Discovering the Real Jesus in Monroe

I’m sitting on the back porch of my home here in Monroe listening to the birds and feeling the quiet. It’s a long cultural distance from Monroe to New York City, and I can feel the effects today. Yesterday morning I spoke at the 12th graduation of Faith Bible Seminary in Queens, NYC. Here are some of the things I told the graduates and the people there.

In my philosophy classes at MCCC I love to have students stay after and talk, ask questions, and dialogue. Last semester one student stayed after and told me what his hopes in life were. He said, “I don’t think I believe in God, but I want to make in impact in my life. I want to leave a “legacy” of my accomplishments.” I told him, “I hate to disappoint you, but no one is going to remember you after you die. Minutes after your body is lowered into the grave the people will be talking about the fried chicken and cheesy potatoes at the dinner given in your “remembrance.”" Months and years later you will be a mostly forgotten thing. And whatever degrees you have earned will be stored in some attic if not already disposed of. Living people just really do not think much about the deceased. I am not now talking about a loving spouse or child or parent. In some cases people say “There’s never a day that doesn’t go by when I don’t think of _____.” I know that’s true for some. But when they die, you’ll be a forgotten thing.

I think life is like this. Years ago I was speaking at a conference in New Jersey at a retreat center located on the Atlantic Ocean beach. It was winter, but during a break I walked the beach anyway. No one else was out walking, and I headed north for about a mile, leaving only my footprints in the sand. When I turned back, my footprints were already disappearing. At the point where I began walking the waves had already washed away my presence. And that’s how it is with any “marks” we think we’ll leave in this life after we die.

Frankly, I think it’s foolish to try to make some personal ego-statement in life. If I were an atheist, I would know that to be true. So what, then, is the point of it all? For me, the point is to leave behind people who have been deeply impacted, not by moi, but by God.

These things being said, I challenged the graduates to be free from trying to impress people with their own lives and live so as to be used by God to bring people into His Kingdom. If there’s no God then life is, as Bertrand Russell wrote, a sea of “unyielding despair.” But if God is real, then this life is all about God. We were created by God and for God and are destined to live forever with God. Put in another way, Jesus once told a crowd of people that they should not live this life working for “food that spoils” but work for “food that endures.”

As I said these things I felt very passionate about them. I prayed that these people would live their lives entirely for God and bringing in God’s Kingdom and not for the advancement of their own little ephemeral kingdoms and queendoms.

When John Hao and his wife Rosie and their incredible office manager Jen took me to the airport they asked me if I wanted just one more bubble tea. “It’s the very best bubble tea in the area, made from the very best tea.” So we stopped for one more round of this sweet drink, and I report that it was the very best bubble tea I have ever drank in my entire life.