Eternity in The Human Heart

I've given more than a passing thought in recent years, even prior to my diagnosis, about our culture's obsession with anti-aging. Make-up products, supplements, diets, workout regimens, healthcare choices, all aimed at living longer and longer. There's even a conference for the ultra-wealthy, held in Switzerland, called the Longevity Investors Conference, where an elite group of insanely wealthy people gather to discuss ways they can live longer and how they can fund the research and science to make that happen. It's private, invitation-only, and guests have to pony up tens of thousands of dollars to attend. 

It's a head-scratcher for me.

Do I want to be healthy? Yes. 

But do I really want to live longer on this planet, in this body, among this kind of brokenness? No.

This planet we tread is a mess. And this body in which I dwell is a mess. And everybody around me is a mess. We are ravaged by the results of sin. We have a conference for people who spend millions of dollars trying to live longer while there are millions of people dying from preventable diseases that cost dollars to prevent. These people dying of preventable diseases? They, too, want to live longer. But they aren't trying to make it to 120 years old; they are just hoping to make it to twenty days old, twenty months old, and twenty years old. Making it to 120 years old is unfathomable. And yet - and yet - there is something inherently ingrained in all of us that makes us long to live forever. 

Because what that conference - and our culture - puts on full display is this truth: We don't want to die early - whatever 'early' may mean. We are desperate to live longer, to live forever, and yet we can't figure out how to make that happen based on our own knowledge and our own willpower. We can't figure out how to solve the longings of our own hearts.

Famed atheist-turned-Christian-theologian, C.S. Lewis, commented in a series of letters he exchanged with Sheldon Vanauken in Vanauken's book, A Severe Mercy

C.S. Lewis asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. 'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?' Then, if we can complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed by it - how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.

This desire to live forever is born from an inherent knowing that we are supposed to live forever, just not here on Planet Earth, but rather in heaven with God. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." 

That desire to live forever that wells up within you? It should point you to the heart of God. He's the one that put that desire there. It is a good and right longing, but not one you will solve on based on your own effort and willpower. You can use every anti-aging cream known to mankind, drink every version of a healthy smoothie there is, and exercise your way into oblivion. And at the end of the day, you don't get to choose how long you live. But you do get to choose where you get to live after death comes to your door. There are two options: Eternity with God in heaven, or eternity apart from God in hell. 

Look, I'm not saying we don't take care of our bodies and treat them well. They are a gift God has given us, we are to steward them well and not treat them like garbage. But as we can see first-hand, I treated my body well and did a lot of things right - ate well, slept well, drank water, worked out - and I still got cancer.

Prior to my diagnosis, I often thought I didn't care how long I lived. However long I lived, I lived. But then when the diagnosis came and suddenly the illusion of how long I lived was seemingly wrested from my control (as if I had any to start with), I found myself desperately praying that God would grant me a long life. I didn't - and still don't - know how to reconcile those two realities within me. I don't want a ridiculously long life, but I'm fearful, too, that I will die early, though. I'm not sure where that leaves me.

My friend Myrt always said she wanted to live to be 80 and then she wanted out of here. She wanted to die five minutes after her husband, Paul, so that she had enough time to tidy up after him and then head out. They had lived full lives, accomplishing everything on their shared bucket list. But Myrt did not get her wish. Paul died in 2014, and she did not pass until 2017. So, not only did she live past 80, she also did not die five minutes after Paul. She wasn't openly bitter about the circumstances and hostile toward God (that I was aware of), but she didn't shy away from expressing her occasional unhappiness over the matter.

But this is the weight of the matter - Paul did not die early, and Myrt did not die late. My friend Jonathan did not die early at thirty-one. If I die tomorrow, I will not die early at forty. 

So all those investors at the longevity conference? I don't know, maybe they will make it to 120 years old and be in perfectly good shape until their last breath, but the day will come when they will take their last breath, somehow, some way. Not a single one will be able to escape death. But if one of them drops dead at fifty? 

They will not have died early. They will have died precisely at the moment a sovereign and holy God intended they should. And no anti-aging cream or longevity conference can override him.

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Throughout this past year, I have returned countless times to the words of pastor Matt Chandler, who also happens to have a more aggressive grade of the same type of brain cancer I have, roughly the same size of tumor and same lobe of the brain. He was diagnosed fourteen years ago.