At life’s end, who we’ve loved will matter more than what we’ve owned

By David McElroy · August 23, 2011

I can’t seem to escape children lately. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid them, but I seem to see them everywhere I go — happy children and proud parents full of love for those kids.

I don’t have any children yet, but I really want them. Given the circumstances of my life, I might never have any. I’m told that having the right woman agree to be the mother of your children is one of the prerequisites — and that part is beyond my control.

The closest things I’ve had to kids have been my nieces, Katherine and Anna, and my animals, too numerous to mention by name. (The picture above is about four years old. Anna’s the one on the left with the huge grin. The picture below is Anna with me at the Birmingham Zoo.) They live three hours from me, so I don’t see them as often as I’d like, but I love them very much and I’m proud of them. They’re wonderful girls.

Still, I’d like to have my own family. I bring this up partly because the subject of children and family keeps coming up in my life lately, but also because I was thinking about something related to it over the weekend.

Some people live almost purely for the material world and to experience the sensations the physical world offers. They’re mostly interested in wealth, status, power, ego and their material place in the world. Other people — although fewer than ever — live almost purely for a world of spirit or meaning or love. These people are mostly interested in experiencing God or understanding why they’re here or finding purpose through loving and serving others.

Most of us are somewhere in the middle, but it seems that even though the reality of our lives is some combination of the two, most people tend to identify with one world or the other — and they keep the two in separate “boxes” in their minds, as though the two are mutually exclusive. I’d like to suggest that it’s more reasonable to integrate the two words instead.

Most of what we talk about here is about ideas and principles and power and rights and money. Every one of those is a very important part of this physical world. For as long as we’re on this Earth, those things will matter. Even for those of us who are Christians (or believe in some other kind of afterlife), there’s no reasonable way to set aside the importance of many things in this world. To do so would go against the vast bulk of Christian and Jewish history. More than anything, it would be a very Gnostic thing to do.

But there are things ultimately more important than any of the material things of the world. I want money and I want freedom and I want a place to live and grow with other people. But more than anything, I want to love and be loved. I want to do things of lasting value that will be meaningful to other people after my death. And I want to live in a way consistent with my faith in God. He didn’t put me in just one world or the other. He made me a spiritual creature and a physical creature. I want to integrate those in ways that will cause God to one day say to me, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I’d like to be able to accumulate money and power over time, but it’s not necessarily to live like a king or be better than anyone else. I want those things because they’re the tools that work in this world to build things that last over time. They don’t endure beyond this world, but if they’re used properly, they can make this world a better place for future generations. When I talk about freedom and a safe place to live, it’s not just for us. It’s for the generations that come after us, too.

When I die, I hope I’ll be able to know that I was the “good and faithful servant” who multiplied his earthly talents, because I want to leave the world a materially better place for others. But when that time comes, I don’t want to be surrounded by stacks of gold or nice essays or even books and films I might have written. By that point, those things won’t matter to me.

I’ll want to know that I’m loved by the people I’m leaving behind. I’ll want to know that I’ve loved — honestly loved — all that I’m capable of. I’ll want to know I’ve made the best of this world that I could and that I’ve been faithful to what I believe God has called me to be. If I do that, I can die a happy man.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts