What’s it all about?

I had a quick thought the other day that prompted me to write a bit about it (with a real pen and paper!), so I thought I’d share with you the content of my mind that was unravelled.

I don’t recall God commanding us (through scripture) to put scripture as the most important thing.  I may even dare stretch the point to say that I don’t think getting our doctrine spot-on and perfect is the most important thing, which probably shocks some conservative evangelicals.  If this was the case, we’d be in a pretty bad situation due to our depravity.  How can fallen man claim to have their thinking (using a depraved mind) about God to be infallible?  Now of course there are certain levels and degrees about what is primary, secondary and tertiary in our thinking about God, but that isn’t the point.  My point is that our understanding about God isn’t the point.  (I want to make it clear that this ‘understanding about God’ is vastly different from ‘knowing God’).

I do, however, get the subtle sense that we’re commanded to love.  To love at all costs.  ”Love God.  Love others.  There is no greater commandment than these.” (Mark 12:30-31 para.).  ”Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44).   “Faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).  ”Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2).  Yes, we are commanded to love God with all our minds (and I love this command), but even this command is a love command.  So if using our minds is diminishing the love we could be showing, we need to change something!

Understanding isn’t the thing.  Love is the thing.

So then I got thinking, if it’s all about love, it can’t be about getting into heaven.  Love is, at its essence, self-denial.  It’s putting others first, caring for them more than yourself.  So how can someone do this while still being motivated by themselves going to heaven?  I don’ think they can.

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16).  “Those who try to keep their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives for me will find them” (Luke 17:33).

It seems clear that life after death shouldn’t be our focus or source for motivation, or even a motivator in the slightest.  How can someone strive to be in heaven while “counting everything as crap for the sake of knowing Christ” (Phil. 3:8)?  Knowing Christ is our focus, everything else is crap (for want of a stronger but non-offensive word).  That includes good works, repentance, faith, charity and even salvation.  They are mere consequences of what it is actually all about – knowing Christ.

So I challenge you not to know the Bible better, as if it was the Bible speaking into your life, but know God better, as if it were the Holy Spirit speaking to you through the Bible and other means.  That is what ‘it’ is all about.

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