Ask most people off the street this question, and I am sure you would hear a nearly infinite number of responses. I’m guessing most Christians would respond similarly with the occasional “Jesus” or “Helping others”.
I asked myself this question, and its something that is tough for me to answer right away. I think a lot of the delay has to do with me taking inventory of all the things or experiences (pronounced “stuff”) I have had in my life. However I then subsequently realize that, calling myself a christian, I should probably not be espousing that material items and moments in time, are what is best in my life. In my hypocrisy I don’t want to appear to others (and myself) to be as fallen and “of the world” as I am. So I resort to a Sunday School answer akin to “That Jesus died for my sins so that I can go to heaven”. Oh wow, do you feel the gravity of that statement; its about as weighty as a piece of Styrofoam. I certainly don’t doubt the validity of that stock answer, because in of itself it is truly an amazing thing, but the position of my heart, that of feeling cornered rather than one of jubilance, is what takes the wind out of the sails.
“That Jesus died for my sins so that I can go to heaven”. There is yet one more problem with this type of canned response: it is really more a response to a question about dying than it is to one about living.
Revenge of the Mummy Ride
Say you are at an amusement park, Universal Studios, and you are waiting in line to go on the Revenge of the Mummy ride. First let me call out what a heathen you are for going on that ride of such demonic focus…j/k I thought it was an awesome indoor coaster. Anyway you are slowly progressing through, maybe with a friend, maybe alone, all your focus on how thrilling the ride will be when it’s your turn, how its going to be the…best. I don’t know anyone that goes to a theme park so that they can finally get the chance to plod along in a line. You probably see where I am going with this. If me going to heaven is the best in life, then I might as well say that the best part of Universal Studios is the lines. I’m sure Heaven is fantastic, God wants us to have a rich, satisfying, and meaningful life, not 70 years of making your way through a queue until you can finally have your turn to experience bounty.
So if if there are actually things (not stuff) in our lives that are best, what are they and why are they so hard to pin down? Again, you ask me what is best in life and I fumble in my head for a response. Ask a Cimmerian warrior what is best and the response is quick, focused on violence and destruction, yet something deeper seems to linger.
Conan! What is best in life?
Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Conan the Cimmerian (from the film Conan the Barbarian)
The scene where Conan speaks what is best in life.
Some of you might be thinking, “Francisco um I think your brain just made like a leaf, and got out of here.” It’s true that Conan is saying that, what brings the most fulfillment in life is the slaughter of those who stand against you, seeing them flee at the mere site of you, and hearing the mournful cries of their women. But could it be that at the foundation of that creed, under all the carnage, is the virtue of Justice, capital “J”. “Yeah ok, that’s about as stupid as a screen door on a battleship,” you might be thinking, but you have read this far, so you might as well finish :). Let’s analyze Conan’s answer by first trying to understand God’s perception of us.
Die Hard
I consider myself a movie guy and if you’re like me it is probably pretty easy for you to pick out who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy” in your typical blockbuster, but do you think that they see one another in that light. In Die Hard, McLane doesn’t know he has come across the boss thief Hans until Hans pulls a gun on him. We as the audience know whats up because we have seen all the other events that lead up to this meeting. We have seen Hans and his gang intimidate and murder in their attempt to plunder wealth. To us they might as well have neon signs above their heads enumerating them as “Henchman 1, Henchman 2…” on up to “Crime Boss”. McLane isn’t watching though, he is busy dieing hard, only guessing who is who by who is shooting at him and who isn’t. So when Hans pretends to be an innocent bystander, McLane is fooled even though we the viewer (perceiver) know better. It would be incorrect to say that God is just watching us all on some uber HDTV screen, because He also plays a part in the movie, interacting with all the characters (us), but he does have that divine perspective of seeing all the events that lead up to every moment in everyone’s life. Only with that type of insight can you be certain who is a “good guy” and who is a “bad guy”. Only with that type of knowledge could we know what true Justice is. When Conan says “Crush your enemies, see them driven before you…” he is of course speaking of his visceral, earthly enemies and the justice he wants to see inflicted on them. But because the enemies of God are evil, sin and Satan, the destruction, the crushing of them is divine justice.
Justice is Blind?
Typically when one thinks of justice, you might think of courts, judges, or the statue of the blindfolded woman with scales; probably not about crushing the skulls of your enemies (unless you are in 5mi/hr stop and go freeway traffic 
). We as humans will typically feel that “justice was done” if we are on the winning side in a dispute, and if we lost, that “it was an injustice”. It seems that if someone wrongs us, the relationship we have with them tips. We go from equal footing, to them becoming the wrong doer, “the enemy”, and we becoming the wronged, “the victim”. Of course because we are human, who is “the victim” and who is “the enemy”, in our mind is highly dependent on our very narrow perception of reality. After the imbalance occurs though, in order to feel justified we need the relationship to be rebalanced, whether by apologies, money transfers, or punishments to the “the enemy”. And once this balance is restored it feels like justice has been done, but in actuality it was not real Justice taking place, but rather a resetting of fairness.
Fairness, like Justice, can see what is right and wrong, but unlike Justice, fairness is chiefly concerned with bringing balance. Fairness is happy when the playing field is evened, when all the wrongs in column A are equaled out by reparations in column B. It wants to keep the peace between the the neighbors of good and evil. True Justice, on the other hand, is not concerned with balance but with the total destruction of the wrong doing. Justice doesn’t seek to repair wrongs but destroy them, and those who cause them, all together. Justice, capital “J”, is not satisfied with Righteousness living beside Evil, but with there being nothing left except Righteousness and its followers. If this is not the case then why will the goats be separated from the sheep? If God is love as we profess then it would seem simply punishing an individual to the point where their wrong vs. right tally was at equilibrium, would be all that is required for everyone to go to heaven. But that’s not the case, the Justice will come and we all will be worthy of destruction. Praise God we can have our inequity covered by the blood of Jesus the Christ and enter Heaven.
So it would seem Conan on some level is espousing the virtue of justice when he professes what for him is best in life. Maybe we all could learn from Conan and find the virtues in our own lives that really make our lives the ride, instead of the line. Or it could be I am just trying to come up with a fancy excuse for watching an awesome R rated movie that is more interested in revenge than virtue
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh9Aw5B4AJA]
