The Difference Between YOLO and DV

Dear Faithful Blog Readers, 

The culture we live in is becoming further removed from two noticeable things: Latin phrases and a God-centered worldview. The one makes sense, since Latin is a dead language. The other is sad, since God is not dead. 

A recent acronym YOLO (you only live once) has replaced the older Latin concept of carpe diem (seize the day). It means enjoying life and taking risks. A dead Latin phrase has been replaced with a hip acronym that is easy to text to a friend or use as a Twitter hashtag. 

There is one Latin phrase the needs resurrected, or at least the concept needs to be understood. It is found in the phrase Deo volente or “God willing” in English. From what I understand, people used to write D.V. at the end of written correspondence, which stood for Deo volente--similar to P.S. which is the Latin post scriptum. This makes sense since people would write their plans in letters to their friends and family. But it also showed that they lived with a God-centered worldview. The difference between YOLO and DV is that one apporaches life with us in control, the other trusts God who is truly in control of all things. 

The concept of Deo volente is found in James:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make profit”-yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 

(James 4:13-15 ESV)

There is a great difference between YOLO and DV. It is not because one uses a hip acronym and the other a dead language. The real difference is that God is absent from one and first in the other. Which leads us to ask the question: is God absent from our lives or is he first in our thinking, planning and living? I hope that we all live to the fullest. I hope that we have a “seize the day” approach. But I hope we do so with God’s name as the first letter of our acronym of life. That is the big difference between YOLO and DV. 

Living as a mist, 

Ryan

D.V.