A question about eternal life (1)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
A new story begins from Mark 10:17 about the relationship between possession and faith and it continues till verse 31. A certain rich man came to Jesus and asked about eternal life. Jesus suggests the standards to inherit eternal life which is mentioned in the later part of the Ten Commandments. In reply, he said that he had kept all these from his childhood. Hearing this, Jesus demanded him a totally new and revolutionary way. According to Jesus, to inherit the kingdom of God, he has to give all his properties to the poor and follow him. When the rich returned in despair, Jesus told the disciples the parable of camel and the eye of a needle. Jesus’ dialogue with his disciples continues till verse 31 dwelling on salvation, the matter of giving up property and true discipleship.
This story represents the unique life style of early Christianity and it has also become a lesson of serious challenge for us today. Jesus’ command to follow him by selling all the properties and give it to the poor put us into trouble and great dilemma. What on earth is this command valid today? Who are living in this manner? It seems to be a very cruel command for those who have a duty to support family. Let us enter into the story slowly.
A man of great wealth asked Jesus, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" In those days, whoever asked Jesus, not all of them, but mostly harbored a hostile feeling against Jesus or formed a conspiracy against him. Especially the vested right group represented by the Pharisees had a lot of questions. The person in today’s content was a rich man. According to Luke 18:18, 23, he was not only a man of great wealth but also and a ruler. Then he also might be a member of the vested right group. However, he did not show much hostile feeling against Jesus in today’s content. He was a rare person who asked Jesus out of pure heart.
Question about eternal life (2)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
In the question what must we do to inherit eternal life contains the essence of human’s naked being just as he is. Our life with limited number of hours either consciously or unconsciously dreams of eternal life. As we can see the Babel tower, Pyramid, Pharaoh’s mummy, Chinese emperors’ underground grave etc, human civilization is a continuous struggle toward eternal life. Endless and continuous quest and effort of man for scientific and technological development could also be the product of such desire.
It may sound as a lecture that none of this world attains eternal life. It is a similar situation of the fruitless effort of Sisyphus who rolled up a rock to the top of mountain but again has to see the rock rolling down the cliff of the mountain. We do our best to come near the top of eternal life but again we are all destined to fall into the bottomless pit. In the same line, Camus expressed that our existence is shrouded in absurdity.
What is the problem? Why does human strain with all their might to reach eternal life which is not possible by him. Taking precedence over such question, we are impelled to put a mark of interrogation as “what on earth ‘eternal life’ is all about? It neither has come to our hand and nor will it catch us in the future. We have already entered into the world in which everything is tentative and limited, and where present yields to the past and future comes to the present time. This world is moving with the principle of irreversibility. A man thrown into such world only steps on the shadow of eternal life but cannot recognize the reality no matter how hard he tries.
Some of you may think strangely that eternal life is eternal life as it says itself and then question why not we recognize it. Such thought is near to the understanding of the Greek’s world as recursion and iteration, eternity and recurrence. We cannot experience the time, the true essence of eternal life from here.
Question about eternal life (3)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
I would like to give an additional explanation to the last sentence of yesterday’s meditation which concludes that there can be no chance of experiencing celestial quality of peace, the essence of eternal life in this endless mechanism of life cycle. Just imagine that we live forever. Suppose our age advances to 100, 1,000 and 10,000 and so on but still we do not die. Then in this case, we may have thousands of descendants. And also we can hardly imagine how our figure and looks be at the age of 10,000 years. There are people who think that youth and beauty are the condition of happiness. However such an extremely old age of a person could be considered as a sort of curse.
Some of you may think of the possibility of having eternal life someday through medical technological development. Will it be a happy life with youth and beauty like an actor or actress in their twenties even at the age of 10,000? We cannot give a deceptive answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for we have not experienced it practically but, one thing will be very clear that the youth and life of today will be relatively regarded. As we grow older and older, we consider the stage of youth more preciously than ever and the thought of the impending death makes us feel the state of being alive more precious. Practically, if there is no difference between a 20 years old youth and a 10,000 years old man in their looks, we may not endure the pains of our lives rather this kind of life will be a perpetual source of joy.
It is possible for us to experience the essence of life by accepting the fortune of life as it is, irrespective of its movement of ups and downs. In other word, we can practically experience the real essence of life by going through the path of old age, physical sickness or sound health. The journey of life involves a lot of changes. The cycle in this world cannot be considered a change. Is the change of a level only a sufficient condition of a real life? Christianity says the entrance into another time in quality as an end of physical life.
Question about eternal life (4)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
The life that the Bible talks about, points out not a mere continuation of time but the life with God. God is the eternal being who he is the unique Creator, and through identifying with him we can experience eternal life. The difficult problem lies in the fact that we cannot proof what identification with God is nor can we show who God is. The main reason of our incapability in this matter is that human is a mere creature.
Deeply think about the relationship between the creator and the creatures. This is an emphasizing point of the Bible from the beginning till the end. The tradition of creation and the tradition of apocalyptical end found in the Revelation accept the fundamental difference between the creator and the creatures. The time which is critically important in understanding the concept of eternal life is also associated with God’s creation. Therefore time is also an outcome of God’s creation. Living in such limitation as the creature, any method can help us face the subject and substance of creation directly.
I do not want to exclusively talk about creativity in a tune of agnosticism and credibility of its evidence. I would like to emphasize the fact that we should not confine eternal life in our epistemic category. In other word, we should not try to reduce the enormous size of eternal life that is evident within our own experience in this world. Needless to explain in detail, but it is very clear how often such things happen in our life of faith. We are thinking of our unconditional and eternal happy life in the kingdom of God after death. The desire for eternal life in a secular level is simply wrapped with a wrapping paper of Christian faith.
We can say eternal life is in God alone. It is the teaching of incarnation that the eternal God entered into this limited world. Hence, the mysterious combination of eternality and finiteness is eternal life.
Question about eternal life (5)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
The man who asked Jesus about eternal life asked nothing but salvation. The question ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ is equivalent to the question ‘what should I do to get salvation?’ As mentioned earlier, when I say eternal life is it talks about salvation.
Why did a man ask such a question? Perhaps he raised such question to clarify his sudden feeling of nihilism in his life. People often face such a moment. There are moments when we lost the clear meaning and purpose of everything that we have pursued and could not find any ground for what is our lives sustained. However, the man who asked the particular question was a rich man. Even his property could not satisfy him. He could not get a real satisfaction even through his family. He wanted to be saved. He might miss the peace like an infant nestling in its mother's bosom and the complete rest that is not disturbed by anything.
Yes. Nothing in this world can satisfy our souls. He eventually gets disappointed if he tries to find out satisfaction from these worldly things such as property, power and hobby. Of course, there is a person who insists that he is fully satisfied with his life in this world. Also those who find out rest in God may satisfy in the way of living in this world. The matter is that man can never be satisfied with these worldly things. In this case, satisfaction has the negative connotation of either lying or a proof of one’s immaturity.
He was not satisfied with his property but, at the same time, he was not able to give it up. Jesus said, “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Hearing this, his face cast down. Is this our true character; running after two hares at the same time?
Question about eternal life (6)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
I wonder you might have misunderstood my previous explanation which says that we cannot satisfy with the goods of the world but real satisfaction is possible only with God. The misunderstanding could be like as if I tried to find out the reality of salvation from the other shore of life by denying the life of this world. If it has been delivered in that way, it could be due to my poor skill of writing. The key point and the intended message is to focus on the relationship between this world and the other side of the world.
As a matter of fact, the world in which we are now living is a momentary one. The items of God’s creation such as man, other species, the earth and the entire universe have the same nature of durability. We cannot expect an immortal status from a mortal one. For example, a young couple falls in love. They want to expect a certain absolute from the other party. Sometimes they may feel like having absolutes in their lives. However, clearly all such experiences pass by like a moment of dream. It means that we cannot expect any absolute thing from a human being.
Then finally we have to find out an absolute from the other side of world by faith. This is also not a simple matter. We have not experienced the other side of world as a reality yet. Precisely speaking, people do not know how to have experience from the other side of world as a reality. The reason is that it is beyond our experience.
How the evanescent world and the eternal and absolute one are connected though the two look different and there seem to have a chasm of difference between the two in reality. What is the connecting ring? The way between the two worlds is just like a labyrinth. It is a hidden path through a dense forest. The eyes that could see it may be rightly called as spirituality. For those who are in this world of spirituality, though their lives on in this world look like an empty dream, at the same time, they can really feel the current of spiritual power in the other side of world ‘here and now’ beyond this visible world.
Question about eternal life (7)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
Shall we look into his question a little more minutely? He asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Two matters are involved in this question. One is a matter of activity and the other accomplishment. In fact, these two matters deal with the same thing.
This man had kept the Law including the Ten Commandments from childhood. A norm ethics became familiar with his life. He was an exemplary man. Such people always keenly think about a valuable activity. They are recognized and respected by society.
The problem was that he pulled down eternal life, the salvation, as part of human activity. He reduced an absolute incident to a relative one. He confused the work of God with that of man. He thought he would get God’s salvation through his exemplary activity that he had pursued throughout his life time. In short, he might visit Jesus to solve his anxiety and doubt having the apprehension that he would not be saved in such way of his life.
Jesus literally deconstructed his thought so as to light with his thinking standard. Jesus told him that if he had such confident in his activity he should go and sell all his property and give it to the poor. It is impossible for man to do this. At this point, Paul and Luther’s teaching which says ‘a man cannot get righteousness by his activity’ is proved to be right.
Then how can we get eternal life? Firstly, it has defined that we cannot get it by our own effort. For it is always relative in nature. So we have to change the question differently-changing the question into a humble prayer. It is not ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ But for us, we must only humbly pray, “Oh Lord. Please save me!”
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
A new story begins from Mark 10:17 about the relationship between possession and faith and it continues till verse 31. A certain rich man came to Jesus and asked about eternal life. Jesus suggests the standards to inherit eternal life which is mentioned in the later part of the Ten Commandments. In reply, he said that he had kept all these from his childhood. Hearing this, Jesus demanded him a totally new and revolutionary way. According to Jesus, to inherit the kingdom of God, he has to give all his properties to the poor and follow him. When the rich returned in despair, Jesus told the disciples the parable of camel and the eye of a needle. Jesus’ dialogue with his disciples continues till verse 31 dwelling on salvation, the matter of giving up property and true discipleship.
This story represents the unique life style of early Christianity and it has also become a lesson of serious challenge for us today. Jesus’ command to follow him by selling all the properties and give it to the poor put us into trouble and great dilemma. What on earth is this command valid today? Who are living in this manner? It seems to be a very cruel command for those who have a duty to support family. Let us enter into the story slowly.
A man of great wealth asked Jesus, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" In those days, whoever asked Jesus, not all of them, but mostly harbored a hostile feeling against Jesus or formed a conspiracy against him. Especially the vested right group represented by the Pharisees had a lot of questions. The person in today’s content was a rich man. According to Luke 18:18, 23, he was not only a man of great wealth but also and a ruler. Then he also might be a member of the vested right group. However, he did not show much hostile feeling against Jesus in today’s content. He was a rare person who asked Jesus out of pure heart.
Question about eternal life (2)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
In the question what must we do to inherit eternal life contains the essence of human’s naked being just as he is. Our life with limited number of hours either consciously or unconsciously dreams of eternal life. As we can see the Babel tower, Pyramid, Pharaoh’s mummy, Chinese emperors’ underground grave etc, human civilization is a continuous struggle toward eternal life. Endless and continuous quest and effort of man for scientific and technological development could also be the product of such desire.
It may sound as a lecture that none of this world attains eternal life. It is a similar situation of the fruitless effort of Sisyphus who rolled up a rock to the top of mountain but again has to see the rock rolling down the cliff of the mountain. We do our best to come near the top of eternal life but again we are all destined to fall into the bottomless pit. In the same line, Camus expressed that our existence is shrouded in absurdity.
What is the problem? Why does human strain with all their might to reach eternal life which is not possible by him. Taking precedence over such question, we are impelled to put a mark of interrogation as “what on earth ‘eternal life’ is all about? It neither has come to our hand and nor will it catch us in the future. We have already entered into the world in which everything is tentative and limited, and where present yields to the past and future comes to the present time. This world is moving with the principle of irreversibility. A man thrown into such world only steps on the shadow of eternal life but cannot recognize the reality no matter how hard he tries.
Some of you may think strangely that eternal life is eternal life as it says itself and then question why not we recognize it. Such thought is near to the understanding of the Greek’s world as recursion and iteration, eternity and recurrence. We cannot experience the time, the true essence of eternal life from here.
Question about eternal life (3)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
I would like to give an additional explanation to the last sentence of yesterday’s meditation which concludes that there can be no chance of experiencing celestial quality of peace, the essence of eternal life in this endless mechanism of life cycle. Just imagine that we live forever. Suppose our age advances to 100, 1,000 and 10,000 and so on but still we do not die. Then in this case, we may have thousands of descendants. And also we can hardly imagine how our figure and looks be at the age of 10,000 years. There are people who think that youth and beauty are the condition of happiness. However such an extremely old age of a person could be considered as a sort of curse.
Some of you may think of the possibility of having eternal life someday through medical technological development. Will it be a happy life with youth and beauty like an actor or actress in their twenties even at the age of 10,000? We cannot give a deceptive answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for we have not experienced it practically but, one thing will be very clear that the youth and life of today will be relatively regarded. As we grow older and older, we consider the stage of youth more preciously than ever and the thought of the impending death makes us feel the state of being alive more precious. Practically, if there is no difference between a 20 years old youth and a 10,000 years old man in their looks, we may not endure the pains of our lives rather this kind of life will be a perpetual source of joy.
It is possible for us to experience the essence of life by accepting the fortune of life as it is, irrespective of its movement of ups and downs. In other word, we can practically experience the real essence of life by going through the path of old age, physical sickness or sound health. The journey of life involves a lot of changes. The cycle in this world cannot be considered a change. Is the change of a level only a sufficient condition of a real life? Christianity says the entrance into another time in quality as an end of physical life.
Question about eternal life (4)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
The life that the Bible talks about, points out not a mere continuation of time but the life with God. God is the eternal being who he is the unique Creator, and through identifying with him we can experience eternal life. The difficult problem lies in the fact that we cannot proof what identification with God is nor can we show who God is. The main reason of our incapability in this matter is that human is a mere creature.
Deeply think about the relationship between the creator and the creatures. This is an emphasizing point of the Bible from the beginning till the end. The tradition of creation and the tradition of apocalyptical end found in the Revelation accept the fundamental difference between the creator and the creatures. The time which is critically important in understanding the concept of eternal life is also associated with God’s creation. Therefore time is also an outcome of God’s creation. Living in such limitation as the creature, any method can help us face the subject and substance of creation directly.
I do not want to exclusively talk about creativity in a tune of agnosticism and credibility of its evidence. I would like to emphasize the fact that we should not confine eternal life in our epistemic category. In other word, we should not try to reduce the enormous size of eternal life that is evident within our own experience in this world. Needless to explain in detail, but it is very clear how often such things happen in our life of faith. We are thinking of our unconditional and eternal happy life in the kingdom of God after death. The desire for eternal life in a secular level is simply wrapped with a wrapping paper of Christian faith.
We can say eternal life is in God alone. It is the teaching of incarnation that the eternal God entered into this limited world. Hence, the mysterious combination of eternality and finiteness is eternal life.
Question about eternal life (5)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
The man who asked Jesus about eternal life asked nothing but salvation. The question ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ is equivalent to the question ‘what should I do to get salvation?’ As mentioned earlier, when I say eternal life is it talks about salvation.
Why did a man ask such a question? Perhaps he raised such question to clarify his sudden feeling of nihilism in his life. People often face such a moment. There are moments when we lost the clear meaning and purpose of everything that we have pursued and could not find any ground for what is our lives sustained. However, the man who asked the particular question was a rich man. Even his property could not satisfy him. He could not get a real satisfaction even through his family. He wanted to be saved. He might miss the peace like an infant nestling in its mother's bosom and the complete rest that is not disturbed by anything.
Yes. Nothing in this world can satisfy our souls. He eventually gets disappointed if he tries to find out satisfaction from these worldly things such as property, power and hobby. Of course, there is a person who insists that he is fully satisfied with his life in this world. Also those who find out rest in God may satisfy in the way of living in this world. The matter is that man can never be satisfied with these worldly things. In this case, satisfaction has the negative connotation of either lying or a proof of one’s immaturity.
He was not satisfied with his property but, at the same time, he was not able to give it up. Jesus said, “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Hearing this, his face cast down. Is this our true character; running after two hares at the same time?
Question about eternal life (6)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
I wonder you might have misunderstood my previous explanation which says that we cannot satisfy with the goods of the world but real satisfaction is possible only with God. The misunderstanding could be like as if I tried to find out the reality of salvation from the other shore of life by denying the life of this world. If it has been delivered in that way, it could be due to my poor skill of writing. The key point and the intended message is to focus on the relationship between this world and the other side of the world.
As a matter of fact, the world in which we are now living is a momentary one. The items of God’s creation such as man, other species, the earth and the entire universe have the same nature of durability. We cannot expect an immortal status from a mortal one. For example, a young couple falls in love. They want to expect a certain absolute from the other party. Sometimes they may feel like having absolutes in their lives. However, clearly all such experiences pass by like a moment of dream. It means that we cannot expect any absolute thing from a human being.
Then finally we have to find out an absolute from the other side of world by faith. This is also not a simple matter. We have not experienced the other side of world as a reality yet. Precisely speaking, people do not know how to have experience from the other side of world as a reality. The reason is that it is beyond our experience.
How the evanescent world and the eternal and absolute one are connected though the two look different and there seem to have a chasm of difference between the two in reality. What is the connecting ring? The way between the two worlds is just like a labyrinth. It is a hidden path through a dense forest. The eyes that could see it may be rightly called as spirituality. For those who are in this world of spirituality, though their lives on in this world look like an empty dream, at the same time, they can really feel the current of spiritual power in the other side of world ‘here and now’ beyond this visible world.
Question about eternal life (7)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17)
Shall we look into his question a little more minutely? He asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Two matters are involved in this question. One is a matter of activity and the other accomplishment. In fact, these two matters deal with the same thing.
This man had kept the Law including the Ten Commandments from childhood. A norm ethics became familiar with his life. He was an exemplary man. Such people always keenly think about a valuable activity. They are recognized and respected by society.
The problem was that he pulled down eternal life, the salvation, as part of human activity. He reduced an absolute incident to a relative one. He confused the work of God with that of man. He thought he would get God’s salvation through his exemplary activity that he had pursued throughout his life time. In short, he might visit Jesus to solve his anxiety and doubt having the apprehension that he would not be saved in such way of his life.
Jesus literally deconstructed his thought so as to light with his thinking standard. Jesus told him that if he had such confident in his activity he should go and sell all his property and give it to the poor. It is impossible for man to do this. At this point, Paul and Luther’s teaching which says ‘a man cannot get righteousness by his activity’ is proved to be right.
Then how can we get eternal life? Firstly, it has defined that we cannot get it by our own effort. For it is always relative in nature. So we have to change the question differently-changing the question into a humble prayer. It is not ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ But for us, we must only humbly pray, “Oh Lord. Please save me!”
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