"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain."
- Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight.
I have been thinking a lot the last few years about the need to and difficulty of finishing well; many of these meditations began with revelations of people that I had looked up to in one way or another falling into lifestyles of compromise or becoming the very things they preached or fought against. I am learning to be humble enough to accept that I am in no way better than these men I have regarded as heroes and that I, left to myself, would probably end up the same way they did.
It seems, to me, that there is a natural inclination within men towards devolution. That is to say that unless someone makes deliberate efforts to grow morally, spiritually, intellectually, financially, etc., they would have been in a worse position at the end of their lives in that regard than they were at the beginning of that journey. It takes work to either stay in the same position or grow better but it doesn’t take any to deteriorate.
This thought sounds similar to a certain physical law. The second law of thermodynamics, loosely speaking, states that all closed systems tend towards disorder (maximum entropy). We can all relate to this in one way or another: your house tends to grow dirty and dusty, even without any efforts from you or your kids to make it so. Weeds, also, will sprout and take over any piece of land that is not tended to. What I find even more interesting about this law is that an input of energy is required to reverse this tendency toward disorder. We can learn a thing or two from this principle.
I think a lot about how many men of the cloth, who may have started their ministries on the right path and with the right heart, ended up abusing their authority to gratify the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes and the pride of life. I also think a lot about how many revolutionary leaders in history became like or even worse than the despots they deposed. I think about husbands who married the women of their dreams only to later cheat on them.
Next to Jesus, Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived and he, the man who started his kingship desperately seeking the heart of God, was an idol-worshipping polygamist at the end of his life. I’m certain that I am not even half as wise as he was; what’s to keep me from ending up in the same situation that he, and many men before and after him, ended up in?
Apart from God’s grace, which he makes available to all of us, something else we’d need to stay clear of the ditches that many have already fallen into is to learn from their mistakes—the chief of which could have been that there was complacency that crept in and they stopped putting energy into the (spiritual, moral, and what have you) systems they grew so confident of being masters of. Perhaps most men cheat because they stopped investing their efforts in the romance that made them marry in the first place. It could be that many preachers fall into sexual and financial sin because they stopped investing efforts in their sanctification. Political leaders probably grow more corrupt when they forsake their passion for service and start to seek only to serve their selves.
Life is not a sprint. It is a very long marathon and to run this race and finish it well, a lot of consistency is required. It takes a lot of energy and effort to stay in the same position, and even more to evolve and grow better, not worse.
I wish to run my race and win it.
I wish to fight my good fight and emerge victorious.
I wish to remain faithful until the end.
I wish to finish well.
So help me God.
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