Midway through the film “Master and Commander,” Russell Crowe gives one of the shortest but most profound eulogies ever delivered on screen.
Speaking grimly of an unloved and hapless suicide victim, he says, “The simple truth is, not all of us become the men we once hoped we might be.”
“The simple truth is, not all of us become the men we once hoped we might be.”
Become… or die
The suicide, he implies, is the regrettable but logical result of profound personal failure – failure to “become.”
By this logic, failure to live as that “man-who-became” leads inexorably to death.
Not living up to one’s hopes – not becoming what one hoped to become – is equivalent to taking one’s own life. To dying.
Let’s acknowledge the obvious: there is nothing simple about that idea.
But part of its power to catalyze a recoil response in us is that it’s inescapable.
Become… to live large?
Think about it: the notion of life-or-death stakes for personal “becoming” permeates popular culture.
It lends the urgency to marketing campaigns for everything from fitness equipment to vacation destinations.
It constitutes the cornerstone of the “American Dream” of affluence, accomplishment, and endless entertainment.
It makes mid-life crises look inspirational.
It keeps “make-overs” perennially popular.
It even lends an aura of inevitability to aberrations like “gender transitions” – because who can argue with someone who is just trying to “become the man (or woman) he once hoped he might be”?
But is this ubiquitous perspective about becoming vs. dying – this not-so-simple idea articulated so pristinely by a movie character and played out so universally in our culture – is it really true, according to God’s truth?
Culture vs. Christ
In other words, does Jesus concur that “The simple truth is, not all of us become the men we once hoped we might be”?
Further, does Jesus understand a failure-to-become as a death sentence?
But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:12 – 13)
The gospel of John makes it very clear: Jesus came, that we might receive and believe and become.
Based on this passage, we could even claim that Jesus’s central purpose in coming is our becoming.
Notice, however, that Jesus’s central purpose is NOT that we “might become the men that we once hoped we might be” but rather that we might “become children of God… born… of God.”
Where the world’s advertisements and applause tend to assume the “self-made man”, Jesus explicitly articulates that our becoming process requires God.
God made us in His image in the beginning; God must remake us for us to be His children in the present moment. The specifics of this God-powered becoming – being quite literally “born again” – is clearly something that only God can do.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3:16 – 18)
The gospel of John also makes it clear that Jesus came so we might live.
Indeed, Jesus came to save us from death, that we might live forever.
Equally clearly, not “becoming” on Jesus’s terms – not becoming children of God – leads to death.
Like the specificity of Christian becoming and Christian life, this death that is the alternative to Christian becoming and Christian life is specific. This death happens for specific reasons. This death encompasses certain specific conditions (condemnation, for example).
Jesus died to save us from this death! But Jesus leaves the choice between living and dying up to us. His is an invitation, not a coercion.
Light, darkness, life, death…
And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. (John 3:19 – 20)
Rejecting Jesus’s light in favor of darkness.
Loving and doing evil.
Hiding from the light that might expose (but also deliver from) that evil.
This death from which Jesus would save us is an ongoing series of choices and actions.
Killing the self (but not by suicide)
The becoming-or-dying paradigm in its Jesus-truth iteration has one further distinctive… something that removes it from the realm of the movie eulogy altogether:
Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?” (Mark 8:34 – 37)
In addition to empowering our receiving, believing, and becoming – in addition to offering us eternal life – Jesus requires our death.
Not a physical death, but a death just the same – a costly death, a death that resembles His on the Cross. A death that is more significant and valuable than “the whole world…”
Dying to self – dying to the world – dying to the idea that our hopes, apart from Christ, are worthy guides – this dying that Jesus requires is the prerequisite for the living that Jesus enables.
Two Deaths, One Life
In fact, the whole package of eternal life that begins here and now through Christ depends on two deaths:
First, Jesus’s death, once for all, on the cross at Calvary – a death that conquered death, and sin, and the Devil.
And second, our own death – the daily death, chosen and embraced and cherished as the path to life in the risen Christ.
Paul beautifully described this living-in-dying in his letter to the Galatians (chapter 2, verses 19 & 20): “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Jesus explained, “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.” (John 14:19)
We die, that we might live – and never die.
Years ago, I served with some church youth at a halfway house in Baltimore.
A Doctor whose retirement-vocation was ministering there was a wise and loving man. I will never forget him explaining the Christian becoming-or-dying paradigm to the teenagers gathered to serve with him.
He said, “Nobody dreams of becoming a junkie. Nobody aspires to lose their families, their homes, their professions. Not one of the men who are guests here are guests here on purpose.”
In his words we find one last critical distinctive: we have to choose Jesus on purpose.
If we don’t choose Jesus on purpose, we will choose something else. Maybe not on purpose, but we will choose.
We may not end up in a halfway house for addicts, but we will never end up in our forever home with Jesus – unless we choose Him ON PURPOSE.
The only genuine hope
“The simple truth is, not all of us become the men we once hoped we might be.”
In light of the truth of Jesus, the proper response to those words is, “So, what?!”
Becoming the men (or woman) we once hoped we might be has no value whatsoever unless our hopes are aligned with and surrendered to the One in whom we have Life!
So, may we shrug off the pressure to aspire to things that validate the world’s warped perspective of a life worth living… and may we embrace Christ’s invitation to die that we may live forever with Him.
The world will keep trying to sell us counterfeit versions of what Christ offers us for free – but we don’t have to buy them. We can reject them, and choose Christ, on purpose. Even now.
May it be said of each of us someday: “S/he became the disciple Jesus hoped s/he might be.”
And may it be said TO each of us someday, “Well done, good and faithful servant… enter into the joy of your Master.” (Matthew 25:23)
