The second part of Ryan’s question, said Huff, was “why do we bother living our lives if it’s just full of pain and suffering?” Huff observed that the Lord’s Prayer teaches believers to ask that God’s will be done on earth as well as in heaven. “This life matters and it can be profoundly beautiful,” Huff said.
People recognize that having children is good even though living in the world has great potential for suffering. Huff described seeing the birth of his children as a “miracle.”
“It’s not just about dying and going to heaven,” he said. “If it was, you know, the Gospel authors could have just solved the whole problem by just having Jesus’ passion narrative. But a lot of the Gospels is about his life. It’s about just the daily struggle and the beauty and the amazingness of friends.”
John 11 recounts that Jesus’ friend Lazarus died. When Jesus approaches the tomb with sisters Mary and Martha, Jesus knows he is going to bring Lazarus back to life. But Jesus still weeps before he does so.
“He wept because his friend had died. And that feeling of that raw emotion, that’s not wrong,” Huff said. “Jesus knew he was going to raise him from the dead.”
“But he’s also weeping, I think, because Jesus understands more than anybody else what the true significance of the brokenness of this world can be in physical death,” said Huff. “But that we look forward to something amazing in the resurrection of life eternal. But that doesn’t mean that this life is a throwaway by any means.”
Ryan explained that he was puzzled by the anxiety he experiences now that he is following Christ compared to how he used to feel when he wasn’t. Ryan said he used to party and do drugs and had no family or other responsibilities tying him down. “It was maybe the most fun I’ve ever had,” he said. “I’m just being honest.”
At the time, he had “no anxieties” and expected that he would die at some point by overdosing on drugs. But he didn’t.
“Now I’ve come to Christ. I believe in Christ. I’m a Christian,” said Ryan. “I’m scared to death of death. I’m scared to leave…behind my kids, my wife, because I know how f***ed up this world is…I have a team I’m responsible for. I have a business I’m responsible for. I have anxieties. I have worries.”
“It seems like you would be not worried about death after you believe in Christ,” he said.
“I think when we’re young, we’re kind of naive in thinking that the indulgences are just what matters,” Huff answered. “And as we mature, we realize that there’s so much more than just pleasure and pouring our lives into temporality.”
“I totally get what you’re saying in terms of there being no outward effect on, you don’t have a family, you don’t have friends necessarily,” Huff continued. “I bet, though, if you had died, it would have affected somebody, and there’s a ripple effect that we often don’t realize to how our lives actually impact others.”
Huff said he could relate somewhat to Ryan’s anxiety. “One of my biggest fears is dying and leaving my family and then not being able to see my children grow up,” he said.
