I was reminded yesterday about something very important in my Christian walk: balance. Not a “work/life” kind of balance, where you’ve got to find the right amount of free time in your schedule to keep yourself healthy and sane. Not at all. To apply this to my faith would almost imply there are times I should step away from the striving (I don’t want to imply though that there aren’t times I would step away from something within my faith).
I’m thinking more of a balance in how I approach life as a believer.
I’m not saying that every waking moment must (can) be dedicated to God…although if one were to look honestly at what the Bible says, one would see the necessity. After all, Jesus does tell us that the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (quoting Deuteronomy).
Yet we can’t (and that’s kind of the whole point behind Jesus). We are frail human beings with limited powers of concentration and patience. Our minds drift. We become tired and irritable. We don’t get what we want and every one of us, to varying degrees, has a breaking point where we completely jettison the Christian walk for a bit of self-centered indulgence. So not only do we fall short on that “great and first commandment,” we manifest it visibly in violating the second: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In dishonoring others, we dishonor God…and vice-versa.
But these two commandments should be our guiding principles in life. And we should be thankful that Jesus boiled it down for us like this. While we only think of ten, the Jewish faith from which we get them goes much further — to over 600. This was “checklistism” if there ever was. I’ve written before about avoiding the life of a “checklist” Christian. And Jesus is quite helpful here. Brilliant, actually. “Go out there and love God.”
“How?” we ask.
“Go out there and love your neighbor as yourself.”
“Well, how do we do that?”
So vague. Jesus doesn’t tell anyone to mow his neighbor’s lawn or give “x” percent to charity. Instead, he tells a parable about a man his listeners looked down upon and hated. Someone who stopped to care for a man lying beaten and bleeding on the side of the road. No checklist there – just a story showing what loving God and others looks like. Putting that together with everything else he said, we should be able to fill in the rest.
In the many years I’ve taught from the Bible, I’ve often been confronted by this before: “What is God’s will for my life?” “What does God want me to do?”
Well Jesus says it right there: Love him with all you’ve got, and love others as yourself.
“Well, how do I do that?” How do you think you should do that?
It’s not a checklist. It’s not even actively going out and seeking those opportunities (although that can be a part…a byproduct…of it). It’s as simple as living a life that, when you see a man beaten and bloodied at the side of the road, you do something. Not because you’re thinking, “Hey, this is a great opportunity to show everyone how much I love my fellow man.” That’s not what the Samaritan was doing. The Samaritan was acting on his sense of compassion and decency for another human being. We can take that lesson and extrapolate that to the conclusion that we, too, should be so steeped in our Christian lives that our first thought is our love for others – a love born of our love for Christ himself.
How do we get there? Balance. To develop simple habits across the board that are informed by who we truly are. I am a Christian. I love reading the Bible. I don’t always get it, but I’ve made it a habit to read some of it every day, trying to understand it as a whole and plug it into my own life. I love teaching, so I do it when I can. I love being able to turn my thoughts to God in prayer at any time (although, like most, I don’t do it nearly enough). I love that I can simply be thankful (again, not enough) for the wonderful things that have happened in my life. And I love that I can genuinely love others, not because I’m checking a box, but because I know their value as image-bearers of my God.
Still, I can’t be so caught up on any one of these things at the expense of them all. Checklist people can get that way. Jesus called some of them out directly — “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” Can you imagine being so rigid that you’re weighing out the herbs and spices you’re going to give, but forgetting such a thing as justice?
Or what about this? Reading the Bible faithfully — three chapters every morning, rain or shine — then walking out the door to nothing more than your own busy life. Far more subtle. Not “call you out in the Bible” convicting, but still…
The more I consider, the more I know I need that balance – to not so carelessly neglect the good with some other good. This happens not necessarily in what I do, but as much in how I live — immersed in a lifestyle that makes doing the right things (and for God’s glory) a matter of course. This is the balance for which I must strive. I just can’t walk a life without it.
