Chalke Talk 40: What are life's biggest questions?

Steve reflects on an important question that sustains our purpose and vision, as human beings, but is unfortunately rarely asked: “What kind of human being do you want to become?”

So often we think that career, lifestyle and other amenities and luxuries will sustain our happiness in life.  But by focussing on happiness instead of digging deeper into our vision and purpose, we often fail to prepare ourselves to be resilient when life gets tough. As Steve puts it, reflecting on Jesus’s response to the Pharisees, “Love God. Love others as yourself. That’s it. That’s what it means to be fully alive. All the rest is commentary. Window dressing.”

This is significant, for a myriad of reasons, argues Steve. Not only does Jesus refuse to refer to parts of the Hebrew bible, such as Judges and Numbers that are packed full of legalism and violence, but he intentionally picks the most important commandment, which isn’t even in the 10 commandments: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” This starts off a long lineage of other followers who put loving their neighbours and loving themselves as the centre point of Christianity.

So, over the coming weeks – that is exactly what we are going to do with Chalke Talk.  But, for now I’ll leave you with these questions?  Why do you think that Jesus chose to answer the Pharisees question to him without any reference to any of the existing commandments? What do you think that this means for ‘rules based’ approaches to life?  And, lastly, why are you here and what kind of person are you trying to become?