None of us lives as his own master and none of us dies as his own master. While we live we are responsible to the Lord, and when we die we die as his servants. Both in life and death we are the Lord’s. (Romans 14:7-8)
A short reading for Morning Prayer began with these few words. They always stir my heart and provoke my thinking no matter how many times I see or hear them.
Whether we agree with them or not is radically decisive about the course of our lives, the structure of our values, and all our expectations for the future.
They are a brief statement of our essential identity. We’re not self-made, we’re not a mere byproduct of an act of love or passion, we’re not anything we may wish to be
We are created—and even though we may yearn or feel free to be and do whatever we wish, this contradicts our essential structure and design. If that is how we try to live our lives, we don’t know who and what we are, and we are not realizing the fulness of our true potential.
One way or another, we all, at least from time to time, are engaged in the search for meaning. for the purpose, direction, and destiny of our lives.
The quest can be uncomfortable, frightening, or dismaying as we try to look ahead, depending on what we see or don’t see. But, we must be who and what we are, and we are limited in what we can do or achieve.
It’s not necessarily a grim or sad story. The quest for meaning can lead us to begin to perceive our limitations not so much as personal failures or lack of success as part of our essence and design.
It seems illogical that the complex reality of a living human person could be merely a result of a long-term process of gradual or abrupt random changes and mutations.
Also, it seems logical that the effect must somehow have a cause that is at least equal to or greater than the effect itself.
In other words, the quest for meaning can lead to something greater than ourselves and beyond our full understanding—as is the very universe itself.
In our less religious age we recourse to sometimes trendy, but ultimately almost unintelligible words and concepts like, e.g., the Big Bang theory. In earlier ages unknown forces and powers were conceived of as the work of superior beings, divinities.
In the Jewish-Christian-Muslim traditions, this gradually led to the realization and belief that this inevitably demanded an ultimate power, a supreme divinity.
That’s what we have come to mean by God. Greater than anything or anyone other, more powerful than any other power, more understanding, compassionate, generous, merciful, and loving.
And this is not merely a kind of philosophical theory or theological speculation. It has gradually emerged in the traditions and development of the world’s great religions. It’s shared human patrimony is not to be underestimated.
When Paul wrote his letter to the Judeo-Christian community of imperial Rome, he used a good word to summarize all this quest for meaning and purpose, “Master”.
Notice he didn’t say God is the Master of everyone, starting with the most difficult and demanding concept of all, “God”. He simply stated the obvious and logical to him, the common human experience: None of us lives as his own master and none of us dies as his own master.
And, this great truth has consequences!
9 May 2021