pray to God, but Row to Shore

Holy shit- it’s December! Where in the name of all things good and holy did this semester go? I suppose time doth fly when you are having fun, but time also flies when life is shitty, crazy, joyful, melancholy…

We, like the flowers of the field, are temporal and transient. We grow and flourish and wither and perish according to the natural order of creation. However much we would like to “go out in a blaze of glory,” we die and the world remarkably continues to rotate on its axis. Like the wooden metronome on my great aunt’s piano, the life cycle continues its steady pulse. The pace may quicken or slacken, but the beats--the rhythm--of life are ever constant.

Though it is somewhat somber and is not often fodder for high-profit, charismatic Christian evangelists, the book of Ecclesiastes is my favorite book in the Bible. I find it profound and honest; Ecclesiastes is very much a “no bullshitting, check your ego at the door” portion of the Biblical witness. One of the more profound lines: “A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” [Ecclesiastes 1:4]. Our deaths do not impede the eternal creation and re-creation of the world. “Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death” [Psalm 23], we are also surrounded by new life being brought into the world daily.

The themes of Ecclesiastes resonate with the last line of T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men: “This is the way the world ends- not with a bang, but with a whimper.” The writer of Ecclesiastes laments “Behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them!” [Ecc. 4:1] Both are contrary to the doctrine of Eschatology (end-times) where Jesus will come back and assauge our suffering, wiping tears from every eye. Is it practical to hope for the world ending with a “bang,” that is, the triumph of Jesus (Good) over evil (Pain and Suffering) when we live in a world of moaning, wailing, whimpering for justice and freedom from oppression?

Christian Hope looks into the face of the trials of this world and decides that “we shall overcome.” We can direct our eyes to heaven and have hope that during the Eschaton, Jesus will triumph and inaugurate a new world in which all of the Children of God coexist peacefully. But we cannot look the future and ignore the present! Placing our faith in Jesus who will redeem the world does not mean we should ignore the world as we know it! People are hungry NOW, dammit! People are being oppressed NOW. We can hope and pray our smug little Christian hearts out and self-righteously attend our comfortable churches, but we need to remember that we are also responsible for bringing the Kingdom of God at hand. We will not succeed entirely, but we can positively impact the present.

As my mother says, “You gotta pray to God, but row to shore.” Faith without action is impotent. Faith coupled with action, theory coupled with praxis, will ensure this world ends, not with a whimper, but with a bang.