But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. -James 1:22-25 (NASB)
Why do we proclaim that we desire our lives to be about the things of God, yet when we hear what those things are we completely ignore them? Soren Kierkegaard says this :
The matter is very simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take an words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the church's prodigious effort to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of he living God.
The reality is this: Christ has not commanded us to bury our faces in Calvin's Institutes. Or the Works of Augustine. Or to debate election. Or dunking versus sprinkling. Or whether or not dancing is an abomination. Or to concern ourselves with hymns or songs from Passion '07.
We are commanded to love the Lord our God, with all of our hearts, with all of our souls and with all of our minds. We are commanded that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father.
Stop talking. Stop theorizing. Stop philosophizing. Stop debating and dividing.
And start living Love.
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? -Micah 6:8 (ESV)
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1 comment:
Good word, Brother. Can you imagine what the world would look like if all of the students at Christian colleges and universities stopped debating and starting living love, the way we have been commanded to do? What a difference we would make! By the way, have you read Irresistible Revolution yet? It's quality, ain't it?
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