Negotiating the Already with the Not Yet

In the theologian Jurgen Moltmann’s book, The Source of Life, he says that, “Every beginning reaches forward to its completion.” He makes this comment while discussing Christianity’s anticipatory, waiting for the coming of God’s Kingdom. When I read this earlier I was captivated by its beautiful simplicity. His thought sent my mind on one of its frequent detours where I began thinking about the intersection of our intentions and what we as humans both create and become. With much of theology these days turning its attention towards seeing ourselves as co-creators who work alongside God—a natural extension of the idea of being the hands and feet of Christ—it makes sense to stop and give deliberate thought to that which we are creating as a society. After all, shouldn’t we want to know that the things we put our efforts into are good?

A profound, yet common way of understanding ourselves as part of God’s creation tells us that we can bring God joy by fully living into and becoming that which we were made to be. By this I mean that if God gifts a person in a particular way or gives someone a certain interest, then God intentionally willed this by design. Thus, to live a life pleasing to God, one needs to meticulously cultivate that peculiar facet of him/herself which God has preordained. Of course, this is just my over-simplified version of this concept, but I bring it up because I like where it leads. Following this logic, we see that God sanctions the further exploration and cultivation of our natural talents and abilities. And who could want to argue with that?

Moltmann’s above thought inspires me because it highlights our agency in becoming the person we one day hope to be. On a personal level, it connects the “where I want to be” with the “who I am right now,” which I find exciting. This connection is vitally significant because a life spent in delayed fulfillment is a life never fully lived. As a person with dreams of what I one day crave to create and be a part of, I can find hope that in my very dreaming those acts have already begun formation. Plus, this understanding teaches us to look ahead and anticipate the outcomes of our trajectories. As people responsible for how the world will continue to unfold, it is our duty to approach the future with wide and attentive eyes. Will the world we one day leave behind be a toxic waste dump or will we see the errors of our current societal path and change our course? With regards to how we relate with others, will our response to today’s unprecedented experience of instantaneous global communication be one of isolationism and protectionism or will we learn to revel in our commonly held humanity? Will we learn to share the best of what our cultures have learned with one another? Or, if we put aside those notions momentarily, why not ask why we as God's children often require the immanent threat of some serious repercussion to convince ourselves from heading down paths of known destructive negligence? Why do we not instinctively choose to do the merciful, generous, or even courageous thing at every juncture? After all, if Moltmann's claim that, “Every beginning reaches forward to its completion” is true, then whatever we are already ambling towards is ultimately, already our final destination.