Count No Man Blessed Until...

It is easy to look at someone and say, "Wow!  She really has everything together!  What a great life!"  It is easy as well to see another and say, "Ah, that poor wretch.  What a miserable life he has."  Yet a bit of ancient wisdom reminds us that we should not be hasty in making such pronouncements until we have seen the full span of a person's life.

Recalling Herodotus

Herodotus, 484-425 B.C.

I was in the drive-thru lane of a local restaurant with my daughter when I received the call that my Uncle Bob had passed away, and my immediate thought was of my mom.  She and her brother had always been close, but recently they had been talking by phone every day, and I knew she would take the loss hard.  My daughter and I immediately drove to her home to give her the news.

We sat around her kitchen table and, after the initial tears, began talking about Uncle Bob's life.  She recalled endless stories of how supportive he had always been, the father he was to his three children, and how he always had a book with him and was leading a book club right up to the time of his passing.  We talked of his faith in Jesus and that someone from his church had been coming to take him from his assisted living home for worship each Sunday.  Just before my daughter and I left, my mom said, "Bob was a good man."  I agreed and shared with her a famous bit from Herodotus.

Herodotus, known as the father of history, wrote his Histories in the 5th century B.C.  In Book 1 he tells of a discussion between Croesus, the king of Lydia and the richest man in the world, and the Athenian statesman Solon about what it means to be ὄλβιος, or happy/blessed.  Solon ends with a famous statement.

εἰ δὲ πρὸς τούτοισι ἔτι τελευτήσῃ τὸν βίον εὖ, οὗτος ἐκεῖνος τὸν σὺ ζητέεις, ὁ ὄβιος κεκλῆσθαι ἄξιος ἐστί: πρὶν δ᾽ ἂν τελευτήσῃ, ἐπισχεῖν, μηδὲ καλέειν κω ὄβιον ἀλλ᾽ εὐτυχέα.

If, in addition to these things, he still ends his life well, this is that man whom you seek, the one who is worthy to be called happy/blessed:  before he ends his life, refrain from calling him happy/blessed, but lucky.  (Histories 1.32.7)

Pressing On Toward The Mark

It is right that young people be told to think about and honor the dearly departed, but it is also right they give little thought to death itself.  Youth is the time of exuberance and perceived immortality.  This is as it should be, for the springtime of life in its physical, mental, and emotional aspects is one of daring creativity, of adventure, and even of risk.  One can hardly be a dreamer or swashbuckling adventurer while fixated by a morbid fascination with death.  The proper role of those in the middle to later years of life is, however, to ponder such things, to put life and death in their proper perspective, and having endeavored with the help of poetry and art and wisdom and faith to understand it all as best as possible, and to present that understanding to those who follow for consideration when their own time of pondering comes.

Solon was right.  Pronouncement about the happiness, which in its true sense means the blessedness, of a person's life can only be made after the race has been run.  Was the person "great out of the gate," so to speak, but not much for stamina?  The tortoise and hare come to mind here, as does what Paul wrote to the Philippians.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith -- that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Jesus has made me his own.  Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.  But one thing I do:  forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  (Philippians 3:8-14, ESV)

Looking back at the evidence, I can say that my Uncle Bob's was a life well lived, and I think Solon would be inclined to pronounce it as olbios.  I know that Uncle Bob would say it was blessed because of the work of Jesus Christ, whom, like Paul, he acknowledged as Lord.  One of the blessings of death for those who are alive is that it presents us with an occasion to do a bit of the pondering that is necessary to keeping our lives on track.  Are we headed toward a good end?  If so, how will we keep our endurance to finish well?  If not, what changes must we make?  Who are those who have finished well who can serve as models and standards by which to measure our progress?  When once we have completed such pondering, we must return to the business of living, for no race can be finished well or poorly that is not run at all.

Robert E. "Bob" Carlile
1934-2022