{"id":104144,"date":"2019-04-20T22:46:51","date_gmt":"2019-04-21T03:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=104144"},"modified":"2021-09-10T10:36:31","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T15:36:31","slug":"sunday-firesides-eternity-is-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/character\/advice\/sunday-firesides-eternity-is-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Firesides: Eternity Is Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Sunday-Firesides-Easter.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-104166 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Sunday-Firesides-Easter.jpg\" alt=\"Posture by Sunday Firesides about Eternity explained by Phillips Brooks.\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Sunday-Firesides-Easter.jpg 650w, https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Sunday-Firesides-Easter-372x230.jpg 372w, https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Sunday-Firesides-Easter-320x197.jpg 320w, https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Sunday-Firesides-Easter-640x394.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The above quote by a 19<sup>th<\/sup> century clergyman speaks to the way a belief in eternal life can elevate and empower mortal life, offering strength, purpose, and a sense of divinely imbued identity and destiny. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Brooks speaks from a Christian tradition, but his viewpoint is, ironically enough, quite Nietzschean.<\/p>\n<p>One of the fundamentals of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/articles\/a-primer-on-nietzsches-big-ideas\/\">Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s philosophy<\/a> was the idea of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/articles\/eternal-return-ultimate-new-years-resolution\/\">\u201ceternal return,\u201d<\/a> in which he charged people to imagine living the entirety of their lives, just as they are living them now, over and over again for eternity. He believed that if you thought you\u2019d have to relive every decision and mood an infinite number of times, you would take every single moment of your life more seriously. You would say \u201cyes to life.\u201d You would realize that \u201cBeing begins in every Now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The linear finitude of death, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/articles\/friedrich-nietzsche-biography\/\">Friedrich Nietzsche<\/a> thought, was something of a cop-out, and he criticized Christians for attempting to escape the weight of the irreversible moment of the present by looking to the future &#8212; by contemplating their mansions in heaven. But there is nothing inherent to the faith\u2019s theology that necessitates this \u201clife-denying\u201d attitude; in fact, if eternity extends forward and back to infinity, then there is no waiting for eternal life; you are living it right now. As St. Augustine said, \u201cYour today is eternity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of one\u2019s religion or philosophy, whether one approaches the issue from Nietzsche\u2019s perspective or the Bible\u2019s or another, every person could benefit from adopting this conviction, and using it to live more fully, more bravely, more nobly: <em>eternity is now<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The above quote by a 19th century clergyman speaks to the way a belief in eternal life can elevate and empower mortal life, offering strength, purpose, and a sense of divinely imbued identity and destiny. &nbsp; Brooks speaks from a Christian tradition, but his viewpoint is, ironically enough, quite Nietzschean. One of the fundamentals of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42270,502],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-104144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice","category-character"],"featured_image_urls":{"medium_large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/easter-1-768x509.jpg","large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/easter-1-538x280.jpg","aom":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/easter-1-372x230.jpg","reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/easter-1-320x212.jpg","reactor-640":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2019\/04\/easter-1-640x424.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104144"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104169,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104144\/revisions\/104169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104144"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=104144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}