A book I read a couple of decades ago had a Klingon proverb that could be translated into, “That which doesn’t grow, dies.” The context in the book was about the Klingon Empire, but it can also apply to your life as a Christian. If you’re not growing in faith, you’re actually fading away from Jesus.
A coma patient has medical personnel to see to his or her needs. Arms and legs are manipulated so the muscles don’t atrophy away to nothing. Astronauts on missions in micro-gravity have to exercise to keep muscle tone, or when they come back to Earth they’ll be no better off than some coma patient who hadn’t been taken care of. They’ll fall, maybe break bones, but definitely something has gone wrong.
The same thing could be said about a person’s faith. “Use it or lose it.”
There’s the Parable of the Talents, where a master gives his servants money. Two of the servants use the money to produce an income, so the master has more when he comes back from a trip. But the third does nothing with it. He’s in orbit and doesn’t exercise. He’s an empire that doesn’t grow. So the master takes the money back and gives it to another so there’s growth.
That’s our purpose in Christ. “Grow, or die.”
I’ve spent years in the slowly dying category. That place is not a pleasant vacation spot. Sure, not doing anything to advance my faith had some short-term advantages. I actually said to myself, “I have a good enough grasp of the Bible to know what I should be doing.”
How wrong could I have been?
Since I’ve been doing deeper dives into what scripture says - and means, I’ve discovered whole new layers to what I thought was there. Some of my pet peeves about, “Why didn’t they teach that in Sunday School?” have turned into, “I bet they did and I didn’t pay attention.”
The Bible as a whole is such an intricate document that people have spent whole lifetimes studying it. There was always something more to learn. If I did nothing but read what others have written about it, there would always be something new to learn. I’d never finish learning before I die.
The thing is, there are implications to the way things were phrased in the original writing that cannot be captured by translations. Idioms they used have no counterpart in modern times. Jokes written in come across in English as just weird ways of saying something peculiar and have nothing to do with anything.
In Judges there’s a story about a left-handed guy who killed a wicked king. According to one commentary I read the king’s name (obviously meant to denigrate him for being evil) would be the ancient Hebrew equivalent of Fatty Fatso from Fatville. In Hebrew the alliteration isn’t there. It’s just an artifact of the English language.
While that king was listed as a fat guy, the joke of Fatty Fatso from Fatville is missing. That’s why studying the Bible can be so rewarding.
If you’ve read even a few of my previous posts there are nuggets I discovered from reading what others have written. Research by others has been a major source of information about what the Bible really means. If I’ve gleaned even a small measure of knowledge from them, then I’m a merely a gnat on the shoulder of a giant. My apologies to Sir Isaac Newton and Bernard of Chartes.
The very act of going to church isn’t even the bare minimum of exercising your faith muscles. Listening, learning, discussing, reading, THAT is the bare minimum. Do not give up going to church simply because it’s a hassle, the game is on, it takes too much time, or any number of other reasons that are simply excuses. You don’t go because you don’t want to.
Just sitting in the pew is like being a coma patient. Someone else is working your muscles, and when you finally wake up you’ll find out how weak you are.
That which does not grow, dies.
The Kingdom of God is growing. Will you grow with it?
