The Examined Life

Am I living it right?

May this be the question I never stop asking.

John Mayer alludes to a possible "quarter-life crisis" as he repeatedly asks this question of himself (or, if of someone else, whom?): "Am I living it right?"   At the age of twenty-two-going-on-twenty-three, I could fall into that "quarter-life" category, and I, too, wonder if my age and the fraction of my life that I have already lived cause me to question "Am I living it right?"

What have I done with my twenty-two years?  Where will the trajectory that I have set take me in the next twenty-two, and when I am approaching forty-five, what will I think of the half-life or more that I have lived?

What will God think?  Can I even ask a question like that and know and let it be known that I am striving not to ask that question as one in fear of damnation for failing to complete a cosmic checklist or as one who presumes ever to be able to know the answer to my own question?

Regardless, I'll ask it-- What will God think of my forty-five years?  What would He say about the past twenty-two or about the past twenty-four hours?  

Do I dare to direct my question, not to myself or to John Mayer or to whatever source he may invoke, but to God?  Do I dare ask, "God, am I living it it right?"

Am I living it right, God?

I hear an answer to my question, Lord, and I can find Scripture to show it comes from You, for the answer is NO. The answer is a bold and resounding NO that I can feel in my heart just as I can understand it in my mind.  Of course I am not living life "right."  I can't even understand completely what right might be!  Even the glimpses of right I can find and understand, I cannot or will not consistently follow.

For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.  For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.  But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.  So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.  For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.  For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.  But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.  I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.  For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is my members [especially the members of my heart and my mind and my mouth-- my emotions, my thoughts, my words].  Wretched man that I am!  Who will set me free from the body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!  So then, on the one hand I myself with mind am serving the law of God but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Romans 7:14-25 [personalization to my most sinful parts added]

God, I hear Your answer and read Your Word that I am not and-- the perfectionism and the pride in me recoil-- I cannot be right or be good.  I look at the world around me just a little.   I read a little, I watch the news a little, I study a little, and I talk a little to a few people who know a little, too.  As I do, I find more and more revealed to me that is not right and that is not good, and, Lord, I confess that for a long time now, each revelation has made me more and more bitter and angry.  I have begun to loathe the world and its people-- Your creations-- for their neglect and for their destruction of so many things.  I have despised myself for what I cannot and do not do.  I have festered in frustration knowing that no matter how much I might want it and how diligently I might search for the best ways to bring it about and how much I might work toward it, I can never bring about all the right and the good that I long to see, that I feel deep within me must be possible.  I have grown angry and discontent and disbelieving in You-- how can You be good and so much here on earth be unjust and unbalanced?  I have been angry, in some moments, that this world-- so maladjusted and so broken-- even exists.  What is the point of the turmoil?  Of sickness and death and poverty?  What's more, what is the point of human beings so fallible, so selfish, so weak, so short-sighted that we allow the turmoil, sickness, death, and poverty to exist in a world that also has available in it possibilities of peace, health, life, and plenty?  Why allow humanity to continue when the portion of humanity-- including, I shudder, ME-- that has seems to seek only to have more?  Why allow a world where many die and starve and suffer injustices while few continue building deluded Babels and hoarding treasures in their overstocked, oversized barns and silos?

It has been a long process beginning to understand the role that I play in the economy of a world that breeds poverty, hatred, and war.  I am only beginning to come to terms with my own guilt in a world of injustice, and I have warped my hatred for injustice into hatred for humanity and for its Creator, into bitterness and resentment that the world is not right, and I have blamed the world and my humanity and my Maker for the fact that I am not living right and cannot live right.  That is not the response I want to have any longer.  

Lord, show me the possibility for justice in the world.  Show me the way of redemption that does not delight only in eternal life or in heaven or in crowns or in jewels for the crowns but in LIFE simply because I delight in YOU and simply because YOU created that life to be lived and to be redeemed.  I have to believe that You did not create a world of inevitable evil and hurt.  

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.  2 Peter 3:9

Lord, surely, You do not desire the evil or the unfairness but instead love, mercy, and justice.  Continue to reveal to me the evil that I do, and continue to refine in me a vision for the good that I should want to do and should do.  Teach me to live a life that communicates and administers Your loving-kindess to the world.  Amen.