Saving Dmitri: Creating A Christian Legacy

Legacy is what we leave behind when we move on or pass away. For my grandfather, these were his children, his grandchildren and the trees he planted.

Often, on long car trips with him, whether close to home or hours away, he would point out trees along the side of the road or in the woods and say, “I planted that tree.”

And though it seemed insignificant at the time, I have realized what my grandfather truly gave to people — the way his legacy is preserved. These trees serve as homes to wildlife, timber to loggers and essential landmarks to hundreds of strangers, most of whom never knew him.

For most of us, when we die, our legacy will be preserved in much the same way. Some of our descendants will see the fruit of our work — that is, if we commit ourselves to work that will outlast ourselves — but they will never know our names. Most likely, they will hardly be grateful for what we did at all.

But still, we often feel the need to leave a legacy. According to Brett Waggoner, Jesse Bering and Jamin Halberstadt’s 2020 article in “New Ideas in Psychology,” this desire is “a means for acquiring symbolic immortality,” thereby diminishing the idea of death as an abrupt finish line with no meaningful impact on what lives on.

While everyone will leave a legacy of some kind, Christians should not view themselves as either the arbiters of their destinies or as worthy of remembrance. The great things we do in our lives are determined by our faith to follow the Holy Spirit. Our failures are determined by our attachment to worldly desires.

No amount of striving to be remembered will ever be enough to ensure a line in history books devoted to us, regardless of how monumental or extraordinary our actions may appear to be. After all, few remember Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet man who saved the world from nuclear fallout; or Gavrilo Princip, who put World War I and subsequently World War II in motion by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The actions of these men determined the fate of potentially millions of people, but still, many have no idea they existed. We do, however, remember the names of countless celebrities who merely made music, movies or other memorable things and had little to nothing to do with the fate of the world.

If this shows anything, it is that those we remember are not necessarily determined by the value of their contribution to society. Sometimes, the way others made us feel is the greatest contribution they made to our memory of them.

My grandfather never broke world records, became famous or saved the world, but he clearly showed his love to his family, who have fondly preserved his memory because of who he was. Eventually, despite this, he will be forgotten among my future descendants. But forgetting him diminishes nothing of what he did or who he was; it only shows that a legacy only looks back so far.

I know nothing of my family 300 years ago, just as the gardeners who use my grandfather’s trees as mulch in their gardens know nothing of him. Eventually, we will all be forgotten, as it says in Ecclesiastes 9:5, “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.”

If I did not know that my future is secure in Christ, then my legacy would eventually be lost to time, whether I do anything that outlasts me or not. But if I follow Christ, planting seeds of faith with my life just as my grandfather planted seeds in the ground, the harvest will most certainly outlast me. More than this, the legacy I will have left will outlive all generations, as it is in Christ and not in myself. 

Kilker is the opinion editor for the Liberty Champion.