Before an Audience of One

As a student and lover of literature, the film Dead Poets Society has long held a place of particular affection in my heart. However, there are nonetheless a few things the film gets wrong, but we shall get to these in due time. In the film, Mr. Keating, an English teacher at a prestigious New England school for boys and young men, strives to inspire the students in his class through the beauties of poetry. Mr. Keating’s aims, though admirable and at times controversial, grind against the ultimate goals of the school itself: namely, not to inspire young men, but to prepare them for the real world, to conform them. According to powers that be at the school, poetry and literature cannot change the world, only science and mathematics can - and so, these young men should concentrate their efforts appropriately.

Upon meeting Mr. Keating for the first time (played by the late Robin Williams), the class of young men is taken out into the hall wherein Keating selects one of the boys to read a passage of poetry. The passage in question is taken from Robert Herrick’s To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time. The stanza that the young boy reads goes as follows:

“Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.”

This poem, explains Mr. Keating, is extolling the idea of carpe dium - Latin for “seize the day”. Indeed, as Keating goes on to say, “Seize the day, gather ye rose-buds while ye may!” Why seize the day? Well, according to Keating, because we are, all of us, “food for worms”. The charge of history is ever moving forward, and “this same flower that smiles today” is the very same flower that “Tomorrow will be dying” and surely dead the day after that.  Mr. Keating then directs the young boys to the other side of the hall and has them “peruse some of the faces from the past”; pictures of men who have long since graduated, married, worked, lived, and died before any of these young men were even born. 

What separates the men in the picture case from the young boys standing before them is not intellect, wealth, or charm - no, what differentiates these two groups of men is a matter of years only. Just as the men who were immortalized in the school’s gallery lived, loved, and died, so too will the men standing before them. The men in the picture case thought that they too were immortal, and now they are “fertilizing dandelions” in the very cemeteries of their fathers.

What then shall we do in light of this ancient dilemma? Mr. Keating’s solution is simple: carpe dium! Seize the day! The eyes of the men entombed in the school’s gallery are burning outwards from their frames, urging the young men before them to resist conformity and seize the day! Carpe dium!

Only, something seems to be missing from this equation, does it not? Some vital ingredient is lacking that, without it, will result in no change at all. For, what does it prosper these young men if they, like the men in the picture frames before them, seize the day, every single day, only to die all the same? Indeed, “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (1 Corinthians 15:32).

There is a sense, however, in which Mr. Keating is absolutely correct. We shall, all of us, “fertilize dandelions” in our own time. Our flesh will, as James says, fade away and wither like a flower of the field - “For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). Seize the day or not, you will surely die and be forgotten by this world.

Clearly then, carpe dium is not the solution to our ailing souls - coram Deo is. Coram Deo, another Latin phrase, translated means “before the face of God”. It means that in whatever we do, whether we eat, drink, or work, to do all before the face of the living God. As author and theologian R.C. Sproul says,

“This phrase literally refers to something that takes place in the presence of, or before the face of, God. To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God.”

To live coram Deo means to live before an audience of One. In all that we do, whether sacred or secular, we ought to do so with the knowledge that we are in the presence of an all-present, all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful God whose gaze penetrates all superficialities, right down to our very heart of hearts. 

When we live coram Deo, in the light of God’s presence, suddenly there remains no division between the sacred and the secular - for all must become holy before Him. Indeed, when we live and love and work and sleep before Him, according to His good pleasure and will, then all things become good and holy. By living coram Deo, there is no such thing as an insignificant life. Suddenly, by living coram Deo, to preach a sermon to thousands of souls becomes no more ‘sacred’ than waking up in the wee hours of the night to tend to a crying child or working a seemingly insignificant job provided that it is all done “as unto the Lord”. For though this world shall forget us, both while we are living and certainly after we die, the Lord will not forget those who are His: “the world is passing away, along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17).

I would venture to say that coram Deo is the ‘big idea’ of the Christian life. What greater purpose can any creature aspire to than exercising the opportunity to do all of life before a glorious and perfect Creator? This is precisely what the apostle Paul was urging the Corinthians to do: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). 

The Biblical summons to “do all” coram Deo, no matter how seemingly insignificant it may feel at the moment, is a tremendous encouragement to anyone who feels as though life has passed them by. If we truly take to heart that all of our existence is to be unto and before God, then suddenly all of life becomes elevated to a profound degree. Before God in Christ, we are no longer ‘mere mortals’, and thus there are no ‘mere tasks’ that the Christian sets their heart to. And so, let that be our song; to live in such a way that the very aroma of Christ can be found in all our deeds, whether great or small. Let us strive to live in such a way that is carpe dium, coram Deo - seizing each day before the presence of God Himself.