What the bible does say

In my post a week ago, I talked about things that The Bible doesn’t say, but where many people have absolute beliefs about the Christian stance anyway. Today I want to talk about what The Bible clearly says, but that we tend to overlook. 

What the Bible does say quite clearly, is that we need to be humble before God. Not only that, but humility seems to occupy a special place among the virtues, within Christianity. It seem to be tied into many of the other prime virtues. Thomas à Kempis, the writer of the classic: The Imitation of Christ, gave it the utmost importance.

The Bible does most certainly call us to follow Jesus’ example, to forgive others and look at our own shortcomings, instead of finding faults in others. It tells us to love God, each other and ourselves. All of this is pretty clear. It is written in very plain language and illustrated in numerous examples. Yet, how many of us really contemplate these, obviously very central aspects of Christian faith, and think deeply about what they mean in our everyday lives? If you are like me, you probably easily get lost in speculations about matters of which you cannot possibly have any absolute knowledge, rather than actually use the same mental effort to reflect upon how to apply these very clear and central aspects of Christian fait to your life. To tell you the truth, even though I know that I would benefit from it, I’m scared of taking the question of truly following Christ in all aspects of my life seriously. What consequences it would have, which things I would need to change or prioritise differently, if I truly made the question of following Jesus central to my life. 

The idea that we should give primacy to the clearer and seemingly more important parts of The Bible, does of course not mean that claims about unprovable facts are unimportant. But arguing about factual claims, whether they are historical, contemporary, spiritual or worldly, that cannot be proven or disproven in any absolute sense, might be counterproductive. Especially if it takes focus from the central message of unconditional love, non-judgment and forgiveness. This arguing often even seem to downright contradict this message, when it turns us against one another. As with many other things, this does not just apply to The Bible. It applies to any situation, where we come to judge and resent one another because of differences of opinion or worldview. 

The Bible seems, at its core, to call for us to express love in all that we are and do. This, I think, seems to be the primary command of The Bible, personified in the figure of Jesus Christ. How could it be otherwise? 

What I’ve found helpful, when it comes to expressing love, is to examine the motifs behind my actions and words. If I’m being honest with myself, I find that my motifs, most of the time, are more or less different from those that I consciously presented to myself before examination. Unconscious motifs can often be such ones that do not express love. I believe that this is true for other people as well. If so, at least to me, this leads to the conclusion that, if we wish to be better att expressing love, we need to make self-examination a priority. As the Bible quote in the post-image says.

Here’s what I think. If we choose to live from this radical place of love, where we in all our brokenness do our best to imitate Christ, to make it our life-mission to do so, we have something to measure what we find during our self-examination against. No one expects us to be perfect at it. If you are like me, which I think most people are in this area, you are spiritually lazy. Even if it ultimately leads to nothing good, it’s convenient to deceive ourselves. And this self-deception of course entails finding excuses for not doing what we know we should, or do what we know we shouldn’t, even though we know that it is within our power to do otherwise.