Life and God’s word

WE have to find the vital connection between our life and God’s word. The latter is the real, ultimate and constant nourishment of the former. What a pity if we just go on living with nary any relation to God’s word.

This is what we are seeing nowadays. There’s so much ignorance of the saving word of God. And if there’s any knowledge or recourse to it, it’s often distorted by confusion, error, inadequate attitudes and misunderstanding.Even among our educated class, there’s that widespread misunderstanding, an urban legend that God’s word is just meant for a few people, or that it’s quite irrelevant and inapplicable to their affairs.

Our life seems to be fed and developed solely by purely human words and knowledge. They can be scientific and practical, impressive and high-grade in their technological know-how, but they miserably fail to feed our soul. They’re just incapable of doing so.

They only feed our body and anything material and social about ourselves. These aspects are, of course, necessary. In fact, these are what we first are conscious of, before we are aware of our spiritual needs.

But without feeding our soul by God’s word, we can have a tree rich in foliage but deficient in roots, a body without soul, a real monster and anomaly that can only invite trouble. We can be very practical, efficient, running fast—but outside the track.

We have to be more consistent to our faith, and recognize the indispensable importance of the word of God. We have to develop the appropriate attitudes, practices and habits.
The word of God is the genuine good news. It’s God sharing his knowledge and wisdom with us. It’s the beginning of how our life ought to be—supernatural and not just merely human and natural.

This means always exercising our faith, and subordinating all our human efforts to God’s word. In fact, we have to orient all of them to it. There’s nothing in our life that is not and cannot be related to the Bible.

We have to find a way to relate our everyday lives to the Bible text, and vice-versa, the Bible text to our everyday lives. We have to frequently ask ourselves, how can we read the Bible with our lives and our lives with the Bible?

This will require a lot of training, of course. And for this purpose, everyone who can should help. We have to open the ways, the bigger and more accessible the better, for others to follow to interrelate our life and God’s word.

Someone observed that because of the malls and the internet, among many other things that just seem to pop up in our present age, there’s also the diminution if not the loss of spiritual life, including of course the interest in the Bible.
There may be a lot of truth to that observation, but it’s not meant to be taken as an iron law. At best, it’s a social phenomenon that can be rectified. Thus, it presents us with a problem, which is actually a challenge.

Among the first things we have to do is to revise our attitudes toward these new things in our life. When we consider these things as purely human or technical without any relation to God, then we are starting with the wrong step.

We cannot get stuck in the technical and practical level. We have to go much further. We have to discern the role they play and the place they occupy in Christ’s redemptive mission. We have to see God in them.

Obviously, a lot of purification has to be done, knowing that these new things come with a lot of elements that are foreign if not hostile to God’s plans. There’s a lot of greed, vanity, etc. in them.

But to ignore them completely, and not to see God in them would be fatal to our Christian life. This is the challenge we face now. We have to learn how these new developments relate to God’s word, and vice-versa, identifying both the positive and negative aspects.

These new developments have to be seen in the context of religion, with due highlight on the good more than on the bad features. We cannot be fundamentalist or purely traditionalist in approach.