I set up this website to help me collect my thoughts. There’s so much noise out there, so many ideas being evangelized, how am I supposed to make sense of it all? I clearly have my own presuppositions and assumptions. But why? Are they congruent with each other? Or, do they contradict each other?
Why do I think what I think about today’s important topics? How do ensure that I’m being consistent in my thinking and convictions? How do I avoid just following the prevailing cultural winds? How do I avoid following my own fickle tendencies and leanings? Is it possible to build a system of thought, a way of viewing life, that is comprehensive, consistent, and relevant?
I think the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” And this website or blog or whatever you want to call it is my attempt to get my thoughts and arguments on paper. With that as a starting point, here’s what I’d like to talk about in this very first post… what I’ll refer to as “First Things”.
Quite a while back, an eccentric elderly man recommended I read a book called “Knowledge of the Holy” by A.W. Tozer. There was a a line in that book that has stuck with me ever since…
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. – A.W. Tozer
Here’s what struck me about this quote. It gave me an anchor, or a cornerstone, upon which to base the rest of my thinking. Here’s another way to look at it. This idea was the closest I could come to a “first thing” a “first thought”, from which all other thoughts and ideas must flow.
Now, perhaps there is a thought that might come before this question of God. As some thinkers have phrased it, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” But, this question immediately gets us back to the question of God. Because there can be only two answers to the origin question. Either time, space and matter are eternal, or they came into existence. Science is providing compelling evidence that this universe had a beginning. So, now the question goes to the cause of that beginning. Was the cause natural, or supernatural? And so, we’re coming back to God, and thoughts about God.
But, let me get back to the title of this post… “First Things”. Part of the reason our own individual thinking is so weak and fractured and inconsistent and fickle is because we haven’t thought at all about first things. We argue with our friends and acquaintances and about politics, economics, art, science, law, educational philosophy, and a dozen other topics but we forget that these are secondary or tertiary things. These topics are very important, but they are not first things.
If you and I are to think clearly, if we are to have a coherent, cohesive, relevant world view, a way of looking at all of life, we have to start with first things. As some have described it, we need to take our thinking “upstream”. So much of the debate swirling around us is dealing in secondary and tertiary things, downstream things. That’s why we quite often talk past each other. That’s why we can’t grasp how a friend or relative could think the way they do. What seems so obvious to us seems insane to them. And what seems so obvious to them seems insane to us. Why? Because, whether we know it or not, we have very different answer to life’s primary questions. Because we differ on first things. Because, if we were to trace the tributaries of our thinking up to their headwaters, you’d see that we have hugely different answers to life’s primary questions.
What are some of those “first things”? What are the topics that form the headwaters of our thinking… those topics and ideas that are as far upstream as possible? Without going too far in this introductory post, here are some of the topics that are generally considered to be very far upstream:
- Origin – Why is there something rather than nothing?
- Meaning – Does life have any meaning? If yes, what is it? How do we determine what it is?
- Morality – What is right and wrong? Is there such a thing as true truth? Truth with a capital “T”. Truth that’s true across all times and cultures?
- Destiny – Where is this entire universe headed?
Back to Tozer’s quote, your beliefs about God (and everyone has them) are about as far upstream as you can get. Similar to that, your thoughts about man are very far upstream. As John Calvin wrote hundreds of years ago…
Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.
Did you get that? Knowledge of God. Knowledge of ourselves. Calvin is talking about theology and anthropology. If we get these first things wrong, we will inevitably take the wrong distributary. We will end up in folly. We will end up with a host of wrong-headed ideas. We will developed systems and solutions to life’s problems that are based on wrong-headed ideas. As one thinker, I believe it was John Stonestreet, often repeats, “Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims.”
But, if we get these first things right, so many of the downstream questions we will face in life will already be answered. Getting the answers to these questions right unlocks answers to a huge variety of other questions. It unlocks the potential for clear headed thinking. It puts us in a position to have a comprehensive, wholistic, coherent, relevant world view. It puts us in a position to advance truth, goodness, and beauty. It enables us to maximize human flourishing, to show people what it means to be truly alive, to be fully human.
I don’t know how long we’ll have the freedom to talk openly and honestly about these topics. But, while we can, I hope you’ll join me in thinking through life’s biggest questions and clearly and boldly proclaiming Biblical answers.