The world through rose colored glasses

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again. In Paul’s letters, he says that he has decided to ‘know nothing but Christ and Him crucified’. That never fails to amaze me. I don’t have to read it to be amazed. All I have to do is think about it. Here is an important man, at the time of his conversion, and he has decided to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified. What does that even mean? How can anyone DECIDE to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified. What would life look like if we knew nothing but Christ and Him crucified?

I was recently reading in a book written by a reformed preacher. In the first chapter this preacher wrote of Paul and how he decided to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified. Immediately upon reading that and the preachers explanation of what Paul supposedly meant by it, I found myself disagreeing with this preacher. He said that Paul was merely saying that as an exaggeration, a way to get people’s attention, a way to make them see that no matter what else he might teach them, the most important thing was Christ and Him crucified.

As I read that I found myself mentally shaking my head. I simply could not agree with that preacher. I don’t believe that Paul said he decided to ‘know nothing but Christ and Him crucified’ as an exaggeration. I truly believe he meant exactly what he said when he said that. My husband has said often that he prefers the simplicity of Christ. I think this is what Paul meant when he said he had decided to ‘know nothing but Christ and Him crucified’. I believe he was saying that THIS is where it all began. THIS is what is important. THIS is where we should start. And THIS is where our entire focus should be. Christ and Him crucified. Paul may have taught how Christians should act but he did it from a basis of Christ and Him crucified. He never taught that Christians should act a certain way without having Christ as the focal point. He may have taught how leaders should guide the ekklesia (Church) but he never taught that without Christ as the basis. Christ was the foundation for everything Paul taught.

Paul did not simply say I have decided to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified to use the statement as an exaggeration for anyone listening (or reading) to his words. He said it because it was the basis of what he said and wrote. It was the basis of his life.

Just yesterday my husband was telling me about a conversation he had with a relative. My husband told me how he spoke against something this relative values and how the relative didn’t like hearing what my husband said. The thing is my husband did not speak against anything in a bad way, he was simply looking at the thing this relative values in light of Scripture. My husband was weighing the world through Scripture, through Christ and His word, and that didn’t set well with this relative. My point here is that my husband doesn’t just say he prefers the simplicity of Christ…he sets his life by the simplicity of Christ. So if my husband says, ‘I prefer the simplicity of Christ’, he isn’t saying it as an exaggeration. He’s saying it because it is the basis of who he is, it is his foundation, it’s how he sees the world, it’s how he lives his life. I truly believe that is what Paul was doing when he said he decided to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified. It wasn’t an idle statement. It wasn’t an exaggeration.

Now, yes, obviously Paul would have known other things. He could not simply wipe everything he ever learned from his mind and know nothing but Christ and Him crucified. I believe that what Paul was saying was that Christ and Him crucified was the basis of how he saw life, it was what he lived (and died) for, it was the basis of who he was. If he said something to you…it was based on a world view of Christ and Him crucified. If he taught you something…it was based on a world view of Christ and Him crucified. If he did something…it was based on a world view of Christ and Him crucified.

I’ve heard it said that some people view the world through rose colored glasses, or that they look at the world through a lens. That is basically what Paul was doing…at least it’s what I believe Paul was doing. Paul could never truly know nothing but Christ and Him crucified, but he could view all of life through a lens that compared everything he encountered to Christ and Him crucified.

I tell my husband often that I would like to live on our own private island. I’d like to just move away from the world, from all its problems, from all its sins. Oh, the peace we could have in our very own little island. No neighbors music blaring, no seeing sexual immorality every time we go to town, no having covetousness shoved down our throats by a society that lives for more, more, more, each and every day. I know that isn’t feasible. We will most likely never own our own island and in truth, if it came right down to it, I might not really want to live on an island. I do like going places, doing things. I have a fondness for thrift stores and ice cream. I enjoy shopping trips with family members. But there is that lingering wish for the simple life of living with and near only those we choose to surround ourselves with.

But what if a person truly spent their entire life on an island? What if they never encountered another person? When I was a kid my family used to watch a movie about two kids that were stranded on an island. They were young at the time that the shipwreck happened, six or seven I think, and with the exception of a very short time during which one of the ships hands was on the island with them, they grew up totally on their own. They knew only a few years worth of information that came through the influence of the world and other people, everything else they knew was simply what they learned there, alone, on their island. They were mostly uninfluenced by the world or anyone in the world.

Where did they form their beliefs?

Where did they get the foundation for how they looked at the world?

From where did the very basics of who they were come?

I recently found myself thinking of my husbands fondness for the simplicity of Christ and Paul’s decision to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified. Those thoughts were quite a few days before I read that book where the preacher wrote of Paul and his exaggeration in saying he knew nothing but Christ and Him crucified.

As I thought of my husband saying he prefers the simplicity of Christ, and of Paul saying he had decided to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified, I found myself thinking of that island and what it would be like if a person grew up on an island, totally uninfluenced by the world. What beliefs would they hold?

Scripture tells us that we must hear the gospel to believe. I know that. I understand that. But I also know that Scripture says that all of creation points to the Creator. I also think of the man, living in a communist country, that had supposedly never heard of God and yet was drawn to Him. I found that story amazing when I read it this past winter and I still find it amazing today.

I have a friend that used to say, often, that she wished we lived the way they did in the 1800’s. She would speak of how simple life was then, of how people weren’t bombarded by stuff and so much that took their focus off of God. Maybe it came from hearing her speak of that so often or maybe it simply is just a fact but I can easily see how the less stuff we have the easier it would be to focus on…anything.

As I sit here writing this…I am focused on my computer. I’m not focused on my family, my house, or Scripture. It doesn’t matter that what I’m writing is Scripturally based, it doesn’t matter that it might edify someone, it doesn’t even matter that my house is clean and my family is occupied elsewhere, what matters is that, at this very moment, my focus is on the computer and not on other things. I’m not reading Scripture because I’m writing. Now…I might not would be reading Scripture if I wasn’t writing but that, too, doesn’t matter. When one thing takes our attention…our attention isn’t put on something else.

If a person lives in a house that is so big, or filled with so many things, that it takes them four hours three times a week to keep it clean…that’s twelve hours a week that they must devote to the upkeep of stuff and not to Scripture or the simplicity of the Lord.

And so I think of that island, and what a person might be like if they grew up on an island, knowing nothing of the world or the ways of the world, simply living life as if nothing else exists, because to them nothing else does exist, what would that person be like? What would they think about? What would they focus on?

And what would they think if a Bible washed up on shore and they read it, hearing those truths for the first time? I’m just giving the assumption that the person could read it because I don’t suppose a Bible would have any effect on them if they couldn’t read it. What would they see in Scripture? What would they understand of it? Would they believe it to be some fanciful story book? Would they believe it to be the Word of God?

About a year ago I had an ongoing conversation with someone where I saw something different in Scripture than this person did. To make sure I wasn’t reading something into Scripture that wasn’t there I asked other people to read that passage of Scripture and tell me what they got out of it. One of the people I asked to read it is a self professing pagan. This person believes the Bible to be a mix of stories and history. They do not believe in Christ and they do not believe the Bible to be the holy Scriptures, the Word of God. I asked this person to read a certain passage of Scripture because of their beliefs. I wanted a completely unbiased opinion. Yes, I know they have a biased opinion about the Scriptures, that is they do not believe them to be God’s word, but I know that because they see nothing but a story book when they look at a Bible then they have no reason to read it in any way beyond just reading the words on a page.

So I asked this person to read a passage from Scripture and tell me what they saw in it. And what they saw was simply the words written on the page. Which was what I saw too. I understood the story those words were connected to, knew more of the story than they did, but there is, in any given passage, simply the words on the page, if we approach Scripture with no preconceived notions of what should be there.

How would someone that has never heard of God, never seen a Bible, never heard a Bible story, read Scripture? What would they get from it?

Now…what if a person was raised on an island, by Christian parents, with no outside influences? What if the only book on this island was a Bible and this child grew up on bedtime stories from the pages of Scripture? What if the parents regularly walked this child through the island comparing it to the Garden of Eden? What if the stars were explained through Scripture? What if the waves, the sand, the sea creatures, the palm trees, the fish…the everything…was explained through Scripture? What if that child never heard of evolution? What if they never heard the Lord’s name taken in vain? What if they were raised on the simplicity of Christ by parents that had decided to know nothing but Christ?

I know neither of those scenarios is feasible. I know that life doesn’t work that way. But…what if it did? How would a person see the world if they knew nothing of the sinfulness we face every day? I know sin lives in our hearts and that we are born with it there. That’s not what I’m talking about. Sin would be in this person but what if their entire foundation for how they viewed the world was Scripture?

How would the world look to a person that saw everything through the rose colored glasses of Scripture?

How would it look through the rose colored glasses of the simplicity of Christ?

How would it look through the rose colored glasses of knowing nothing but Christ and Him crucified?