Impermanence and The Atonement of Jesus Christ.
Short Essay #1
Nothing lasts forever. Everything decays, dies or disappears. The hair that once adorned my head is now gone. The babies I once held are gone and are replaced with the children I love; but these children will slowly disappear into adults, their infancy and childhood never to be retrieved. My body, no matter what I do will decay, become decrepit and die. In the end everything in life will be stripped away. The home I own, the nations I have called home, the woman I love, the friends I have, the body I possess, the money in my bank, the work I do; Everything is impermanent.
So why in this world of obvious impermanence where life itself can end or be forever altered in seconds, do I find myself attempting the cling so tightly to the things of this world. Why do I fear loss when loss is the inevitable outcome of living. I fear losing a child but in a very real sense I have already lost all my babies to the natural process of maturation.
I fear death, yet I die every day. I am no longer a baby or a child. I am no longer a young man. All these versions of me are gone, never to be relived and even the remembrance of them is clouded by inaccurate recollections. The man I am today this very moment as I sit here in West Virginia will not be here tomorrow when I wake up. I am dying. This body I call my own is slowly but surely dying. And when it does it will disappear as though it never was; the elements and particles being absorbed by the earth to become other things.
The idea of ceasing to exist terrifies me. When my body does finally die, what becomes of me? At the core of this is the the question; “Who am I?” Am I just biology and chemistry with a brain; a chance creation in a dark and dangerous universe? I sense deep down that I am more than this, that I am an eternal being, an intelligence that can be neither created nor destroyed, but living in a world of impermanence makes me wonder if I am also impermanent; that death really is the end. And if death is the end then life really does have no meaning.
But my life seems to be imbued with meaning and purpose. Instilled deep somewhere is the feeling that life really does have a purpose. I sense a very real desire to progress toward something or someone that is beyond my natural senses to comprehend.
For these reasons I find myself drawn to Jesus Christ because He seems to be the only one to offer any satisfactory answer to the problem of impermanence and provides the solution to it.
One reason why I believe and hope that the tomb was empty that first Easter morning is because if it is true then the problem of impermanence is solved. The fear of ceasing to exist is vanquished. And whilst it does not provide every answer right now, Christ’s resurrection demonstrates that the death and decay I experience all around me as I sojourn through mortality are not final and will, in the end, be overcome.
If Christ came to show me how to become an eternal being, and if I am serious about following the pathway Jesus Christ walked, then I see no bypass around the garden, the cross, or the tomb. If that is the route Christ had to take then surely I must also enter the garden and kneel, be crucified and lay in a quiet tomb.
As I have sought to better understand the Atonement of Jesus Christ, one conclusion I come to is that His Atonement does not absolve me from having to also descend below all things so that I can experience a fullness of Joy; the majesty and miracle to me is that because Christ went first and did it alone, I do not have to go alone. Because he knows how to do it and has borne the weight; I can choose to yoke myself to Him and not have to walk the pathway to eternal life alone.
The question I find myself asking is do I trust Christ enough to follow Him; to let go peacefully of everything in this world and then step into the quiet garden, to hang on the agonizing cross, and lie in the silent tomb with Him. Am I prepared to say “Thy will be done” and descend below all things yoked with Christ so that on my third day I, like Him, can undo and reverse impermanence, and burst forth from the tomb an immortal, eternal, and everlasting being.
From my home in Almost Heaven,
Matthew, xo