Carpe Diem
Robin Williams’ suicide hit me hard. Not exactly sure why.
Perhaps it’s because I know something about depression and how it can
grip you like nothing else. Perhaps it’s because I wish someone had shared the
hope that Jesus offers with Williams. Perhaps it’s because I always wanted to
be like Mr. Keating in Dead Poet’s
Society, impassioning students to find their own verse in this thing we call life.
Most of us never had heard the term carpe diem until
Williams’ Mr. Keating told us that we will all be worm food one day, and that
we must seize every day like it is our last. But what does this mean to the
Christian? What does carpe diem look like?
I find myself torn again and again between the world’s hedonistic
cry to live life to the fullest and the Christian worldview of being a humble
Christ-like servant. The secular worldview of seizing the day is arguably defined
by following the Greek gods of Mammon (money), Mars (power), and Aphrodite
(sex). These seductive gods toy with us everyday and too often we agree to play
with them. If I were to be honest, I occasionally find temporal satiation in
worshipping these gods. Conversely, the Christian worldview should be more
about serving than getting. We are called to follow the resurrected Jesus who
offers the hope that Robin Williams seemingly never experienced.
Like Williams, I have a
propensity for depression, and more often than not, my depression comes from
believing that the idols in my life (power, sex, money) will satisfy. When they don’t, I can become depressed.
Paul has a cure for such depression:
Romans
8:32: He who did not spare his own Son but gave him
up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
Without the One who gave himself up for us, seizing the day
is meaningless and endless. May we all
seize the day worshipping Jesus, forgoing the magnetism of the Greek gods.
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