Don't Cultivate an Empty Legacy

I hesitate to write this for a lot of reasons. The fact is, Andrew Breitbart has died and for the last week or so we have observed a flood of contrary evaluations of the man. On the one hand, people hated his guts and thought he was the biggest slimeball who ever lived. On the other hand, some people are already lionizing him - Ann Coulter, for example, says that this is similar to the death of John Lennon.

My suspicion is, there are many Christians who would look at the life and career of Andrew Breitbart and - without having known anything of his religious life - say that Breitbart as "finished the race," borrowing Paul's own phrase. In reality, Andrew Breitbart fought for a temporal kingdom - one which will not endure in its present form. “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved" (2 Peter 3:10 ESV). This points to a cataclysmic end for the world as we know it. When Christ ushers in the age to come, it will not come calmly and smoothly with the institutions and structures of this world relatively unchanged. Rather, we will inhabit a new heavens and a new Earth. The cosmos will be fundamentally remade, and so we see that the institutions, the news papers, the blogs, and the buildings of this world will not endure into the age to come.

The Bible points to very few things which will "endure forever": God's steadfast love (1 Chr. 16:34), God's righteousness (Ps. 111:3), God's praise (Ps. 111:10), every one of God's righteous rules (Ps. 119:160), God's name (Ps. 135:13), and whatever God does (Eccl. 3:14). This does not mean that nothing we do is of any benefit. However, it should cause us to make our ultimate end and goal the one which God has designed for us (WSC Q1), so that our endeavors and labors in this life are not "burned up" in the end (1 Cor. 3:15). "Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life" (John 6:27).

Andrew Breitbart... Ronald Reagan... John Lennon... Herod... All passing fads.