A MAN OUT OF TIME...

There has only been one man in history that exists (or existed) out of time. I met him once and I know him still.  Well, “know” is not very effective here. More like, I am known by him.

The idea of a man outside time demands that he be neither current nor stale, neither in front of any particular movement or behind it or within it. He is not liberal and certainly not conservative, right or left in any spectrum mean nothing to him. He is not for free trade or free markets or anti-china or pro-negritude. Shockingly, he is not even for or against countries, is not Nigerian or polish or Japanese. He is not a champion of any ethnic group or ‘people’ though he belonged to one. Blue or pink, rich or poor, free or bound, Dark Age or renaissance, the tides do not change. The issues he addresses are not tied to any age.

His claim to living does not come from studies of “purpose” or the things that he owns or may own around that way or the person he became/or may become in some material future. Eternity is all that gathers on his mind and in his heart.

It is not that he is non-linear; it is that he is multi-linear, ultra-linear, hyper-linear and meta-linear. It would be an insult to say he is “outside the box”.  He is so far above all that. He would not even notice that you have sought to put him in context and so limit him.

His message is simple but it is not easy. It is for everyone but it is hard for anyone to submit fully to it. Most likely, we will pick and choose and adapt for use. It will challenge professors and adolescents in exactly the same way with different circumstances.  It says the same thing to those who value heart over mind and to those who value mind over heart. It says: love others as you wish to be loved. That is the hardest of the disciplines because often we want to be loved in indulgence, loved as we think we deserve to be without effort on our own part to reciprocate with even the tiniest morsel of the grace-bread. Loving as we wish to be loved removes the quid pro quo at the base of our ideas of love and romance. It encroaches on our ego and wants it destroyed in every place in which the ego exists. It is Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism turned on its head, the “fountainhead” in reverse. “The ego is the fountainhead of human regress.”

For our man out of time gave all he had and did it without holding back him-self. He was not afraid to lose his identity or position or respect or dignity or love or intimacy because he knew these things were masks of masks, mere consolations in the light of eternity. He knew that by giving all we would all have the opportunity to become all we can be and give that up too and on and on till all are held up in grace and…you know where this is going.

The Christian life is an exercise in learning how to live out of time. It is not an escape from the calls of your day but the interpretation of these days with the illumination of forever.  It is the discipline of emptying out all you think you are on earth and looking up to all you really are from the vantage point of heaven. It is the answer to that question that bothers you at the most successful and unsuccessful points of your life, the baffling anti-climax of all your great events, the gaping hollow space when you have just drunk deeply from the fountain (head?) of life.  The tiny voice that keeps insisting: more, more, more…you have no answer for this voice so you quench it. But you really should let it keep on. The words become clearer…” more, more…there is so much more to be had…” it is the great something missing in all something(s).  The price for this life is the self. It will take all you have and all you think you cannot live without to get what you need.  It will take a step out of time.

This is done in full aggression. We are not in a passive sport. It is a lifetime of not yielding, constant training, no surrender and only victory of light over darkness will do. The victory over the preservation of self is the first battle. It begins on your knees (maybe) and ends beside a throne.  Yet it is still based in love. It is love in utmost action, as light, as salt, as cross, as tomb and as resurrection. It is a heart, mind and body dedicated to the origin and destination of things toward God.

But all that  comes  later. The foundation must be clear. Christ is not an image to worship but a path to follow, a hero, a role model, a trail blazer, an original. There are no others. All must become like Him to get the fullness promised by the very presence of life and the heart of man. Here is your chance, now, right now, to fill all your empty places. Now, right now, is your chance to be finally better.

You know the first pill. “Cease from your own works”. Stop acting so right. Competence and character in one part of life does not a wholeness make. And we are talking about the whole man.  It is hard to accept that our strongest points do not matter, that one ink stain ruins the whole cloth. It does. It is hard to not cover up your ignorance with what you think you know and not hide behind shades of apparent brilliance. We are speaking about the whole man. If the shades are still drawn up on your life house and you have no use for sunlight then turn away here. It has always been a message first for the losers, the half-wits, the non-fixers, the slow to burn and the unfortunate. “Blessed are they…” they are also the honest. They know their value is inherent and in their souls.  That they have given, that they must give.  The more aware you are of the state you are truly in the more you have to give and the more appreciative you are of the divine exchange taking place.

In the end, to step out of time, you have to learn to walk out on your own life and be more active in it. I am putting it badly. Shall we try Francis Thompson’s “hound of heaven”, paraphrased:

“That which I took from you/I took not for your harm/but that you might find it/in my arms.”

Clive Staples Lewis said there are no selves outside God. It is only in Him that we begin to approach who we truly are.  Before that we are phantoms, alterations, ghosts of spirits, betrayals of our true, given state.

Death is the doorway to the more whispered about.  A physical death one day but the first death is of the ego. It must succumb to the holy trinity of hope, faith and finally love.  This is the grand giving up of those ‘vital’ things so you can get on with what truly is. This is the tailspin and truth of Rand’s fountainhead and Howard Roark and objectivism. It is: there is God and man is in His image and not apart from Him. In His image, not in space or time or earth but in image. Within Him man will be everything not just anything.  Without Him man will die. In time.