When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. – Colossians 3:4
The recent travails of the Warriors basketball team — losing Kevin Durant, probably their best player at this point, for a significant amount of time, and (as a result) losing two games in a row for the first time since forever — have reminded me how easy it is to become invested in things that aren’t important. As a sports fan I find myself doing this a lot. If a person or team I root for loses, I become dispirited. I still recall the time the Americans lost the America’s Cup boat race for the first time in over a hundred years and how that bugged me for two weeks!
The reason I become so invested in these things is that by identifying with them I make their victory my own. I become glorious because I support that which is glorious. I rejoice in the glory of their victory.
The principle of identification is a powerful spiritual reality. We gain life through that with which we identify. By that I mean we gain inner strength by identifying with something strong. We gain confidence by identifying with something powerful.
Even more, we become like that with which we identify. People inevitably try to imitate what they identify with. We try to imitate sports figures; we accept the values of famous people we admire; we invest in the goals of institutions to which we attach ourselves.
Unfortunately most of the things that appeal to us are not worth the investment we make in them. Interestingly, Paul reflects on the transience of athletic glory in 1 Corinthians 9:25:
Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable crown (stephanos, a laurel wreath awarded to the victor of a contest of some sort), but we an imperishable.
In other words, many of the things that we invest our lives in will simply let us down. Today’s victory becomes tomorrow’s defeat. This year is particularly notable for unexpected defeats in sports and politics. And much of our political turmoil seems to spring from the tremendous investment people made in one political figure or another.
But Paul contrasts the perishable crown with the imperishable crown we Christians seek. If we are going to invest ourselves in something to gain life, why not make it something true and lasting? Why not seek eternal life, life incorruptible?
Peter also speaks of imperishable things:
… According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you…. – 1 Peter 1:3-4
Here again we see that Christianity gives us something to identify with that will not let us down. By identifying with Jesus we obtain the things he has gained; most of all eternal, incorruptible, unfading life. Nothing in this world can do that for us!
I have seen too many people seeking life in things that do not give life. Too many people struggle and agonize because they value things that fail, that are corruptible or ultimately disappointing, like a kid’s toy that looks really great on TV but either breaks immediately or is not nearly as good as you thought it would be.
The dirty secret of this world is that people want you to invest your lives in their things not for your benefit, but for theirs. Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Goebbels, put it well when he talked about getting someone to fight in a war:
Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship …
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
This is just a cynical and depraved example of the many ways we are seduced by the purveyors of the things of the world. We are promised life but at best we avoid death for a while, until it finally catches up with us.
And so the call to discipleship — to seek first the Kingdom of God — is not a call to privation. It is not really even a call to sacrifice. It is a call to leave aside all that is false and fading, all that is deceitful and dying, and really take the life that cannot fail.