This morning was wonderful. Most of it I spent in silent reflection. A brush with surgery will do that to you. It tends to promote self-examination.
This morning, as I sipped coffee at Bo's, I remembered something Plato once said. I say this to my shame, but although I've taught Greek for 48 years, I never once sat down to examine that statement in its original language. Today I decided to rectify that. Here it is:
As you know, this is usually rendered "The unexamined life is not worth living." The Greek, however, puts it a bit differently. A literal translation might be "But the unexamined life is not lived for a human." I think what Plato means is, "A person who lives an unexamined life has never truly lived." For Plato, an unexamined life wasn't life at all. To put it another way, it is impossible, unthinkable, and unfathomable for a person to go through life without self-examination. A paraphrase might be:
"The person who lives an unexamined life is not truly alive."
The next question I pondered was this: Would the New Testament authors have agreed with Plato? The answer I came up with was, "Yes and no." Yes if we think of passages like 1 Cor. 11:28 ("A person must examine himself") or 1 Tim. 4:16 ("Keep a close watch on yourself"). But an emphatic No! if we think of a passage like Phil. 1:21, where Paul clearly and adamantly insists that life for a Christian doesn't consist in anything but Christ ("For me to live is Christ"). As Jesus put it in John 14:6, "It is I who am the way and the truth and the life." It is I who am the life! Merrill Tenney, the former dean of the Wheaton College Graduate School, once put it beautifully:
"Without him there is no going. Without him there is no knowing. And without him there is no living."
When we examine ourselves, we discover things about our lives that no one else knows. There are secrets in our lives we've never shared with another human being, not even those closest to us. We discover habits and attitudes that no one else has noticed. Above all, we see with perfect clarity how short we fall of being able to say, honestly and wholeheartedly, "For to me to live is Christ." We keep up a good front, but the back porch of our lives is cluttered with things no one else can see. The Pharisees were good at that, and how our Lord blasted them because of it. Yet all the while there is the One who sees what's on the back porch. He sees our hearts in their darkest recesses. All things are naked and open before his eyes.
Perhaps that's why God allows us to suffer so much in this life. True, sometimes he spares us, like he did me yesterday. This morning, instead of lying in a bed in a dark room recovering from surgery, I was able to drive and lift and walk. But truth be told, there's no way we can live for very long in this world and not have a time of suffering in our lives. You know, that's not all bad. You're finally looking in the right direction, into the face of the One who suffered. There are occasions when God shows himself strong, openly and obviously, while at other times he does so in the shadows, behind the scenes. His intervention may not be that evident or at least visible to those around us. Nevertheless, still he's at work.
I know that many of you are going through difficult times. Soul-searching times. Heart-examining times. Maybe, like me with my torn retina, you're encountering a situation you never saw coming. No matter what, God is still showing himself strong. All we need to do is acknowledge it. I so love the One who spared me from surgery yesterday. I want so badly to say, without any reservation whatsoever, "To me to live is Christ and Christ alone." But honestly, I'm not there yet. Even so, amidst the darkness, a light is shining.
So why did he give me yet another miracle? Because he loves me. Wholly and unreservedly. And I'm beginning to realize that he will never tire of showing me that, be it in times of health or in times of sickness. He is lovely and precious beyond belief. Look closely, friend, past the scars, and you will see him too.