Jesus is God's Philosophy

“I’m a wretch.” I said that to my wife last week after we had gone to bed. We were lying there, close but not touching, staring into the darkness. We attempted to go out for dessert earlier in the evening. But before we arrived at our destination, we engaged in a conversation that didn’t go particularly well. The taste of that back-and-forth soured our  appetite by the time we got to Menchie’s. Without going in for something sweet, we turned around and went back home.

 

Here we were, then, lying in bed, feeling a bit salty. After a few minutes of silence yet knowing she was still awake, I said to Tamarah, “I love you.” A few more minutes passed and then she asked, “How can you love me?” And that’s when I said, “I’m a wretch.”

 

The phrase just came to me, instantly, instinctively, from a drop-down menu of words, phrases, truths, and realities I’ve thought about for most of my life. I’ve developed that mental menu—we might call it a philosophy—because I’ve learned there is such a thing as saving grace for moments just like this. I can’t remember the last time I sang the song, Amazing Grace. Years, I’d guess. Yet there in the dark, in a lightening flash of memory, came the line, “amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

 

That refrain might be a good place to begin building a philosophy for life. Philosophy, strictly speaking, means, the love of wisdom. More broadly, philosophy is a person’s way of life, a world-and-life-view, how one thinks about things like knowledge, truth, and the nature and meaning of life. Philosophy seeks to answer big, essential questions: What is real? Who are we? Why are we here? How should we live? How should we die?

 

Do you ask yourself questions like this? Where do you go looking for the answers? At the start of another year, I’ll state the obvious that sooner or later you’re going to need some answers. And I’d like to say that your life is worth a lot more than a weak effort at getting clarity on the big questions.

 

If we go to Christian Scripture looking for answers to these questions, we might start by considering the word, “way” as a signpost. “Way” or “highway” occurs 710 times in the Old Testament, with 75 of those occurrences in Proverbs. Just start reading through Proverbs and you’ll see the signposts: the stairway to heaven and the highway to hell. The Hebrew word for “way” is, derek, and the way is a metaphor for an ongoing practical lifestyle, not just some theory. This is where Christian philosophy breaks from the secular. The Scriptures speak of going in a way rather than of going on a way. The way is already paved; you don’t figure this out on your own. Unlike Bon Jovi’s screed of, “My heart is like an open highway, like Frankie said I did it my way”, an honest person knows life is too hard, too short, and too complicated to figure out on one’s own.

 

In other words, the way to life is not found by chance or accident, nor is this the wealthy person’s self-indulgent philosophy that “the journey is life” as an end in itself (no immigrant stuck at our border would buy that idea—they are looking for a way to a better home, not a romantic dream of never arriving). “The way” is, in biblical terms, learned by explicit teaching and repetition.

 

Each day, maybe each moment, asks us, Which way do you want to go? Yet the Word is straightforward in warning us that, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Prov. 14:12). The Scriptures are also clear about the path that leads to life, and even though “the gate is small and the way is narrow” (Matthew 7:14), it can be found if you want to find it.

 

Curious, then, that in the New Testament book of Acts those who believe in Jesus as the Christ are referred to as people of “the Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9; 19:23; 22:4; 24:14; 24:22). It appears from these verses that these people have found an answer to the big questions.

 

“Thomas said to Jesus, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, how do we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me’” (John 14:5-6). In saying that he is “the way,” Jesus is saying that he is God’s philosophy. I am not saying that Jesus came to be a philosopher, much less that his teaching should be detached from him to form a philosophy unto itself. I’m saying Jesus IS the philosophy.

 

Back in college, for example, I learned that the Ten Commandments are the external written form describing God’s internal moral character. Hence, the moral law. We can also say that Jesus is the embodiment and incarnation of God’s wisdom in answering our philosophical questions about life and reality. The question then is, can I bring what I know and believe about Jesus to bear on my immediate circumstances in such a way that both my life and the life of those around me are made better? Saved, even?

 

When I say to my wife, then, that, “I’m a wretch”, I’m bringing my life’s philosophy—Christ crucified and now alive in me—to show me the way through a difficult moment in which I, and then my wife, needed deliverance. Note that “amazing grace” comes first, and only after that comes “a wretch like me.” This is one of the many ironies of God’s philosophy: that when you know you’re fully loved, and are secure in that love, you are then finally free to admit the worst about yourself. The confidence that comes with God’s love humbles us.

 

Jesus has shown me the way. I knew that if I gave up my rights and ended the soured discussion with a sweet and simple declaration of love for my wife, both of us would get our life back. I had to die to myself and make my wife the focus of my affections. And sure enough, just as it worked when Jesus first loved me, she came undone.

 

Go ahead and admit it in the dark, to God and yourself, that you want Jesus’ love to save and secure you. Then you can finally stop running from the worst of yourself. I’m a wretch, yes. But I’m more than that. Much more. I’m loved and in the Way.

 

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than human philosophy (1 Cor. 1:25).