Living on a Pillar

Yeah.

Thank you.

Literally, every time Kyla leaves, she says, What song should I play?

I'm like higher love.

Whatever the answer is higher love.

I'll make the message work.

Don't worry about it.

Thank you guys.

There is something about that.

Higher love.

Like, what does it look like to have a higher love?

Okay.

I actually have a message that ties into that, but we're going to come at it a different way.

I'm actually going to come at it by talking about finances for a little bit.

This is where you all go like this.

Uh anyone sat with a financial advisor?

Just so I'm going to have you put up your hand.

Anyone sat with a financial advisor at some point?

One second.

And they told you you should spend more money.

Stop saving so much.

Has anyone put up your hand high?

Anyone?

Hold on a second.

Anyone?

Nothing.

I don't see any hands.

Oh, yeah, I see one over there, but I know that story.

Anyone sat with a financially savvy friend who said, You're saving too much.

You're not living your life well enough.

Anyone?

Any TV shows you've watched that encourage spending more now?

Like forget about the future?

Anything?

Nothing.

Oh, wait, we have one.

I get you to yell at what happened, but we'll talk about that after.

I remember sitting with my financial advisor.

I just come out of Bible school.

You can imagine how much money I had.

So I have nothing.

I'm making no money.

And I sat down with the person because I thought, well, I should be financially responsible.

So I sit down and the person does what financial advisors of some ilk do.

They said, How much money do you want when you retire?

I was like, I don't know.

How do you know that?

You're like, I've been eating ramen noodles for four years straight.

Like, I have probably have scurvy at this point because I haven't seen a vegetable in a long time.

How much money do I want?

So the guy came up with a number.

He's like, okay, here's how much you're going to want.

So he's like, goes to his computer and like, okay, so how much do you make right now?

Okay.

So yeah, as long as you save a third of your take-home income from now until you retire, you'll have everything you need when you retire.

A third of my take home income.

I could not live on my take-home income at that moment.

And you want me to spend a third of that by saving that for my future?

What is cheaper than ramen noodles?

Does anybody know the answer to that?

Like air, water?

I'm just gonna live on water.

And then he said something interesting.

He said, Well, do you want future you to suffer?

Do you want future you to be destitute?

Do you want future you living in like a crappy old folks' home someplace where they have no support and no services?

And I remember just feeling this wave of kind of like shame and guilt hit me.

I went, oh, I know that feeling.

Anyone grow up in a Christian tradition that had some shame and guilt?

Don't put up your hand because this is unless you're feeling proud of it.

You're like, yeah, I did, totally did.

I could feel that same.

He was like, well, does is present-day Vince so selfish that he's gonna steal from future Vince?

I was like, oh yeah, I probably ooh, yeah, I maybe, ooh, what could I eat that's cheaper than ramen?

Uh I didn't realize at the time, but later in s in reflecting on it, I realized he was creating a situation where present me, the one that was eating ramen noodles and was hoping that my life would have a little bit more in it, was at war with future me.

The me after retire.

The me when I'm older.

And I realized something in the guilt and shame of it.

I realized that that same dichotomy is part of my tradition, my spiritual tradition.

Did anyone grow up with a conception of hell?

Just throw up your hand.

Oh, that's a humdinger one, right?

Now, spoiler alert, I'm gonna undermine hell in a minute, but bear with me for a second.

There's a story that Jesus talks about where he seems to be talking about present-day us and future us.

And Jesus sets up the story as a parable.

Do you guys know what a parable is?

It basically means Jesus is saying, here's a story.

It doesn't need to be true, it doesn't need to be factual, it's a story.

The prodigal son is a good story, not because there was some guy who went off to Vegas and, you know, blew all his money.

It's a story.

There's a truth in it.

And Jesus sets up this story the exact same way.

He says, There's once a man.

He starts it that way.

There was once a man.

I'm going to paraphrase it because Jesus didn't use these terms, but he was an a-hole.

And he was a rich a-hole.

And so after he dies, it says, Jesus says, He went to Hades.

Now, be very careful here.

Older translations of the Bible conflate Hades and Hell.

They are not the same thing.

Whatever you grew up with, your conception of hell, this is not it.

Technical translations will say the man went to Hades.

Jesus, the Jewish side, has no conception of hell like this at this time.

But the Greeks do.

And Jesus is talking in Greco-Roman culture.

They understand Hades.

Now in Hades, the man is suffering.

It says suffering in flames.

And Jesus says, the man is suffering in flames, and he looks up to sees across the way, like from me to Bryce over there.

Now, there was another man in the story who was good.

And it said when he died, he didn't go to Hades.

He went and stood next to Abraham.

Abraham was one of the superstars of the Jewish tradition.

So the story is set.

Man in Hades because he was an A-hole.

Good man standing next to Abraham because he was good.

And this Hades is like this for me to brace away.

And I say, Hey Bryce, can you uh get me some water over there?

It's pretty hot over here.

And Abraham says, Yeah, it doesn't work that way.

You can talk, but you can't bring water back and forth.

I'm not sure why, but whatever.

And then the man says something different.

He says, Would you go to my brothers and tell them what they do in their present will have an impact on their future.

Sit with that for a second.

What they do in their present will have an impact on their future.

Tell them to not be a-holes.

We understand this idea of present impacting our future.

That financial planner was not wrong when he said, Look, how you spend your money today will have an impact on your future.

I wore a t-shirt today.

I didn't know this when I first got this.

My wife's a floor, so I bought it for the flowers.

This is actually Maradona, a famous soccer player, just in case you didn't know that.

This is the part where you don't nod and say, Yeah, we all knew that, Vince, you're an idiot.

Maradona made something like$120 million in his career.

He died broke.

Why?

Because he didn't save any of it.

Present day hymn impacts future him.

And so when the when my financial planner said, Well, do you want to screw over future you?

I could feel this same story that I grew up with from the Bible.

And in my tradition, it wasn't Hades, it was hell.

If you do things in your present, you will suffer, and this is my tradition, burning and eternity in hell.

Yikes.

Just so you know, when future you, you know, when he's talking about me retiring and I won't have a lot of money, okay, yeah, whatever.

Burning for eternity in hell, that kind of levels this up a little bit more, doesn't it?

And when I say a little bit, I mean a lot.

Did anyone uh can I just who grew up in a Christian tradition?

Either like you're part of a church, you grew up in something.

Okay.

Can you be I love it when it's small.

Actually, it's funny.

The reason I had us move here in July is because this is the smallest our community ever gets.

We're an affluent community, people go away, do fun things.

It's awesome.

We're actually growing.

We just reported the board what we're up 7% year over year.

Yeah, it's great.

So again, we're in good shape.

This is the quietest one.

That's why I had us move.

But one of the things I love about this time of the year is I get to talk with you guys because I'm closer to you.

So this one is going to be an interactive message.

Here's my question.

Growing up, what were the things that the church or your tradition told you were bad and that maybe didn't send you to hell, or maybe they did?

I'm not sure how it worked for you.

What was the thing that you couldn't do?

I'll tell I'll start with one.

My coach said she grew up in a Catholic school.

She's like, chewing gum sent me to hell.

I was like, chewing gum?

She's like, Oh yeah, definitely go to hell on that one.

Okay, so what else did you guys have growing up?

Just short yelled out to me.

Sorry?

Lying.

Lying.

Good.

I like that one.

What else you got?

Stealing.

Stealing.

Those are good ones.

Dancing, yeah.

That was my midnight tradition.

Man, dancing?

You're definitely gonna go to hell for that one.

Playing cards.

Playing cards.

Where did they get that one?

Does anybody know?

Blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

Can you imagine what that means?

Unforgivable.

Unforgivable.

Growing up in my tradition, if you use the word it's even funny.

Oh my god, if you say that, like if you're something happens, you say, oh my god, that's taking the Lord's name in vain.

You're definitely going to hell for that one.

I see a lot of heads nodding, going, Oh yeah.

What else?

Any tradition enjoy uh was encouraging masturbation?

Any tradition?

Yeah, that was a good one.

That was a good one.

Yeah, my tradition didn't like that one at all.

The number of these messages we had on that one.

It's never in the Bible, but of course, that was like smoking too.

Smoking and drinking.

I don't know what the Mennonites.

What's with the smoking and the drinking?

My grandfather put a hundred dollars away when I was born.

And when I was 16, if I didn't smoke or drink, he would give me the$100 plus whatever interest.

Of all the things that I could not do, right?

I could kill somebody, still get the hundred bucks.

Can you see how the Christian tradition said, if you do these things today, you will burn for eternity when you die.

That's heavy.

Especially when it's playing cards or blaspheming the Holy Spirit, whatever the hell that means.

But you can see how when that guy used guilt and shame, I was like, oh, I know this feeling.

And it feels right.

Now, if you hold on to a conception that after you die, you could go to a place like the Greek conception of Hades, or in my tradition, hell.

And you would literally be on remember, I did that sin series, I put up a candle and I put my hand over the candle.

It was like, this is gonna be over your whole body for all eternity.

I would feel I was gonna say, I would not do almost anything.

No, no, no, because we all know we did it.

The things we were not supposed to do, we still did it.

We just felt horribly guilty about it, and we were scared.

My wife was saying the other day, she's like, I said the sinner's prayer, which is basically like, hey, if I did anything wrong today, I'm sorry.

Can you not send me to hell?

That's the prayer.

She's like, every day I prayed it, just in case.

Like, what if I did something I didn't know about, right?

When future you risks burning for all eternity in hell.

It justifies craziness in today, you.

Sainting in Catholic Church means this is the person who's doing spirituality the best way possible.

If you want to be a good human, follow their example.

You know why they sainted him?

There's a few reasons, but one of them.

Because he so lived in this dichotomy of if I do something bad now, future me will suffer.

He built himself a pillar 40 feet high, 50 feet high, sorry.

On top, he had a little six-foot by six-foot platform, and he lived on top of it.

He believed that any pleasure in life, anything good, anything comfortable, shade, like not sitting on top of a pillar in the sun all day, every day, or in the rain.

He took it so far that he said, anything good I am going to avoid.

And so he built a pillar to live above it all and suffer.

And suffer.

So that he believed he would be rewarded.

I don't know where you go with that, but that's a little messed up, isn't it?

And yet.

Your son is the reason why all the problems in this world exist.

They suck, they are horrible.

You had to walk through that to get to the funeral.

They believed.

The ends, being whatever the ends looked like, not going to hell, justified them, and I'm gonna say, being horrible human beings today.

Do you see how this logic gets twisted?

I've heard of parents who let their children die.

We had the medical ability to save the children.

But the parents believed that if I let that child have access to that medical care, something in my future is gonna go bad.

I'm going to burn in hell.

And so they literally sat and watched their children die while the hospital is going, we can save them.

Think through the people in your life who are profoundly religious and who are living in this reality of it doesn't matter how horrible I am today, it doesn't matter how countercultural I am, it doesn't matter how unloving I am, as long as I don't burn in hell.

My grandmother.

When she was my dad's mother, when she married my dad's dad, the day they got married, he said, now you're mine.

Not in a beautiful, loving way.

He abused her every day of her life in every way possible.

We begged her, begged her to leave him.

She said, no.

Divorce sends you to hell.

And so I will stay with him.

She'd have bruises on her arms, like, grandma, please, oh no, I was I'm just clumsy.

Please.

This logic.

What I do today impacts my future.

There's truth to it.

But when it's when it's tied to this conception of hell in our spiritual tradition, it it's like it gets twisted somehow.

It justifies anything today.

Anything that you enjoy.

No, no, live above that.

Live on that pillar.

Suffer.

It doesn't matter how horrible you are.

Pick at a funeral, whatever you need to do.

I told you that.

This conception of hell I grew up with is not biblical.

I want to read to you a quote from the Bible.

Normally I'd have it on the screen so you could read it.

We don't have that right now.

It's from a book called Ecclesiastes.

The author is trying to figure out what is a good life?

What is a spiritual life?

And he's wrestling with this idea of today and future.

What you do today, how does it impact your future?

And what does the future look like?

Let me read it to you.

This is what he says: seize life today.

Eat bread with gusto.

Us Mennonites like our bread, so this is profoundly spiritual for us.

Drink wine with a robust heart.

Oh, yes, God takes pleasure in your pleasure.

Dress festively every morning.

Don't skimp on color and scarves.

Relish life with the spouse you love, each and every day of your precious life.

Each day is a gift from God.

It's all you get in exchange for the hard work of staying alive.

Make the most of each and every one.

Whatever turns up, grab it and do it and heartily.

This is your last and only chance at it, for there's neither work nor thought to think in the company of the dead.

Where we're almost certainly headed.

Does that sound a whole lot like Saint Simeon living on top of a pillar?

No.

And when he describes after we die, does that sound like this whole Greek conception of Hades and blah blah blah?

No.

All you have is life, and then when you die, there's nothing.

So live life fully today.

I feel like the pastors that I grew up with maybe missed that book.

They just skipped that one.

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.

Drink wine?

Eat bread with gusto.

Actually, they would have liked the bread one, they're minimates.

What happens if we take away this conception of burning in hell for all eternity?

What happens if we look through the lens of that biblical author and say, wait a second.

What does life look like?

And this is where I get back to financial planning.

I knew you guys saw that one coming, didn't you?

Because this is exactly where you're thinking I was going.

I'm sitting with my financial planner.

He's guilt and shaming me.

Like, do you want old Vince to suffer?

Like, he doesn't even have enough money for diapers.

Right?

He's going in hard.

And I am buying it because I am trained to think this way from my tradition.

And so I'm sitting and wrestling with this idea.

What's the number?

What's the number?

How do I live?

Oh, am I spending too much?

I ate ramen with an egg on top.

Ooh, I'm frivolous.

Right?

I should have saved that money, right?

This is what's going on in my head.

I'm a bit that way.

It's okay.

I'm in New York City for work.

Actually, it was my partner's work.

I got to go along.

And I'm in a bookstore and I found this book called Spend to the End.

Spend to the End is an incredible book.

There's one line in it that changed not only my finances, it changed my spirituality.

It was a line that said, The goal of life is to consumption smooth.

Consumption smoothing is simple.

If you currently take three weeks of holidays now, try and live your life so that you take three weeks of holidays all the time.

Even when you're retired.

How many financial planners say, well, spend more now?

No, they're like, no, no, take no holidays now, and then you're gonna take six months off at a time and live in Aruba.

Right?

Eat ramen now, then Aruba.

Consumption Smoothing said, no, no, no, spend consistently.

If you cook most of your meals now, plan to cook most of your meals after you've retired.

Try and have as much fun and joy and pleasure throughout your whole life.

Did anyone ever share that with you?

How much money do you save?

Well, enough so that your whole life is consistent.

If you need a new mountain bike every two years, you plan for a new mountain bike every two years.

Sorry, that was wrong.

Every one year.

I apologize.

That was offside.

Every year.

And no hand-me-downs.

Two people just saying they're gonna go shuttle Moose Mountain after this on mountain bikes.

And they didn't invite me.

A little rude.

Oh, they did, yeah.

But my mountain bike's not running properly.

Anyways, back to this message.

Consumption smoothing.

Now, I remember the first time I told somebody, I've just spent the last three years in Bible school in seminary, studying the Bible in original languages.

You know what I didn't find?

The conception of hell I grew up with.

I told a friend of mine, he's like, then what's the point of living good today?

Do you see?

He had the same mindset as me.

We suffer today.

We live on top of a pillar.

Whatever you enjoy, leave it below.

Suffer, suffer, suffer.

So that when you die, it's all good.

When I took that out, he's like, Well, why are we living on top of a pillar?

Doesn't make any sense.

And I was like, yes.

And suddenly I realized I'm gonna have to rebuild my spirituality with a whole new morality behind it.

Because if you grow up with an afterlife conception of hell, you don't have to worry about morality.

All you have to worry about is what's gonna send me there.

There's 70,000 different Christian traditions.

There's probably 70,020 different answers of what gets you to hell.

There's probably 70,000 different conceptions of hell itself.

But what we never did is we never did the hard work of saying, how do I consumption smooth my life?

Someone said, We don't lie.

I can't remember who yelled it.

It was over here someplace.

We don't lie.

Oh, there we go.

Lie.

Why?

In the old school, it's because it's going to send us to hell.

But now what we realize is if I lie today, the next time I go and talk to that person, they don't trust me.

Present day Vince got something.

Future Vince suffered.

Is that consumption smoothing?

No.

It's saying, oh, I get something now.

Oh, now I'm going to suffer.

What I realized, telling the truth now is kind of hard.

But long term makes a huge difference in who I interact with, how I interact with them.

I can say, hey, I'll be at your house at four, and they don't go, really?

Is that like five?

No.

They trust me.

Why do I so I have a you guys read that report where it says uh two drinks a week is the maximum you can do for health?

I know everyone thinks it's a typo, it's two per day, but supposedly it's two per week.

I decided to do that.

Why?

Not because that was some rule, but because what I realized is every time I have a drink, even one, I don't sleep good that night.

The next day I'm dragging my butt a little bit.

If I have two drinks in one day, I feel like crap the next day.

Why do I drink one drink at a time?

Not because there's a rule about drinking, grandpa.

But because what I realized is drinking one drink spaced fairly far apart makes my whole life good.

My tradition would say, well, just don't drink.

Yes, but it's delicious.

How do we balance the good of today with the good of the future?

When I heard higher love today, that's what went through my mind.

Not just I love this in this moment and who cares about the future.

No, no, higher love, where I can love something through my life.

Anyone had somebody who found religion or found God, and suddenly they don't talk to you?

They go to church like seven days a week, they never, or maybe it's they're, you know, in the Buddhist tradition and they're like at silent retreats every second weekend and they dress differently, and it's like they're full on.

Here, present day that them is like, yeah, this is it.

How sustainable is that?

You all see them when you know the person turns vegan, you know, you're eating a steak with them one day, the next day they're vegan, and they're like, Do you know where that steak comes from?

Yes, cows are delicious.

And they're giving you that hand wag, right?

Do they think that they can consistently do this for the rest of their lives?

I think there's some old code inside of us that likes this black and white thinking.

Suffer now, live on top of a pillar.

Anything that's joy, anything that's pleasurable, anything that's good, scarves, what was the line from the quote?

Bright colors and scarves.

No, no, that's down below.

This is bad.

We suffer.

Right?

It's like black and white, or the other is then hedonism.

No, no, no.

What if we think through consumption spent or smoothing?

Why do I go to counseling?

Because when I'm living not my best relationally, I suffer.

Me and my wife have a fight, it takes longer to deal with.

First, we have the fight that we didn't need to have.

And then it takes longer for us to get through it.

And suddenly we realize wait, we don't need to live this way.

What if what if I just did some counseling?

Not live in counseling, not, you know, join an ashram and change my clothes and shave my head.

No.

Smooth pleasure today, pleasure tomorrow.

Pleasure for our whole lives.

First, I had bought into the Christian story that said, Today is bad.

The things you enjoy today are bad.

You should feel guilt and shame for these things.

Because there's an eternity that you're gambling with.

And so I bought into this idea that said suffering is somehow intrinsically good.

Saint Simeon living on top of that pillar, just suffering.

There's some sort of spiritual intrinsic good.

Honestly, I don't think that's true.

I don't think that's fundamentally the universal voice of the Bible.

Let me read that quote to you once more.

Think of this through your life.

Tweak it to say the things you love.

The biking, the good sound, the D characters, the car that runs nice, the sports you love, the martini, the flirting you do.

Put it all in there.

This is what the author says.

Seize life.

Live pleasurable today.

Drink wine with a robust heart.

Don't just drink crappy wine.

Get the good stuff, the stuff that you really enjoy.

Oh, yes, God takes pleasure in your pleasure.

Dress festively every morning.

This is festive.

This is pretty festive for me, folks.

Come on.

Don't skimp on color and scarves unless you like to wear black, and then it's fine too.

Relish life with a spouse that you love.

Each and every day of your precious life.

Each day is God's gift.

It's all you get in exchange for the hard work of staying alive.

Make the most of everyone.

Whatever turns up, grab it and do it and do it with a full heart, with as much joy and pleasure as you can.

This is your last and only chance at it, for there is neither work nor thought to do in the company of the dead, where we're almost certainly headed.

Not one mention of eternal torment when we die.

What it is is a call to say, live today fully.

And to make sure you're not going to hedonism, consumption smooth.

Maximize your enjoyment and pleasure in life throughout your life.

If you can get it a little bit high, do it.

Do more.

That's the words of the author of Ecclesiastes.

May we leave here today on a beautiful summer day.

May we let go of this future us story.

Where today us is the enemy of the future us, where we have to live on top of a pillar and suffer.

And anything we enjoy, we have to suffer.

May we live fully today with as much pleasure and joy as we can sustain through our whole life.

Amen.

This is a hell yes message, right?

Hell yes.

Have a great week, everybody.

Next week we should have ice cream or something, just to put my point forward, right?

Okay, have a great week, everybody.