To the humble goes the respect, or something like that

What comes first in your life, the chicken or the broken egg? Oh, let me be more clear. What comes first in your life, your beliefs or Jesus?

The answer to that question might just be the most important one you'll ever give.

What I mean by that is complicated. To many, their beliefs are a system passed down from mother to child, like, oh, say, "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." While a righteous saying, it is not a Biblical one.

But it might be passed down through so many generations that is is as righteous and, oh, say, "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

Therein lies the problem.

If we're worshipping the beliefs instead of who the beliefs are about, for example, then we're not getting it. If we're worshipping the word (intentionally lower case) rather than the Word, then we're not getting it.

All this is to simply say, Jesus told us to worship in spirit and in truth, and if we're not true studiers of the word of God, if we're not willing to understand that new scholarship opens new vistas into the word on a daily basis, and if we're not willing to simply say we're wrong on occasion, then I don't believe we're worshipping in spirit and certainly not in truth.

I get things wrong.

There. I said it. I'm not all powerful, all knowing, all understanding. I have opinions, of which I have offered on many occasion, and for more than five years of blogs. But that doesn't make me right. It makes me, uh, witty on occasion and witless on others.

The ability to say we are wrong at times is the ability to listen, and I've learned over the past 10 years that I can do that at times. Hasn't been easy. But it has been worth it.

The Bible says much of humility. Proverbs is practically teeming with items about humility. A sampling goes like this:
-- "When pride comes, so does shame, but wisdom brings humility."
-- "The fear of the Lord is wise instruction, and humility comes before respect."
-- "Pride comes before a disaster, but humility comes before respect."

Even in the prophetic word, Zephaniah's prophecy, there's this: "Seek the lord, all you humble of the land who practice his justice; seek righteousness; seek humility. Maybe you will be hidden on the day of the Lord's anger."

We've become a nation of opinion. News isn't written or spoken any longer, opinion is. We form these opinions often before the facts are even in. We seek to be right more than we seek to be just.

If for a moment we could remember these instructions so freely given in scripture, perhaps we might be hidden on the day of the Lord's anger.

But I suspect we will be handing out advice that day instead.