How Do I Decide What Is Right? (Part 4)

How Do I Decide What Is Right?
Part Four
In last week’s column I addressed the question “who we are in Christ” by summarizing five ways that we can think of our identity in Christ: (1) We are a people who have been baptized into Jesus Christ. (2) We are a people who have been sealed with God’s Holy Spirit. (3) We are a people who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. (4) We are a people who have been reconciled to God. (5) We are a holy people who form the Church. In this week’s column, I want to address the second question that is important if we are to make the right moral decisions: Where are we going? What is our destiny? What is the goal and the purpose of our life?
 
In addition to knowing who we are, we must know where we are going if we are to make the right decisions. So where are we going? What is the goal and purpose of our life? There are many ways to answer this question.  For example, some people will say that the goal and purpose of their life is their career, their profession, their job, and they act accordingly. Other people will say that the goal and purpose of their life is their family and friends, and they act accordingly. Other people will say that their own good and welfare is the goal and the purpose of their life, and they act according. In other words people act in a way that leads them to their goal. That’s why it is so important for us to be clear about the goal and purpose of our life.
 
So how can we identify the goal and purpose of the Christian life so that we can make the best possible moral decisions?  The goal of the Christian life can be described in three ways: (1) being conformed to the crucified and risen Christ, (2) entering into the fullness of the kingdom of God, (3) the resurrection of the dead.
 
Being conformed to the crucified and risen Christ: The crucified and risen Christ is the perfect human being because he is perfectly conformed to God’s will. The goal of our lives is to be conformed to the pattern of Christ’s death and resurrection so that God will in us what He sees in his beloved Son.
 
The kingdom of God:  The central message of Jesus is the kingdom of God, a kingdom of justice and peace, a kingdom in which God rules over his creation, a kingdom where all who have lived according to the gospel will dine at the table of God’s eternal banquet. The kingdom of God, of course, is a metaphor. It is another way of speaking about heaven. The advantage of this metaphor, however, is the way in which it describes the life we will enjoy: a life of peace and justice, a kingdom where we will sit with each other at the banquet table of God.
 
The resurrection of the dead life: We will be fully conformed to the image of God’s Son when we are raised from the dead. A third way of speaking about the goal of the Christians life, then, is in terms of the resurrection of the dead. The resurrection of the dead is important because it affirms that we will be saved, body as well as soul. It will not just be our soul that will be saved; it will be the whole of us, our body as well as our soul.
 
Those who know where they are going will know how to act. Those who understand that their destiny is to be conformed to Jesus Christ so that they can enter into the fullness of the kingdom of God at the resurrection of the dead will know how to make the best possible moral choices.   Fr. Matera