LBJ, C.S. Lewis, & Jesus on Immortality

I just began reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s well-regarded 1-volume biography of LBJ. Unlike many biographers, Goodwin had extensive, personal access to LBJ in the latter days of his presidency and before his death. On the first page, she recounts an amazing conversation she had with LBJ only two days before his fatal heart attack:

“Listen,” he began. “I’ve been reading Carl Sandburg’s biography on Lincoln and no matter how great the book’s supposed to be, I can’t bring Lincoln to life. And if that’s true for me, one President reading about another, then there’s no chance the ordinary person in the future will ever remember me. No chance. I’d have been better off looking for immortality through my wife and children and their children in turn instead of seeking all that love and affection from the American people. They’re just too fickle.” 

Whew! What a startling admission. I’m always fascinated by the confessions of those who have reached the absolute summit of their world, and then found it wanting. Yet another confirmation of Jesus’ words: 

What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matthew 16:26; cf. Mark 8:36; Luke 9:25). 

I’m not making any statement about LBJ’s eternal destination. In fact, Billy Graham (in his autobiography) believed that LBJ was a Christian. But on his almost-deathbed, LBJ is articulating with brutal honesty and lucidity the simple truth that what we live for, what we give our very lives for, will inevitably fail to live up to our hopes. 

Would LBJ have been better off investing less in the public and more in his family? Perhaps. But the world is littered with people who gave everything to their families and were also disappointed. The Bible teaches that the longing for immortality is placed in every human heart by God (Eccl. 3:11). Particularly in this materialist society, we don’t know what to do with that longing for eternity. We fill it with all kinds of mismatched parts. Jesus teaches us that we may gain everything the world has to offer, and yet lose what is most important.

Nothing temporal can fill eternity. That’s what LBJ–and thousands of summit-climbers before him–have discovered. Only eternity can fill eternity. 

This is lofty ground, so let me defer to C.S. Lewis, who expressed these things much better than I:

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

–Mere Christianity

“If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there?”

–Encounter with Light

“It now seemed that…the deepest thirst within him was not adapted to the deepest nature of the world.”

–The Pilgrim’s Regress

“Though I do not believe that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will.”

–Transposition and Other addresses

Thanks to the C.S. Lewis Quote Page for the above quotations.