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May 26, 2015

You Only Live Once?Get Free from the Tyranny of YOLO

by Ryan Shelton Topic: The Unwasted Life

It might surprise some Millennials to hear that one of our generational battle cries is fairly old school.

The popular acronym YOLO (you only live once) has captured the hearts of many an emerging hedonist (and not the Christian

kind). It wrests the minds of thousands with the tyranny of the urgent, motivating a kind of desperate restlessness to squeeze

the last drop of pleasure out of these quickly fading days. YOLO is imprisoning a generation with a familiar lie exposed by the

apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:32: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

But YOLO is a mask worn by an ancient despot. Who doesn’t remember his previous disguises? He has had other aliases. You

may remember him as carpe diem, or more recently, “the bucket list.” He has gone incarnate in figures like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian

Gray or Robin Williams’s portrayal of professor John Keating in Dead Poets Society. He ensnares would-be servants of the true

King by holding out fleeting satisfaction and vaporous rewards.

How should Christians respond to these lures? As adopted heirs to the throne over all creation, we can laugh in the face of such

puny promises. How silly it must seem to be offered the thimble-sized cup of three score and ten years for worldly delights

compared with oceans of full-joy pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

Learning from the Devil’s Playbook

So that we are not deceived, let us examine together our captor’s strategy. What makes the YOLO mantra such a trap? How

does it make us slaves?

When we believe that the only pleasures available to us are those we can wring from the fabric of our short lives, time becomes

our greatest enemy. As the ranks of each passing year close in on our fragile village of pleasure seeking, a chaotic frenzy erupts

in our hearts and minds. Regret and gloom drive the captives mad:

“I can’t believe I’ll never get to see Italy!”

“What if I never find a husband or have children?”

These are the kinds of melodies that earworm their way into prisoners of the bucket list. They haunt casualties of carpe diem

01/06/2015 You Only Live Once? | Desiring God

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Ryan Shelton (@SheltonRyan) is a graduate of the Worship Pastor Concentration M.Div. at Bethlehem College & Seminary. He lives in the

Chicagoland North Shore where he serves as the worship director of Winnetka Bible Church.

These are the kinds of melodies that earworm their way into prisoners of the bucket list. They haunt casualties of carpe diem

captivity.

On the Third Day

Without a distinctively Christian hope, we are doomed to suffer under this maniacal monarch in one form or another. But as

Christians, we believe in a glorious resurrection! Secured by our elder brother, who settled the question once and for all that we

don’t only live once, Christians hope to follow our trailblazer into an eternal inheritance.

Just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the

sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Hebrews

9:27–28)

The hope of all those eagerly waiting for Christ’s second coming is to be saved from the great judgment that evaluates what we

did with the time we were given.

For those who are saved from this judgment, we will receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:28), and a city that is

to come (Hebrews 13:14). But what kind of lives does this hope produce? Quite contrary to bucket-list victims, it produces lives

that, like our Savior, go outside the camp (Hebrews 13:13).

Brothers and sisters in Christ, you have been set free from the slavery that panics to hoard all of the honors and riches of this

world, thinking that in them you have eternal life and legacy. You cannot keep them anyway (Matthew 6:19). You are free to

spend all of your strength and wealth and time to point others to a joy richer and more lasting than anything YOLO can offer.

Give What You Cannot Keep

To riff on Jim Elliot’s famous phrase, he is a fool who keeps what he can give, and loses what he cannot earn.

YOLO offers the false promise of “eternal life” by acquiring stuff now. It says, “If somehow I can acquire enough social media

followers, photos at historic monuments, or accolades at the workplace, I can achieve a sort of immortality.” Only the fool

thinks he can earn eternal life by holding onto things.

The deeper problem is that eternal life is never gained by our efforts. Your legacy will not save you on the Judgment Day.

Instead, Christians are set loose to give freely because we have been given everything. Eternal life is a gift from the Resurrected

One, and so all our dying (giving) in this life is empowered by the Spirit of the Crucified One.

We spend our lives as resurrection-seed, knowing that no bucket list will ever compare to the glorious New Creation waiting

for us on the other side of the resurrection from the dead.

Related Resources

Four Ways to Fight the Fear of Missing Out (article)

When Your Twenties Are Darker Than You Expected (article)

Don’t Waste Your Life (book)

“He is a fool who keeps what he can give, and loses what he cannot earn.”

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