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.