I say this with as much humility as it is possible to do so, I am very smart and ‘thinky’. I don’t mean that as a compliment. For a long time I’ve very much enjoyed the intellectual side of Christianity: Revelation, Apologetics, and ‘historical context of Jesus’. However, I’ve realized that I can’t say much if any of it has really helped to deepen my practical everyday faith. When it comes to the question of ‘doing what I liked’ vs ‘doing what I ought’ it falls squarely into the ‘what I liked’ bit.
I have a bad habit of playing devil’s advocate and perhaps occasionally destroying other people’s faith. With the self justification of ‘if their faith isn’t strong enough to survive questioning, then perhaps it’s not faith worth having.’ This is of course stupid, one does not treat a bud in the same way that one treats a fully grown and healthy plant. Rather than nurturing and helping others grow in faith, I can be a distraction. A cold snap to a faith that is at a tender and vulnerable age.
Recently, I’ve been coming more and more to the realization that while this sort of intellectual theorizing is useful and necessary (After all, one must be ready to give a reason for the faith we have) it is more often than not less than helpful in our daily decisions.
What good is it if I understand the precise meaning of the ontological argument if while doing so I cultivate in myself a haughty spirit? What use is Jesus’s resurrection if I forget to live my own life with love?
It is quite easy then to in a rush to defend the ‘core tenets of the faith’ that we forget how we act practically in the real world. To have our noses so stuck in a book that the book becomes blinders for the very real suffering around us. How we react to that is the practical and real Christianity that we have.
This is not to say that such thinky things are useless. They are not, the intellect must see that Christianity is reasonable and sensible to come. However, they are not what the daily walk of the Christian life is like. I certainly don’t spend several hours every day doubting God’s existence. I spend many more hours of my day interacting with people. Be it at work, at home with my family, or a short transaction with a cashier on my way home from work. I even interact with people by the way that I drive and park my car.
One might certainly scoff at thinking that how one parks one’s car is an interaction. However, consider this. At the moment that I write this my car is parked on the street at my sister’s house. Every single person who drives down the road must now interact with my car being parked there. It is a small interaction, but how you do anything is how you do everything. If I park selfishly, then others will have a harder time maneuvering around my vehicle whereas if I park it neatly then they will have an easier one.
What one must understand is that every interaction is the basis of our future relationship. But what relationship do I have with people who aren’t even my sister’s neighbors but people who live several houses down the street who I may very well never meet before I die? This is of course a natural perspective. We think of death as the end of our lives. However, if the Bible is to be trusted, it’s not. It’s a transition where we will be judged for our actions good and ill that we have done to others. Then through the finished work of Christ we will receive true immortality. We think of immortality for us, but not that the neighbor down the road is also someone for whom Christ died and is wooing to himself. Someone who will hopefully also be an immortal being.
It may very well be that they will only drive by my car once and that will be it for our earthly encounters. However, in the vast reaches of eternity, it is almost certain that eventually we will meet again. Will we get off on the right foot because I was respectful of their use of the road or will it not because I was a jerk who made everyone drive around his poorly parked car?
What we must remember is that every touch echoes across eternity.
See thinky again. That is a very high and lofty statement. However, we must ground the lofty in “how do I act today?” A lofty statement of intention and vision does nothing if not firmly rooted in the ground of everyday life. How do I treat my siblings, partner, parents, children, friends, strangers? How do I cultivate and make virtue a habit in my day to day life?
I’m certainly far from perfect. I can be insular and inconsiderate. I can preach one thing and do the exact opposite a moment later. This is not because what I’m saying is untrue, but because I am a very imperfect man.
Every society has it’s high ideals. One might value power, order, and stability. In another, individuality and freedom of expression. In a third, philosophy. We observe two things, first that these high ideals are correct or good in some way. Second, that many fail to live up to the ideals that they claim to espouse. This doesn’t make the ideals wrong or bad, but that mere mortal men are incapable of living up to them.
Therefore, we must ask ourselves the grounding question. How does this impact my daily life, in what way am I living up to the ideals? In what way am I failing or selfish? By holding ourselves up to a standard, we see all of the ways that we don’t live up to it.
So I will leave you here with a question, “What is the practical daily impact of the Bible’s standard on your life?”