FOMO and YOLO

You’ve probably heard the slang terms “FOMO” and “YOLO.” FOMO means “fear of missing out.” YOLO means “you only live once.” Together, they express a whole worldview, “Life is short. Death is coming. So grab as much pleasure as you can before your chance is gone.” But that is a horrible lie. It is the spirituality of despair disguised as freedom. It assumes that death ends joy, that heaven is somehow less satisfying than earth, and that if we give up sinful or shallow pleasures now, we will be deprived forever.

Many atheists believe this openly. The sad thing is that many Christians seem to believe it secretly. We act as if heaven will be a downgrade, as if there are pleasures here that we must seize now because we will never taste real happiness again. But that is completely false.

The Catechism says heaven “is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness” (CCC 1024). Heaven is not less joy. Heaven is joy perfected. It is not the end of happiness. It is happiness without fear, without boredom, without regret, without loss. Heaven is all gain.

Cutting the Cord

Entrance into Heaven, into the fullness of the Kingdom of God, is a birth. So it helps to think about our own natural birth. The transition from the womb into the world is not a transition from more to less, but from less to more. It would make no sense for an unborn child to say, “I only live once. I had better enjoy the womb while I can. Once I leave here, all the good things will be over.”

No. Birth is not the end of life. Birth is the beginning of a larger life. After birth come light, color, sound, faces, voices, loving arms, movement, language, friendship, thought, and love. The child does not lose the womb as if it were the whole world. The child leaves the womb because he was made for something greater. That is what Heaven is. We talk about “living life to the fullest” now, but the truth is, we barely know what life is. Compared to Heaven, this life is still the womb.

Death is not the end of joy for those who belong to Christ. It is birth into joy. We are not leaving life behind. We are finally entering it.

Aren’t there some things we have to leave behind here?

Still, people get nervous about Heaven. We don’t like the thought of leaving behind what we know. It would be like a baby in the womb who was afraid to be born and said, “I get to keep my umbilical cord, right? I can’t survive without that!” And we would say, “No. You won’t need it where you’re going. There is something called eating. It will give you everything the umbilical cord gave you, but in a richer, fuller, more delightful way.” That might sound suspicious to the baby, but it is true. No one who has tasted real food wants to go back to being fed through the belly button.

Heaven is like that. There is no marriage in Heaven because there is something greater: the perfect communion of love with God and with one another. There are no debates in Heaven because we will possess the truth directly and joyfully. There is no hope in Heaven because hope means we are still waiting for what we long for. In Heaven, we will possess it. Whatever we leave behind is not lost. It is fulfilled. Heaven is not subtraction. Heaven is fulfillment.

Intimacy with God

But, of course, the best part of Heaven isn’t just the richer experience. It’s that we finally get to possess God perfectly. Let’s go back to the baby in the womb for one final comparison. Who is that baby surrounded by? His mother. All the protection and support, and comfort he has, where does it all come from? His mother. Only, the baby doesn’t see his mother. He hears her heartbeat, and perhaps occasionally the muffled sound of her voice. But he’s never actually met this person who sustains him and cares for him and gives him everything.

And then, one day, the baby is born. And it’s an intense experience, no doubt. But then, then he is embraced by his mother, and he sees her smile, and he looks for the first time at her beauty, and he feels for the first time her love. And the baby knows a happiness he never could have imagined before.

There’s a lot of good things about heaven, but the best is that we get to meet God, face-to-face. This God who is the source and sustainer of absolutely everything good in our lives right now. This God who gives us all we have. This God who is all around us, all the time, even though we can’t see Him, and only sometimes maybe catch the muffled and vague sound of His voice in prayer. Finally, we’ll get to meet God. We’ll see Him, we’ll be embraced by Him, we’ll see Him smile, and we’ll experience His delight in us, and, for the first time, we’ll feel the full depth of His love for us. And that will be the best part of Heaven. That’s what we’re looking forward to.

Seek the One Thing That Satisfies

This is why we are so tempted to sin. We hunger for perfect fulfillment. We want complete happiness, complete love, complete security, complete joy. But then we look for that infinite fulfillment in finite things. We think, “If I just had the right spouse, the right house, the right job, the right vacation, the right experience, then I would finally be satisfied.” And when we are not satisfied, we assume the thing was wrong. So we discard it and look for another. A different relationship. A different house. A different pleasure. A different distraction. A different life. But the earthly thing was not necessarily wrong. The problem is that we were asking it to do what only God can do.

No created thing can satisfy an infinite heart. Only God can. That satisfaction begins even now through a deep life of prayer, love, and union with Him. But it will only be complete in Heaven, when we possess God perfectly and are possessed by Him. So stop chasing perfect happiness where it cannot be found. Get laser-focused on union with God now, and long for Heaven.

Resolution: Today, when you feel restless, dissatisfied, or tempted to grasp at something new, stop and say, “This cannot satisfy me. I was made for God. Lord, I just want you.”

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