Cliff Loesch

May 13, 2007

Mother’s Day

First, Second, Third

Romans 14:7

Two or three years before World War II broke out, a man in Australia saw it coming. He felt that another war of great devastation was about to break out so he set out to find the safest hideout possible. He studied for a long time and finally settled on a remote island in the South Pacific. Its name was Guadalcanal. This man’s safe hideout became the center of one of the war’s most terrible bombardments. [Clergy Talk, May 2007, p.6] There’s really no place to hide. Like it or not, we are all tied together on this planet, and though not every event in every part of the world affects us directly—even still many of them do. We are inter-connected with other people throughout the world. Halford Luccock, a professor at the Yale Divinity School in the first half of the 1900s once said, “It is a day of fearful propinquity.” Someone commenting on those words said, “The truth of this observation is not very difficult to see.” [ibid., 6] In my case, however, I had to look up the word “propinquity” before it made any sense to me. Basically, it means near or close proximity. And his statement is much more true of the world today than it ever has been before. Through cell phones we can talk to or leave messages with friends and family virtually anytime. And through the internet we can communicate with people throughout the world if we so choose. The world is much smaller than it used to be and we are tied together in the global community more and more all the time.

Romans 14:7 says, “We do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves.” We’ve got to think about others. But it’s not a good idea to go to extremes when it comes to others. On the one hand we should not seek to be so distant and so detached from those around us that, like the man from Australia, we seek the remotest part of the planet so we can try to be completely disengaged from the problems of others or the problems of the world. On the other hand, it’s not a good idea to become so closely involved with others that we become entangled in everyone else’s problems. So we avoid detachment and we avoid entanglement—but we seek to be involved, supportive, caring and encouraging however we can.

Again, Romans 14:7 says, “We do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves.” I also think it might be a good idea from time to time to simply ask ourselves: what do we live for? “We do not live to ourselves,” says Romans 14. So what do we live for? Why are we here? What is the purpose of our existence? Or is there some kind of goal for our lives or an end that we should strive toward? These are really not such easy questions to answer. But they are important questions. The students in my philosophy class write a short paper that asks the question, “What is the goal of human life?” I may need to change the title of that paper, for even though I try to verbally explain that I’m asking the big question—the “why are we here” question, the “what is our ultimate purpose in life” question—I still get a lot of papers that seem to miss the bigger picture. They focus on the smaller picture and say, “We all have many goals in life.” Well, yes, that’s true. We might have educational goals and career goals and financial goals. We might have goals in life that involve travel or learning new skills. We even have more moment-to-moment goals like getting our bills paid or getting supper on the table. More than a few people wonder why we should even bother to ask ourselves questions like these. Why not just live our lives to the fullest—and surely the questions of meaning and purpose will work themselves out. Well, that seems like it could be true. On the other hand, if others were to observe our lives—to take note of how we actually spend our time—what would they conclude is our ultimate goal in life by the things they see? Would they say that it appears that our main goal in life seems to be to watch more television? Or to try to win a world record in sending text messages? Or perhaps they would say our chief goal has something to do with the consumption of chocolate? Or coffee. Would they say that from all outward appearances we live for ourselves alone? This is why I think we ought to ask questions like these. Ultimately it’s our choice: we live for ourselves. Or we live for others. Or we live for God. Or we live with some combination of those three things. I don’t think I need to convince anyone here that living for self, alone, is an incomplete life. I mean, don’t misunderstand—there is nothing wrong with living for yourself (at least to some extent). You have to live your own life. No one else is going to live it for you. In fact at certain times in life it seems you need to lay aside your humility and sing your own praises to some extent—such as when looking for a job. The philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard spoke about a concept he called the single individual. My take on what he means by this is that there are so many ways that we are pulled into the expectations and thought patterns of the larger group—or of all the various groups that we happen to be part of. But Kierkegaard says that to live an authentic existence there are those moments when we have to step out of the expectations of others and simply act as a single individual. That’s an oversimplification of his ideas, I’m sure. Nevertheless, we cannot totally discount the idea of living our own life—of looking out for ourselves. It is a responsibility that is ours to embrace. Yet living our lives for self, alone, would be an incomplete life. An impoverished life. Putting yourself first leads to lots of problems. That’s a truth, I believe, that’s easy to see.

Romans 14 recommends putting God first. I read verse seven a moment ago, which says, “We do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves.” The next verse—verse 8—says, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” I think this chapter advocates putting God first in your life. And that’s probably not a surprise.

But Romans 14 also makes a strong point that we should live for others. Look at the way the chapter opens. It says, “Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarrelling over opinions.” It goes on to talk about some differences that people had concerning eating meat and observing days. We know that Paul had his own opinions on these particular differences—but he basically says that on these things we have differences—and we should simply accept one another anyway. God has accepted all of us, he says. So who are we to judge one another? We are all servants of God. So who are we to judge the servants of another? A little later in the chapter, in verse 10, Paul returns to this point. He said, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.”

When I look at this chapter, I have a tendency to link verses 7 and 8 together. We do not live to ourselves—it says in verse 7. And verse 8 reveals that we live to the Lord. But I think in the larger context—both in the verses that come before and the verses after—we are also directed to live for others. So the idea that we do not live to ourselves points in both directions: live to the Lord, and live for others. I know it may seem like a rather simplistic idea, but could it be that Romans 14 teaches the idea that we’ve often heard: God is first, others are second, and I am third? It may be a simple idea—but if we could live by it we would do very well.

If you are like me, on a regular basis some regular re-examination of priorities are needed. As time goes by, things get out of alignment. From time to time we need to set our priorities back in order. There are many way to go about this. But I want to leave you with a little idea from Elton Trueblood. A former student of Trueblood’s, Kenneth Chafin, wrote that as a young man he was drowning under all the responsibilities and busy-ness of having a young family and being a new teacher. He was “pulled in every direction and finding it hard to get things done.” He was together with Elton Trueblood for a meal and simply asked Elton, “With your heavy teaching load, how do you find time for all the other important things in life?” “He smiled, reached inside his coat pocket for his date book, held it up and said, ‘The secret is in keeping my calendar full.’” Chafin said, “I thought mine was already too full. When he sensed that I hadn’t gotten his point, he continued, ‘A long time ago I discovered that other people would decide how I used my time unless I decided to keep my appointment book full with the things that were important to me.’” [Daily Guideposts, 12/4/2000] Ever since that day, Chafin says he used Trueblood’s method to manage his time and to keep his priorities straight. And may the Lord empower us to discover ways to keep our lives in balance and to live by our priorities.