A Convenient Fiction: "Living In the Moment"

"Always live in the present"... "Now is eternal"... "There's only one moment"... "You can't stop time"... "Now is all there is"...

These and the many similar aphorisms one hears from today's peddlers of platitudes are more than inane tautologies. They represent an important aspect of postmodern humanist thought, and reflect the deconstructive impulse of postmodern philosophy. This idea is at odds with Christian philosophy and is destructive as well as deconstructive.

Philosophers of our day emphasize the tenuousness of links between moments in time. What is it, exactly, that links "me" today to "me" tomorrow. If I lost my memory, would I be the "same person"? Can "me" tomorrow be held accountable for the actions of "me" today? In economics, our models of behavior bring this home: people ('agents' we call them) are utterly anonymous, and exist only as a set of momentary 'states', or circumstances. This stylization of humanity conforms to the postmodern view of man.

Christian philosophy, however, links the observable, temporal human being to an unobservable, eternal soul. This foundation of the doctrine of man underpins the Christian's understanding of himself and frames his actions and attitudes. In fact, the eternity of souls binds the Christian's actions to a framework that includes but is not limited to time as we experience it. This is tremendously at odds with "living in the moment" philosophy.

Those who follow the pop philosophy of the era, which includes most people I encounter, have difficulty dealing with change. When "the moment" is all you have, faith - in the human or the divine - is washed away by each flash flood of circumstance. If "the moment" is unbearable, then life is unbearable. If cogito ergo sum is the full measure of man, then my perceptions now of my entire existence are its truest evaluation.

"Imagine all the people living for today." Depressing, huh? Suicide is a logical extension of the Beatles.

Contrast this tyranny of the second to Biblical injunctions. A search of "remember" turns up 233 results in the NIV. Nowhere is the Biblical attitude clearer than in the Psalms and rites of Jewish worship, which constantly recall the relationship of their forefathers to God, and God's deliverance of the Israelites from slavery. Likewise, God emphasizes that His own relationship to them is based not on their present state but on remembering His covenant with Abraham.*

Likewise, our salvation and standing before God is completely independent of the "now". Christ intercedes for our salvation based on His past, complete sacrifice on our behalf; we maintain faith in God's faithfulness not blindly, but in remembrance of his faithfulness in time after time; the consummation of our salvation is an object of hope - and we hope for what we do not see.

Tautologically, we can only act in the present. But we do not have to "live in the moment". We have the privilege of memory and of hope, and we can join our forbears from the age of martyrs to the abolition movement is despising the sufferings of the present time because we are not shackled to its vacillations.

* Note that I discuss God here in His relation to us; 'memory' for Him is not a fading function of time as it is for us. His own existence is outside space-time, though He relates to us in time and space. Our limited freedom from time is a function of His complete freedom from it.