X-ray questions - 13 August 2009 |
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One of the most perceptive chapters in David Powlison’s Seeing With New Eyes, appropriately entitled ‘X-ray Questions’, contains a series of questions designed to expose what’s really going on in our hearts. The idea is to mull over each question (honestly) for a while, and then look up the Bible references that follow. As you’d expect, there’s plenty of food for thought.
It’s tempting to think that exercises like this are really only for ‘desperate cases’ – Christians suffering under really serious trials, or stuck in patterns of really destructive ungodliness. But this is a mistake. It would do none of us any harm to chew over questions like these from time to time.
Here’s an example.
1. What do you love? Hate? (p. 130)
So, what’s the first thing that pops into your head? Honest, now. Love – proper cappuccino with an extra shot; hate – cheap instant with powdered UHT. Or maybe (this’d probably be better): love – talking to people who really understand me? Playing with the kids at church? Or maybe better still: love – a good solid sermon; the book of Ephesians. All good things. Great things. Really great Christian things.
And then you look up the Bible references.
And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39)
It’s not that we don’t believe it. It’s not that we don’t really love God. It’s just, well, we just didn’t think of it. Mention ‘love’, we don’t immediately think ‘the Lord our God’. We think ‘creation’; the Bible says ‘Creator’. We think ‘provisions’; the Bible says ‘Provider’. We think ‘good Christian stuff to enjoy and do and be blessed by’; the Bible says ‘The One who gives to all people life and breath and everything else’.
And then the ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ bit. Here ‘love’ means something subtly different from ‘love’ when we say ‘I love coffee’ or ‘I love Ephesians’. When I ‘love’ Ephesians, I love what I receive from/through/in it. Not bad, obviously – that’s what it’s there for. But when I love my neighbour, I’m giving what (s)he needs from me. In the one case, I love to get; in the other, I love to love.
Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Books, Minister's Blog, Seeing with New Eyes