How much do you love your future self?
Just a little survey hereto start: Who here has played 80 hours of video games in a week? Any kind counts: phone, computer, consoles like xbox or playstation. 80 hours would be the equivalent of two full time jobs or more than ⅔ of one’s time awake in a week. (raise hand, complement congregation on prudent time management/praise whoever raised their hand for self honesty and humility). Unsurprisingly I was known as the ‘PC gamer’ by my friends in college. I was not known as ‘the Christian’ unsurprisingly enough. That title went to one of my Protestant friends who went to weekly Bible study and Sunday service. Sure my friends knew that I walked 45 minutes each way to go to Mass every Sunday, but obviously I did spend a lot more time playing video games so having the title ‘PC gamer’ was more fitting than ‘the Catholic’.
In today’s Gospel Our Lord tells us how the world will recognize us his disciples: by our love for one another. Now both ‘the Christian’ and me ‘the pc gamer’ had reputations as being all around good guys, honest, helpful, and trustworthy. We both also did volunteer work through our respective youth groups, yet he was ‘the Christian’ and not me even though when it came to neighborly relations we were pretty similar.
A solution to this situation can be arrived at by understanding the other not as only ‘someone who is not me’, but as ‘someone who is not me right now’. By spending so many hours playing video games I was not treating my future self very well. Those hours were to a large degree squandered when they could have been spent studying, exercising, cultivating friendships or various other soul building activities. ‘The Christian’ on the other hand was a diligent student, an accomplished cross country runner and more outgoing than I was. He obviously did a much better job of loving his future self, which is simply another sort of neighbor, than I did and this is what our common group of friends recognized implicitly. That’s why he was ‘the Christian’ and I was the ‘PC gamer’.
This lack of love for the other that is our future self can be manifested in a variety of ways. Drug or alcohol abuse are more evident and obvious ones. Netflix binging would be something also analogous to video game addiction. Obesity would also be a kind of self hate towards one’s future self. After all, you don’t see many 65 year old morbidly obese people walking around. All these would be quickly perceived by anyone we interacted with for any substantial period of time. Once perceived this kind of lack of love for another is repulsive to those whom we would aspire to evangelize. After all human beings do love themselves including their future selves. In fact the central mystery of the Gospel, the promise of eternal life, the Resurrection, fundamentally appeals to this love of the future self. Those acts of self hate against our future selves serve as a sort of anti testimony to the Gospel. They inhibit us from being recognized as disciples of Christ because in these acts of self hate we do not love one another in the fullest possible sense of those words.
We are given this call to emulate the love Jesus had for his disciples “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another”. However, the love he had for his disciples was oriented towards preparing them for that future resurrected life and the death and judgement that precede it. That is the kind of love you are called to give your neighbor and you can’t give your neighbor that sort of love if you don’t love your future self in that sort of way.