The Artist Must Die: Totally Forgettable...

Nov 12, 2008

Totally Forgettable...

Think about this:
There are billions of people who have died that NO ONE REMEMBERS AT ALL.

They are forgotten.

Sure, there are a few people who are remembered through literature and history but the VAST majority of all earth's human inhabitants are forgotten... unnoticed by history...unmentioned by time.

I am just looking at my own family ... I know the names of a few of my great great grandparents...
...but above that pretty much NOTHIN'. (My mom knows more because she went "Mormon" on the family tree thing a few years ago.)

Let's face it: Only the people we know well, know us well.

And they don't know us completely or deeply. And those we consider close friends can become strangers in a short time. We are always changing.. .We all have people in our past that we once knew very well that we no longer have contact with...I have co-workers, great friends, and neighbors in my past that I loved like family...BACK THEN.
Now things have changed, and I don't know them anymore because time has already made us all into new people...

As for me, being a Christian, a wife and a mom to my two boys is so central to my being that anyone who knew me before all this change came, doesn't know me at all... and I doubt they think about me anymore... I am a faint flicker floating farther and farther away from their lives. I am irrelevant. Get my drift?

We will all be forgotten in just a few generations. Even if we write books, and blogs, and take photos, and scrapbooks and try to hold on, we will slip into oblivion. After all, someone has to be interested sorting through all our old junk... people are just not that interested in people who are dead... However, they will take our stuff, pillage our jewelry boxes, and enjoy the antiques some...but they won't care too much about us... or where we lived and what we did and if we could or could not lose the 40 lbs we gained since high school.

We can increase your chances of being remembered if we can:
1. great achievement (like becoming president)
2. celebrity status (shallowness is essential)
3. legendary talent (like Mozart or Shakespeare)
4. great philanthropy(give a lot of money away and make them use your name on the buildings)
5. infamy(Jack the ripper)
6. noteworthy scandals(Monica Lewinsky)
7. social importance(Rosa Parks)

... and think about it this way... celebrities and important people are forgotten all the time. With any luck, today's celebrities will be forgotten next week!

No, really. Anyone remember the pop star Martikka? You forgot her didn't you? What about what's his name from that show with, oh! what was it? Or how about that song, you know the one with what's-his-face?

This is so frustrating, I can't remember all that I have forgotten!
If you can't cast a large shadow, chances are that in just a few generations you will be a great great great grandparent to a whole bunch of total strangers.

Through the eyes of the secularist/evolutionist/athiest this part of the great "circle of life." We don't matter at all, we have no inherent reason to care.

The popular culture, however, displays a desperate desire for another answer...just look how everyone seems to be hoping to leave a legacy, a permanent mark, proof that we mattered, that we existed, evidence that we were more than "dust in the wind." In all that we do, in the back of our minds we are thinking, "What will they remember me for? Was I pretty? Was I creative? Was I better educated than most? What will they say at my funeral? What can I do with my life to make my funeral weigh more? How can I get the most folks to come and cry over me!"

However, we don't really die...at least not permanently.

According to the Bible, we go on living after life... Either to our great joy or to our great horror. Yes, this means Hitler, Elvis, and John F. Kennedy are still alive.

AND, all of the billions of people who ever lived and who ever died since the dawn of time are all still 'alive' waiting for the end when all will be known. The Bible tells us that every detail of our life is REMEMBERED and we will give an account them.

Thankfully, the only One who can fully KNOW us, the only One who TRULY cares about every detail of our lives, the only One who NEVER CHANGES and NEVER LEAVES US, the only One who NEVER TIRES of us is our CREATOR.

Jesus, knows us fully and he loves us fully inspite of everything. We can take comfort in knowing that we matter to him. We are not wasted, and there is no wasted lives in God's economy. We will not be forgotten because we are loved and special enough to spend eternity in his company enjoying him forever.

The only thing forgotten, at that point, would be our sins...
"as far as the east is from the west, that is how far he has removed our transgressions from us."

It's good to know that all of life has not been a waste and that its fruit will be enjoyed forever...

"And this burning tree, this withering... will bloom again..." SONG: Good-Bye, Plankeye

2 comments:

Sit-N-ChatNovember 14, 2008 at 9:26 PM
I think you are pretty young for the thoughts of your Nov 2nd and this last one to be so "settled" for you. God is so good. Blessings.
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Ruth MacCJanuary 11, 2009 at 3:47 AM
I agree with all you say. Before my conversion I pondered and thought of these things but now I know that like you say there is One who knows me from way back then and now, and still loves me. He loved me then when I was His enemy and He loves me now I am His child. It is all irrelevant in comparrison to having a relationship with Him.

How manyu people died and is in Hell now unforgiven?
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Some Warnings to the Christian Artist

"However, there are dangers in exercising one's artistic creativity. One danger is idolatry. the worship of the work of one's own hands, Another is jealousy of other, perhaps more talented or more successful artists, A third is the prostitution of one's artistic talents in the service of evil causes. Yet another is the falsification of artistic visions received from God, This danger is unavoidable in our sin-perverted world, as any godly writer or artist will instantly admit. Because literature and art can be so influential in society. Christian writers and artists must take very seriously the Scriptural admonition to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling" as God is "working out His good pleasure in us" (Phil. 2:12-133. Christian writers and artists also should bear in mind that their work is in many respects of an instructive or teaching nature, The writer or artist as teacher `~ill be judged more strictly' by God (James 3:1). Lastly. Christian literature and art should "bless our Lord's holy name with all that is within" the artist (Ps. 103:1). Our creativity must glorify our Creator (Rev.t:1 1). To glorify our wonderful Lord we must forsake mere "Christian utility" aimed at mere entertainment. How sad that Franky Schaeffer, son of the late Ltr .Francis Schaeffer and a talented painter and film maker, could rightly accuse today's Christians of "addiction to mediocrity' and shoddiness in craftsmanship in the arts, This cannot glorify our Creator (Rev. 4:11)."

click here to read the whole article

DYING TO SELF

When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you don't sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ.

THAT IS DYING TO SELF

When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take in all in patient, loving silence.

THAT IS DYING TO SELF

When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any impunctuality, or any annoyance; when you stand face-to- face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility-and endure it as Jesus endured.

THAT IS DYING TO SELF

When you are content with any food, any offering, any climate, any society, any raiment, any interruption by the will of God.

THAT IS DYING TO SELF

When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendations, when you can truly love to be unknown.

THAT IS DYING TO SELF

When you can see your brother prosper and have his needs met and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy, nor question God, while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances.

THAT IS DYING TO SELF

When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart.

THAT IS DYING TO SELF

Are you dead yet? In these last days, the Spirit would bring us to the cross.

OTHERS MAY, YOU CANNOT !

If God has called you to be really like Jesus, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put upon you such demands of obedience, that you will not be able to follow other people, or measure yourself by other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other people do things which He will not let you do.

Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful, may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it, and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

Others may boast of themselves, of their work, of their successes, of their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, or may have a legacy left to them, but it is likely God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, namely, a helpless dependence upon Him, that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury.

The lord may let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hidden in obscurity, because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade. He may let others be great, but keep you small. He may let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He may let others get credit for the work which you have done, and thus make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes.

The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasting your time, which other Christians never feel distressed over. So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign and has a right to do as He pleases with His own. He may not explain to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason in His dealings with you, but if you absolutely sell yourself to be his love slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and bestow upon you many blessings which come only to those who are in the inner circle.

Settle it forever, then, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He must have the right to tie your tongue, or chain your hand, or close your eyes, in ways that He does not seem to use with others. Now, when you are so possessed with the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.