Two of the Three or is there more?

Money

I love my Job

Happiness

 

If you could only choose two of the three above, which would you choose?

 

Do we only get two choices? Or have some of us had all three for a brief or longer than a brief time?

I think that, realistically, there are people that have had all three; but that it does not last is something we can agree on, no?

 

The philosopher Gautama said that life is impermanent. The second law of thermodynamics agrees as it states that things go from order to disorder, slow heat loss.

It is Jesus Christ who said that:

Matthew 24:35

New King James Version (NKJV)

³⁵ Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.

 

So there is impermanence in material creation as it is now, but not in the whole sense. This is great news and a joy for all. We have various myths in societies that as G.K. Chesterton said:

"If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales."

The New Testament and the Old are where myth, fairy tale comes together. The myth and the truth merge. The story tells us that peace and happiness can exist under one condition, and not the many conditions that man creates himself in hope that it will work; but, exactly the one condition that will solve all the issues of the world once and for all. Christ becomes incarnate, lives in the world and saves it to Himself by the power of God. This beautiful narrative that reads like myth and truth at the same time combines the mythologies of old and the truth of reason and fact into one. The Incarnation is the meeting point of all our tales of old; it is where morality, poetry, life, law and philosophy meet at the center of the cross. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis both new and cultivated this in their stories, they weaved allegory, symbolism and eternal truths into one narration. Something had to completely die for there to be peace in the world forever. Tolkien had his dragon Smaug and the evil, mostly bodiless enemy or eye, Sauron and those who followed. C.S. Lewis had is White Witch that brought cold and ruin into the endless sunny fields of Narnia.

We find incompleteness in the world because we are made for another world as C.S. Lewis said. Tolkien and Lewis both discussed these things for many hours in the Inlkings. Their stories remain as Christ inspired stories of the hope of permanence once evil is removed forever. This is the beauty of myth and the moral of the myth; this is the transcendent beauty of the Divine Being who comes to earth to rescue creation, to rescue man from the pit of spiritual death and restore all, body and soul. Christianity is the culmination of all myths completed and absorbed into one final answer for evil and death and impermanence. Here the river of myth both flows into and from the One and True Myth, the Great Sea of Life.  The Way of Lao Tzu is completed and seen in Christ, the way, the truth and the life. The Logos of Heraclitus of Ephesus is manifest in Jesus Christ as the Word (Logos) of God.

So if we only have two of the three in this life: Love of Job and, or as the Greeks would say philia (love as a friend) happiness… I’d say we are ahead of the game. In eternity, the job of knowing God will be unquenchable, shareable to all, forever. Happiness will be ever-growing, and money will be something of the old and now obsolete.

 

Kyrie Elaison

Glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit