First Things and Second Things - No. 46
A concept that I have run into many times in surprisingly different works of wisdom is the idea that there are first things and second things. In its simplest form, it means that some things must happen first and are of greater importance than other things. C.S. Lewis is the only person I have read who uses the phrase “first things and second things,” but similar concepts are present in many different writings and wisdom traditions.
This kind of thinking seems to have originated in Greek Philosophy, but in many ways, it is all over the Old Testament. Aristotle said in Nicomachean Ethics that some ends are subordinate to others. We see the concept show up again in Augustine’s writing on rightly ordered love. He said that a good life requires loving things in the right order, with God as the highest good, and that moral disorder comes from loving lesser goods more than greater ones. Bonhoeffer talks about this again in a different way in his writing on the ultimate and the penultimate. Over and over again, we see great thinkers and spiritual leaders bringing us back to this idea that there are some things that are of a higher importance or order than other things. Even though their perspective differed, the recognition that there is an important order of things shows up in both Western and Eastern thought traditions. You might be saying right now, of course, some things are first, and others are second, but just because we recognize the validity of the concept does not mean it properly shapes how we think and live.
Lewis says that you cannot have second things without first things. For instance, food is a good thing, but too much of the wrong kinds is bad, so food is a second thing to the higher good of health. Any part of our lives where we focus too much on second things in the place of first things is bound to collapse. If we value safety too much, we will find that we don’t actually live. If we pursue pleasure too much, we will find that everything seems to lose its flavor and pleasure. These are simple examples, but they demonstrate a profound truth. If we put secondary things before first things, then we lose the secondary thing as well. Another way of looking at this is that good things become “not so good” things when we do not have them in the right order.
The highest and first good thing is always God. Yet culturally, in our pursuit of God, we constantly fall into the trap of valuing the second things, the lower things, over the higher things. We care more about right theology, denominations, politics, worship styles, behavior, and appearances than we do about the Gospel. Perhaps you are horrified that I said that, and I agree it sounds horrible, but I am afraid it is true. If we valued the gospel above all those other secondary things, then we wouldn’t have such fractured and often powerless displays of church in the Western world. Churches and faith communities split at an alarming rate because we confuse secondary things for first things.
We can't do second things without first doing first things. For instance, we can’t love our neighbor as ourselves without first receiving God's love for us. We can't truly share the good news if it hasn’t transformed us. We cannot forgive unless we have been forgiven, and we cannot be forgiven unless we have truly seen our own need for forgiveness. When it comes to the teachings of Jesus, order matters a lot. We like to treat everything as of equal importance, but in doing that, we actually just downgrade the first things and end up losing the second things in the process.
Modern Christianity has rolled the Gospel into a larger theological context. In doing that, we make it about a set of beliefs and a moral code for living. Then we get to look at it and say yes, I believe in it, and that is evidenced by how well I follow this code for living. Then we set out to propagate our theology as the right way, and every other way is wrong or at least less right. If we get nothing else out of the Gospel, it should be our immense personal need for salvation and redemption. The Gospel is a personal message to each of us that, as we ponder it and let it sink in, should lead us to be transformed. Our ego and need to be right cannot survive if we first see the Gospel as a personal message for me that demands a response.
When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus said, love God with all your heart and love others as yourself. He combined two commandments and said that together they are the greatest. This is obviously of paramount importance, but what we struggle to see is that both of those commandments imply ego death. For instance, if I love God with all my heart, then I am completely surrendered to Him in every area of my life. If we surrender that fully, then our old self that wasn’t surrendered, and used to be in control, has been sacrificed. Then, if we can actually love others as we love ourselves, that is one of the greatest pictures in all of the world’s wisdom writings of overcoming self. If we take seriously what Jesus said as the greatest commandment, then we see the first and most important part of our lives as the surrender of self.
When Jesus began His ministry, He went out saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” Said another way, change your thinking and go a different direction because the reality of my kingdom is right here. As we work our way through the good news that Jesus shared, we are taken deeper and deeper into an awareness of what Kingdom thinking actually looks like. Suddenly, the first are last, and the meek inherit the earth. It is a complete paradigm wrecker at every turn, and all of it is a personal invitation to ego death, new identity, and transformation.
How can we claim to believe in that message and then split churches over power and control? I heard of one church that split over whether the piano should be on the stage or on the ground. Regularly, we see faith communities in conflict and splitting over silly things like authority, money, theology, politics, and church leadership roles. How can a community of people that are embracing ego death and radical transformation end up fighting over such silly things? How is that a picture of the greatest commandment lived out in our lives? I believe the answer is simple, it isn’t. That can only happen when we put second things before first things, and in so doing, we lose the first thing.
If we first focus on the most important things, then we become transformed, and our ego is no longer running the show. Instead of caring so much about being right, we start to care most deeply about living from connection to the Father and loving others the way we love ourselves. More importantly, since we are being transformed, we no longer think the way we used to. We begin to have more and more of a kingdom way of thinking in every area of our lives.
Bonhoeffer talks about how it is not that secondary things don’t matter; they matter immensely, but they are not the most important things. If we use Lewis and Augustine’s line of reasoning on this, then we end up seeing that we cannot properly understand second things without first focusing on the first things. In the case of the teachings of Jesus, we can’t really understand what He is talking about unless we first completely build our lives around the greatest commandment. When we embrace that level of ego death, we begin to be able to see what he was talking about in the rest of his teachings. On the other hand, if we try to understand the Gospel without first embracing our own ego death and transformation, we end up obsessing over a bunch of things that are important but devoid of true meaning in our lives unless they are handled in the right order.
I think that all of our problems in the Western Christian world come from the fact that we value being right over being transformed. We take the second things in the Bible and treat them as first things, and as a result, we have lost the first things. When the woman caught in adultery was brought before Jesus, they wanted her punished, stoned to death for her wrong behavior. Jesus responded by saying that the person without sin should throw the first stone. I believe this story is so powerful because he brought them back to the first and most important thing, their awareness of their own sin and need for redemption. As soon as He shifted their perspective, they just walked away. When they were reminded of the first thing, they could no longer judge and condemn another person.
There is a great story about a desert father named Abba Moses, who was asked to come join a council that was going to deal with a brother’s sinful behavior. At first, he refused to go, but when they wouldn’t stop bothering him, he grabbed a leaking jar, filled it with water, and then walked to join the gathering. When the other brothers saw the water leaking from the jar behind him as he walked, they said, “What are you doing?” He responded, saying, “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.” After hearing this, the brothers did not condemn the man but forgave him.
How do we respond to the faults of another when we have first things first in our hearts, minds, and lives? I think it looks a lot like Jesus with the adulterous woman and Abba Moses with the brother who sinned. We love others the way we love ourselves. I have to believe that most of the conflict in the Christian world would cease to be a problem if we put first things first. By doing that, we would end up getting the second things as well. For instance, I have never heard of someone being transformed because they were judged or shamed so well over their wrong theology or behavior. But I have met many people who began following Jesus because of how well they were loved and forgiven. If we actually care about the teachings of Jesus, we will not and cannot confuse second things as being of the same importance as first things.
We live in a real world, with real people, real challenges, and decisions. Those things matter, and I am not advocating for wholesale ignoring problematic situations. What I am saying is that when we have the right order, our perspective and understanding of those situations is different. If I am trying to navigate complex terrain from deep in a valley, it would be much easier to navigate if I could climb a mountain and get a higher perspective. Focusing on first things first changes our perspective and allows us to actually see and understand the second things.
I will leave you with one last example. There is much discussion in faith communities about what it means for a man to be a leader of his family. If we simply define a leader the way the world does, then we end up thinking that means a man should be the boss, the one in charge, making all the decisions, and his wife is subordinated to him. If we define a leader through the lens of the teaching of Jesus, then a leader starts to look more like the most sacrificial role. When our ego dies, and we begin to be transformed, we lead from love and sacrifice, not control. When we see marriage as the two becoming one, then what does it really mean to be the leader? I am not sure, but I have to believe it is a kind of leadership that we rarely see in our world. I also have to believe that it is the kind of leadership all of us would want to follow. It’s no longer about who is in control but who is showing us through word and example “the way.”
- John Walt
