“The unexamined life,” said Socrates, “is not worth living.”
Well, he didn’t actually use those precise words, but that’s
how it’s been quoted since — in books, on coffee mugs and t-shirts, and in the
common memory. The essence of his
words has remained, even if the particulars are a bit sketchy.
How seriously ought we to take that? True, he’s called the
Father of Philosophy, and he was notoriously smart. But the guy wore bedsheets,
and died a long while ago. How seriously can you take a guy dressed in bedsheets?
Not Worth Living
He said those words at the end of his life, just before he
was obliged by the State to drink a cup laced with hemlock (poison). His
disciple Aristotle would advise us that is the very best time to summarize a
man’s life. And maybe that’s right: to this day, the last words of the dying
retain a special dignity in court. So maybe we can take the old Athenian at his
word after all.
The unexamined life is not worth living. Why not? Because
the unexamined life is a life that you do not understand. You may be happy or
you may be sad. You may have riches or poverty. You may be loved by millions or
ignored by everyone. You may pass on as the father of a nation or as barren as
a stick. But if you don’t know who you are and why you’re doing what you’re
doing, you’re living on autopilot. Your choices are not really your own; they
are impulsive, habitual, reactive, conformist. You are not really in control. You
are a null entity in your own life.
And if that’s how it is, then why are you here at all?
Beastie Boys
“What is man,” asked Hamlet, “if his chief good and market
of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.” And Shakespeare
was pretty smart too … even if he didn’t wear bedsheets.
Actually, I think he wore breeches.
See, what these old guys knew is that life’s got to be about
real stuff. And that just doesn’t happen by accident. We human creatures are
all too prone to carry on life by way of habit or ritual, and to let our minds
settle into “bestial oblivion”. It happens that way because routines and habits
are easier than thinking: we just go on autopilot all the time, and save the
grey matter for something we really care about. And that means it takes a real
effort of discipline, of the will, to awaken ourselves from our usual patterns
so as to step back and evaluate them accurately.
On the Hook
Now, when I really need to examine myself I go fishing. Why
not? It’s what the disciples did. I find it a great way to calm my mind and review my life. I’ve got enough
in hand that I don’t get bored, but I’ve also got little enough to do that I
can think. So I can review life, ask myself the tough questions, and with the
Lord’s help, process my life so as to sort things out.
I’m sure I don’t always get it right; and sometimes I come
back from the river with more questions than answers. But that time of
reflection and self-examination is precious to my spiritual development. Now,
you may prefer golf (though only the Lord knows why), or camping, or just an
hour or two sitting on your back porch. But if you’ve got the courage to do it,
I’ll bet you can find some time and the right situation to examine your own
life. And maybe, just maybe, that will help you make it more “worth living”.
When was the last time you put yourself “on the hook” to
answer for your own life?
Thinking Too Much
Now, I know what you’re going to say. You’ll say, “Yeah, but
doesn’t Paul say, ‘I do not even examine myself … but the
one who examines me is the Lord’?”
Nicely clipped! You forgot the context. Paul’s
talking about other people examining
him, for the express purpose of telling him whether his life is ultimately
worthy. He was just saying, “Your
assessment doesn’t settle that, and even my
assessment doesn’t settle that; only God’s
does.” But he was not saying that there is some secret spiritual virtue in
living your life thoughtlessly … far less that he himself ever did that.
Read again. Paul tells us we must examine
our lives. “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith,” he writes. To the Thessalonians he
writes, “test everything” (especially doctrine) in order to “hold fast what is good.” To Galatia, “Each [of you] must examine his own work.” And finally, to Corinth, “If we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be
judged [by God].” The upshot, then, is that while we will
never be able to pass our own judgment on how our lives stack up in terms of
their real value to God (for only God knows how sincerely or righteously we
actually did whatever we did), Christians ought to examine their own lives
continually. We have to do that in order to make sure we are obeying, thinking
straight, and living in the way God intends for us. We ought to be taking full
moral responsibility for what we believe, say and do … and doing that all
the time.
The Flawed and Faithful
Yet I wonder how many Christians today are
on autopilot. I don’t mean those that have wandered into obvious sin; I mean
those who go to church every week, perform all the expected rituals, participate
in the program, and maybe even keep up a routine of Bible reading and prayer at
home … and yet never even think to ask themselves the tough questions: Why
do I do this? Where am I now? How pure is my heart? How sacrificial is my life?
How much do I really know Christ? And
how am I really doing in my walk with him?
How many of these have a church that has an
unimpeachable routine, but one that has kind of “gone dead”: not so much
through being wrong as by becoming
stale and habitual? And to how many of these congregations would the Lord say,
“I know your deeds … but … you have abandoned the love you had at first”? To these he also says, “Remember”. But how can you remember if you don’t think about what you used to be? Even
worse, how can you remember when all you really knew about your church’s practices was inherited from others and learned by rote?
You can only remember, then, if you examine
yourself, looking to see if your heart is really in things, if you believe
what you say you do, and if your real life and church practices are alive and
sincere or dead and insincere — because they might very well be exactly the same practices!
Whaaat?
You heard me.
You might be doing all the right things — rather like the church at Ephesus — and still be way, way off track in your personal Christian life or in the spiritual
life of your congregation. Getting the details of doctrine technically correct will not save you from hard-heartedness.
Now, needless to say, getting them wrong will help you even
less. But theoretical accuracy and passion for the Lord are two different
issues. One can obey out of habit or one can obey out of heart; the Lord prizes
the latter. Getting the facts right is how we figure out what obedience is; but
our love for the Lord is the only reason we have even to bother to get the
facts right. So which comes first?
I would even argue that being in a church that was in many
ways flawed, perhaps populated only with immature and ill-informed Christians,
but which was possessed of a heart tender to the Lord’s word, such that they
would respond to everything they learned, would be far better than sitting in a
congregation rigid to the truth of scripture in every explicit particular, but
dead in heart and too hard to learn anything anymore. I think I know which
congregation the Lord would choose.
Now or Later?
Now, why is all this pressing? It’s pressing because one day
we’re all going stand before the judgment seat of Christ (in Greek the word is bema) to give our account to the Lord, with our own mouths. That’s right: we’re all going to stand alone, face to face with the Lord, and
say exactly what we did, and when, and why.
I don’t know if that prospect fills you with confidence, but it doesn’t do that for me. I’ve got plenty to answer for, as, I suspect, do many of us; and we’d rather not have to answer for it at all. But we will.
Now, when that happens, I’m going to have plenty of anxiety …
mostly out of shame for how often I failed a God who has been so very kind and
gracious to me, and for how often I forgot to love him and cherish his beloved
people as I ought. But fortunately for me, I find some consolation in scripture.
It comes from a verse I’ve already quoted above. It reads, “If we judged
ourselves rightly, we would not be judged”.
I don’t want to be judged. But I can get out of it. All I
have to do is to get my head straight about things now. We used to call this
“repenting”: not just a change of direction,
but a change of mind (that also issues in a change of practical direction).
Repenting is not just a one-time thing we need when we get saved: it’s a
lifetime practice. From time to time, I need to pull myself up short, assess my
life, looking for ways in which I’ve been unfaithful or living on autopilot,
recover a true heart for God, then go and bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance;
that means reforming my life and practices continuously, so I cannot become a phony again.
But this will not happen if I will not take a look at
myself. My unexamined life will bring me to judgment as an unfaithful servant. I
can’t afford that.
Can you?
You might be better than me. Probably you are. But are you
good enough that the way you’re living needs no further reform? Are you content
to play out the hand of cards you’ve dealt yourself, and then wander off to the
Judgment Seat with only that in hand?
Or do you need a second … and then a third … and a
fourth look at yourself.
It’s Time
Time to take stock.
Time for reflection.
Time for refreshed obedience, both in our personal lives and
in church.
Like the Word says,
“Examine yourselves”.
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