Birth and death are two wings on the same bird, and that bird\u2019s name is time or temporality.\u00a0 The Christian life is an attitude toward both temporality and Eternity.\u00a0 Strange as it may seem to people of our era, we are each an inescapable relationship with both the Eternal and the temporal.\u00a0 The experience of this paradox can be spelled out in terms of these four words:<\/p>\n
The quality of the Christian life has to do with being \u201cin the world, but not of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cNot of the world<\/strong><\/em>\u201d means an \u201cend-of-time<\/em>\u201d happening in your present life.\u00a0 It means the coming of a deep detachment from your family, your peers, your citizenship, your culture, your time in history, your self images, your personality habits, your gender, yes even your own body and all its time-bound characteristics.\u00a0 But if\u00a0 your state is only \u201cnot of this world\u201d rather than united with \u201cin this world<\/em>,\u201d your state is aloofness rather than Christian love.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this world<\/strong><\/em>\u201d is just as important as \u201cnot of this world.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cIn this world\u201d means an \u201cincarnation\u201d of your \u201cout-of-this-world-ness\u201d in your physical body, your personality habits, your self images, your time in history, your gender, your culture, your citizenship, having your peers and your family, your body.\u00a0 All your temporal relations are fluid; they can change; they can be changed by you; they will change because of your \u201cout-of-this-world-ness.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, your \u201cin-this-world-ness\u201d does not go away.\u00a0 Some form of \u201cin-this-world-ness\u201d will always be the case.\u00a0 Also, the quality of this \u201cin-this-world-ness\u201d is not entirely up to you.\u00a0 You have been assigned your \u201cin-this-world-ness\u201d by the Infinite Almighty Mysteriousness that has sourced your temporal existence and moves you inexorably toward the end of your temporal existence.\u00a0 At the same time, you are totally responsible for what you do with what you are and with what you can become over the course of your life.<\/p>\n But if your state is only \u201cin this world\u201d rather than united with \u201cnot of this world,\u201d your state is despair, torn and scattered by time\u2019s inexorable march. And you will have no sustained attention and objectivity for what the Christian witness is pointing to with the word \u201clove.\u201d<\/p>\n Love<\/em><\/strong> of the Christian sort means a total affirmation of every aspect of your particular body, of your personality and changes, of your self images and your recreations of your self images, of your gender, of your ongoing relationships with peers and family, of your culture and how you live it and alter it,\u00a0 of your citizenship and your time in history with its limitations and challenges, plus your responses to some of these challenges and the consequences of those responses.<\/p>\n Love<\/em> of the Christian sort also includes a total affirmation of your end-of-time detachment form the temporal flow of the world.\u00a0 This absolute uprootedness is your gift of objectivity and creativity in your living in this world. This uprootedness makes you a son or daughter of Eternity rather than a son or daughter of perdition.\u00a0 This uprootedness is your power, your spirit energy, your equanimity, your rest, your hope, your undefeatable quality that no ups or downs of fortune can disrupt.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the world, but not of the world\u201d is your human essence, but perfection in manifesting this essence is not to be expected in your real-time living.\u00a0 This is a journey.\u00a0 We may have been born into this quality, but we \u201cpress on to the full stature of Christ Jesus,\u201d as the apostle Paul put it.\u00a0 \u201cWe were crucified with Christ\u201d Paul said.\u00a0 This means our detachment in being \u201cnot of this world.\u201d\u00a0 And we were \u201craised up in Christ to newness of life,\u201d Paul witnesses.\u00a0 This means our incarnation in being \u201cin this world\u201d as the resurrected body of Christ.<\/p>\n So, what does this \u201cin Christ<\/em><\/strong>\u201d symbol mean for Paul?\u00a0 It means a perfection into which we have been joined by a profound transformation of the overall direction of our lives\u2014toward ever greater realism in love-relatedness with Infinite Reality and love-relatedness with all the temporal\u00a0 realities that constitute our lives.\u00a0 But this is a journey. We do not yet manifest this perfection in our personal life or in our social contributions.\u00a0\u00a0 Let us press on.\u00a0 We are in a cosmic struggle between realism and illusion.<\/p>\n For more study of the \u201cin Christ<\/em>\u201d symbol, I recommend this essay:<\/p>\n Here is the downloading URL for this essay:<\/p>\nHere Already and Still to Come<\/h3>\n