The Lasting Legacy

To what extent should a Christian engage in self-promotion? Should any church sell itself to the public or engage in marketing? Should any Christian desire fame or is ambition itself not a good thing? I think about this a lot actually. I want a lasting legacy and for that reason, fame is always a very tempting thing. After all, if I were famous (and I assure you, I’m not) then I could be guaranteed that my legacy would be one that lasts. The apostle Paul, C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer—they’re all notable names, famous in a sense, even theologically. They all have a lasting legacy but did they … desire … it?

Rolling around in my head on any given day are a million thoughts. Try these:

• The movie stars who died in 2016, their work lives on. For a while at least. At some point the glitter dulls since, for example, no one watches silent films anymore, or the early talkies.
• For the movie stars or rock and roll performers, is their legacy real or does it belong to their stage persona, the people they portrayed? (This started all the legacy thinking for me… about what’s real and what’s not).
• Social media has a way of giving everyone the temptation to make themselves famous as their Andy Warhol fifteen minutes.  The torture of the disabled man and the hate crime perpetrated shows that fame isn’t always good. Dylann Roof is living proof that what one is famous for is more important than fame itself.
• In the end, if everyone was famous, would anyone really be?
• The President is presently out there working overtime with Senate and House Democrats to “save” his legacy. What exactly does that mean? Who benefits from his saved legacy? If it’s primarily himself, is it really a legacy or is it just an ego? Does releasing the Gitmo detainees benefit anyone? It’s in the news and I can’t help taking it to the deeper thought level.

Even after all this pondering, I don’t know to what extent God is in charge of my legacy and where that line gets crossed to being my role in it as a Christ-follower.

If I wake up every day, pray, and try to do the will of God, and then expend my efforts in that direction, what is my legacy? My efforts? My achievements? Or my faithfulness?  Or arguably, is it all His?

I’ll close today’s thoughts with my 2017 life verse (Philippians 3:13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus) and the one that scares the living daylights out of me regarding a lasting legacy:

1 Corinthians 3:11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. 14 If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 15 If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.