Living vs. Surviving

A while back, I was listening to “Born to Live” by About A Mile, and my mind got stuck on the lyrics that open the song, and then part of the chorus:

“My heart’s beating inside my chest
My lungs breathe in the oxygen
But I need something more than this
To keep me alive…

There’s a higher calling on all our lives
Let’s live to love not just survive

Wake up! What are we waiting for?
We know that we were made for more
We’re not living just ‘cause we were born
There’s no doubt about it
We were born to live.”

The Difference Between Living and Surviving

Nowadays, we treat the words “living” and “surviving” as synonyms—using them interchangeably—even though they most certainly are not. There’s a completely different experience between someone who is living life and someone who is merely surviving it.

And actually, there is no better example of this than two people who started out living life and were relegated to barely surviving: Adam and Eve. These two were truly born, created, to live. They had no worries in the Garden of Eden. Their days were spent walking with God, enjoying the fruits of the garden, and overall, having a wonderfully joyous time. They were truly alive.

But then, the Fall happened, and no longer could they just live so easily in the presence of God. After they were removed from the garden, every decision was paramount. One wrong move, and the land that was once bountiful with everything they needed would turn against them. One faulty decision and they might not make it to the next day. They had to work with all they had to ensure they, and eventually their children, would survive.

The Existence of a Survivor

What’s important is that believers are called to do more than just survive. To the nonbeliever, all choices are made with one goal in mind: to preserve some sort of legacy so they can live on past their death. Take a look at some quotes that nonbelievers have about death, and you can see it’s a fairly universal idea amongst those who do not profess a belief in God. I’ll throw a few in just as an example:

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.” – George Eliot

“They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” – Banksy

“To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.” – Thomas Campbell

There’s a key theme located in all of these things: worry. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, there was no reason to worry. They literally didn’t even know what worry was in the perfection of life prior to the Fall, whereas afterwards, worry was introduced as part of sin. No longer were their lives carefree. The people around who do not know our God worry ceaselessly about their survival, and that’s where we differ.

 The Life of a Believer

Matthew 6:25-34 tells us we are called to be above worry, to be above survival, to live, specifically in verses 33-34, which say, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

For believers, our worries in life are not meant to be over whether we will have enough to eat and drink or clothes to wear or a place to live. Those things will be provided for us as long as God has us on the Earth to do the work we’re called to do. Our worries are on other things including, but not necessarily limited to, our relationship with God, our community with the Church, and our outreach and discipleship work in the world around us. Those are the only reasons you’re still here and not done with this life, as I’ve written about before here.

The Hollow Reality of a Survivor in a Forest of Life

To borrow a metaphor, let’s say that humanity is a forest, and gathered in this forest are trees representing each person’s life. There are so many of these trees that look beyond perfect. The bark is thick, the roots look strong and appear to burrow deep underground, and the leaves appear a brilliant, deep green.

But in reality, many of these trees are empty, hollow. Attached to their trunks, right at the ground, is a plastic cover that seeks to project the picturesque image of abundant life but is only hiding the tiny seedling whose roots are so shallow they absorb almost no nutrients, and whose single leaf can barely gather enough sunlight to survive in the hollow cylinder that blocks the sun.

Now, all around these tiny seedlings in hollow, plastic trees are majestic oaks, towering over the forest floor, with roots that have dug deep and wide, branches that touch the sky, and leaves that pattern dappled shade on the seedlings around it, protecting them from the wilting heat of the day and allowing them to be nurtured towards a fruitful life. With reckless abandon, these trees bask in the sunlight knowing that their roots can gather all the nutrients necessary to protect themselves from any danger and repair any hurts.

So many people are like those tiny seedlings, projecting life when they are only barely clinging on to their survival, believing, fruitlessly, that the only thing keeping them alive is the belief that they are big and strong, when in reality, it’s the thing that’s killing them. If they were only to remove that plastic cover, they would be able to reach the sun and actually grow so they can live.

There’s a Practical Answer to Helping Survivors Learn to Live

This is the power a relationship with Christ grants us. Only He is able to pull away the plastic cover of sin that robs us of what we genuinely need in life, and oftentimes, He uses His people to do so. When it comes down to ministry, a lot of believers absolutely love being God’s hand to reach out and pull off that cover, but few are willing to help nurture that seedling into life.

There’s a hard line between living and surviving, so when we go out to show people how to actually live, we have a lot of work to do to get them to cross over that line. It’s paramount, then, to take care of the needs for survivors before showing them how to live, to guide and guard that seedling until it grows into a sapling, capable of standing, of reaching for the light of God, of diffing deeper into the Word and gathering the nutrients it needs to truly live.

No survivor is going to change what they think already works for something that can’t be proven effective. As believers, we know we were remade in Christ to live; it’s just a matter of convincing nonbelievers that they, too, were made for more than just surviving, and then showing them how to live as God calls us to.

Are we Animals?

This is a topic often considered when discussing apologetics with those who believe in Darwin’s evolution theory. Are we just animals? Or are we something more? What does it mean if we are just animals? How many differences are there if we are no different, no better than the soulless creatures that roam the Earth around us, that we were given to command?

Well, God says we are different, special. We were formed out of clay by God’s hand as he breathed life into us while he merely spoke animals into existence from the earth. We were designated as God’s special creation while animals were not given such a position. We were made in the image of God while animals were not.

And in creating each in the manner they were created, God designated an important distinction between human and animal: one has the character of God imprinted in its very nature—humanity—one has earthly character imprinted in its nature—animals. It doesn’t seem that important at first, and I’m sure many of us have just glossed over these verses in Genesis before, but they are incredibly valuable when we talk about our nature, and especially in the argument of morals and death.

Solomon had to deal with this in his time thanks to Egypt’s worship of animals, and he does so in a form of mocking, but there are some important things to take from his mocking of Egypt’s mythology in Ecclesiastes chapter 3.

First, let’s establish the relationship of animals, humans, and God. Animals are representative of a sin nature. They lack the likeness of God and as such they can only perform in a manner of sin (you’ll see what I mean later). Humans, now, sit in this middle ground. We have the capability to live and be like God in our behavior, but we also have the ability to act like animals. And God is the ultimate good. He only acts within His character.

Now, we must ascribe a spectrum of morality because that is the key difference separating each of these three groups. Animals have no morals. They act to benefit themselves or their offspring. There is no altruism in animals. Humans have the capability to be animalistic—acting selfish—or Godly—acting selfless. And God is the ultimate morality. Everything He does is morally perfect. He was the ultimate morality when Jesus died on the cross for us.

Ecclesiastes 3:16-18 says, “I also observed under the sun: there is wickedness at the place of judgment and there is wickedness at the place of righteousness. I said to myself, ‘God will judge the righteous and the wicked, since there is a time for every activity and every work.’ I said to myself, ‘This happens concerning people, so that God may test them and they may see for themselves that they are like animals.’”

As with all things in Ecclesiastes, the purpose of this is to remind us that we need God. Earlier, I said that animals are a moral representation of sin. They only act to benefit themselves. They have no moral system. If an animal kills another of its kind, no other comes to punish it. If an animal steals, it receives no justice. Revenge, perhaps, but certainly not justice. But especially, there is no quandary that occurs when an animal does something morally incorrect like killing or stealing. An animal does not concern itself over whether it does right or wrong because, to it, nothing is objectively wrong. Everything is subjective to its place.

But humans have an innate moral compass. This was imprinted on us because we were created in God’s image. A person will feel perplexed when confronted with a situation that would have them compromise that compass, such as killing or stealing. And upon performing such an action, a human will feel convicted that they did wrong, ideally.

But because of sin, we have injustice just like the animals. We have people who can kill, steal, lie and do all manner of harm and not feel as though they have done wrong. But, even worse, we are all capable of doing wrong and feeling no remorse. It is only through just judgment that we see through God’s character that we have done wrong. That’s what Solomon is describing. When we see that we are like animals, we see that there is a God who can help us to be more like Him and less like soulless beasts.

So, no, we are not animals, though we certainly can act like them at times. The existence of our morality is clear evidence there is a distinction between us and God’s other creations. That distinction is important because there is no hope without it. If we are animals, there is nothing after life here. There is nothing but a meaningless life and then death, as Solomon describes in verses 19-20.

“For the fate of people and the fate of animals is the same. As one dies, so dies the other; they all have the same breath. People have no advantage over animals, for everything is futile. All are going to the same place; all come from dust, and all return to dust.”

Again, this is Solomon picking at the Egyptian worldview that when you die, life after is the same as life here. But at an even larger scale, this is Solomon talking about existence without God. Without God, the reality of these verses is all you have to look forward to. You live and you die. You are meaningless dust. If we are merely animals, this is all there is.

Personally, I thank God we are not merely animals, but that we are special creations of one who loves us.