(side note this was already a note on my facebook wall...you may have read it before)
“To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?” Socrates
Over the past week or so, I have been reflecting on this quote I found a few years ago. When I read it back then, I thought to myself "this is SO true!"...but I failed to live that out. At that time in my life I didn't fully understand the love and forgiveness of Jesus. I knew a lot about Jesus because I had attended church and volunteered to council kids at a Christian camp. But through that, I never accepted that God could love ME. I was living for me, myself, and I...and didn't care who I hurt along the way just as long as I was making myself happy. I thought I was actually happy with how I was living my life then, but I was scared shitless. I just put up a front so everyone would think I knew which end was up.
I think most of us, regardless of our past, are scared to live life. We have this fear that if we don't do it the right way before we die, then we wasted it. But what if we are actually wasting it by searching for a meaning? I have been questioning why we are, who we are, what we are, and so on for years now. And every quest for the perfect answer comes up short. Science trys to give us an answer we can be happy with, but they don't really know. So that leads us to putting our faith into something. Shouldn't the fact that we are putting our faith into something completely unknown be enough to drive us to live without fear? Instead, we hide behind drugs, broken relationships, personal sin, the self, and the world around us. It's in those places that we are looking for life's "answer".
But what if we decided to stop asking "why", and started living. I mean, taking life by the reins and leading a life that matters. Focusing on building relationships with one another and showing each other love. Jesus had a mission on this earth: to show the world what Love is. I believe with all my heart that when he died on the cross, he proved that love and therefore I should love those around me. But what happens when we get caught up in the world? Fear creeps back in. Instead of trying to overcome that fear, us humans attempt to hide behind it. Unfortunately, I think sometimes we get so lost in trying to hind behind it, we actually become our own fear. Fear is no longer a part of life...it consumes it. Every decision we make starts to revolve around attempting to make life better ourselves so we don't "mess up". The difference though, is when we accept the love of Jesus we are able to overcome that fear. Jesus took on all of our sin...our drug abuse, our sexual impurities, our tax fraud, even speeding...Jesus took those sins with him on the cross! Not only that, he defeated death and rose again! Which brings me back to the quote...
I can't help but wonder what would happen if we stopped living life in fear. I think the point of Socrates' quote was to tell us that fearing death is stupid because we don't know what will happen to us after we die. We just think we do. But I think it also goes one step farther. I think Socrates is also telling us we shouldn't live our only life in fear. I think if we stopped living in fear, then the self wouldn't be able to hold us back from the love of Jesus. Death doesn't have to be final. The irony is, the death that a lot of humans fear is the death that can actually bring us life. Instead fear makes our human experience painful. Death has become our worst enemy the same way life has. I don't think the two are as different from each other as they appear. I think they are one in the same. Life would stop being a tragedy and death would be beautiful if we looked at it through Jesus' eyes like he intended us to.
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