Episode Transcript  

One

Angels

Here’s a random question: how long do you think it took the angels to make the choice whether to spend eternity in heaven or hell? In other words, how long did it take after being created for Satan and his followers to defy God, and for St. Michael and his followers to choose allegiance to God? Well, of course, we don’t know for sure. But theologians think that it only took one second. That’s right. In the first moment of their existence, all the angels were given all the information they needed to make an eternal decision and stick to it. In other words, when it came to the angels’ salvation, God didn’t waste any time. The question was, did they want eternity with Him, or did they want eternity without Him?

And, actually, that’s really the only question at the end of the day with us, too. So here’s the question: why does God even bother putting us in the world? Why doesn’t He do the same thing with all of us as He did with the angels? Why not just give us the choice, as soon as we’re created? Why give us so long, so much time, if it’s going to come down to the same alternative in the end?

Two

Why We’re Different

We aren’t like angels. We aren’t pure minds. We don’t start out complete. Quite the opposite. We begin as infants, body and soul. We begin small. And we grow by interacting with the world God has made. We develop in our environment, we grow physically, we learn, we develop the capacities of movement, of speech, of self-reflection.

The angels had two seconds. We have up to about ninety-five years. God has given us a fortune of time, so the question is, are we using it or squandering it?

Three

Time to Grow

We start out small, but God is really, really big. And only those who have grown enough to receive and appreciate Him will end up in Heaven. So we have a lot we need to develop. We have to increase our capacity for truth, our capacity for love, and our capacity for joy. Heaven has standards. You must be “this tall to ride the Heaven slide,” you have to have used your time to have developed your soul to the point that it can receive God Himself.

Fortunately, we have a lot of time. The question is, how are we using it?

Four

The Failure of Using Our Time Well

We are living in an era where almost everyone has more free time than perhaps ever before in human history. We have professional obligations, family obligations, and then, hopefully, the time we spend on prayer. And we have a ton of time left over. Which, it turns out, we are increasingly spending NOT engaging with the world God made for us.

We’re spending it all engaging with the pseudo-virtual world we’ve made for ourselves. We spend that time texting, on social media, watching videos online and on television, and playing games on our devices. The sheer amount of, say, pornography that people watch - that by itself shows how much free time people have.

This virtual world, this electronic world, doesn’t make us grow. That doesn’t challenge us, doesn’t develop us into fully mature persons fit for heaven. Quite the contrary. It narrows our minds and our interests. It weakens our wills, impoverishes our emotions, saps our strength and vitality. We have chosen to spend as much time as possible in a fake world that makes us smaller. And our souls shrink and shrink, and our hearts become smaller and smaller, and our entire personality gets sunken in on itself.

We are a society that is not using the real world to prepare ourselves for the enormity of Heaven. We are using a fake world to prepare ourselves for the smallness of Hell.

Five

Preparation for God or Hell?

The angels only had two seconds to make the decision that would determine the course of their eternal destiny. They could do it because they started out fully-formed; completely equipped. Full-grown at birth. But God wanted to make other creatures, human beings, that would develop themselves through time, unfolding their capacities like a flower blooming.

Through time. God made us creatures who develop our character over time. Time is the medium of change, and we are always changing, whether we realize it or not. If we are pursuing the ultimate truth, self-sacrifice, and delight in what is truly noble and beautiful, if we are trying to live as children of God in the world He made for us, understanding the deepest truths of faith and reason, loving as fully as we can, serving the people closest to us, delighting in the natural world made by God Himself - then, whether we know it or not, we are maturing.

But if we’re indulging in trivialities, distracting ourselves with vacuous or even vicious entertainment, making no effort to restrain our self-righteous opinionatedness, trying to get attention instead of trying to actually help people - if this is how we’re spending our time, then, whether we know it or not, over time we are spoiling, twisting, thwarting the progress of our own souls. 

And when the time is up, which it will be, before too long, we’ll have taken several decades to make exactly the same choice Satan made in less than three seconds. So take stock of how you’re spending your time. And figure out what you need to be doing differently.

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